Man, Nintendo was REALLY leaning in hard on these pointless puzzle games for the Mario franchise, weren’t they? They had something going there with Dr. Mario, I’ll give them that, but then they made Yoshi, a fine enough puzzle game, but one that isn’t engaging enough to where I wanna play it for more then five minutes, and Yoshi’s Cookie, the one that will probably give Yoshi diabetes while also STILL not being engaging enough to make me wanna play for even more than five minutes! There comes a time when, after trying time and time again, you gotta take a step back and realize you have already peaked, and you will never be able to reach that success again. But nonetheless, that didn’t stop them from trying, so for their next attempt, they decided to give the green dino a break, and instead use their good ol’ yellow fat man instead for another experiment, and thus, they created Wario’s Woods.

Like with Yoshi and Yoshi’s Cookie, I never had any real interest to give this game a proper shot beforehand, primarily because it was another Mario puzzle game from the NES, and I wasn’t really wanting to try it out for fear that it would just be another mid puzzler with nothing to show for it. I have been curious about it for a while though, not just because it is a Wario puzzle game, but also because it is the last officially licensed NES game ever released for us in the states, so I wondered how exactly were they going to end off the legacy of such an industry-changing console. Well, now that I have played it, let me tell you then that, they ended it off with… another mid puzzler with nothing to show for it. For what we got here, I would say it is a good game, and you could have some fun with it with the right people, but it does fall into a lot of the same problems that both Yoshi and Yoshi’s Cookie had, with not much else to show for it.

The story is appropriately simple, where Wario takes over the all-too-perfect Peaceful Woods and turns all of the creatures that inhabit them into sinister beasts, so it is up to some random Toad from the Mushroom Kingdom to go in and stop anymore destruction from happening, which is an incredibly stupid premise, but I feel it fits right at home with the game as a whole. The graphics are pretty good, having plenty of great sprites and animations for all the characters and enemies, all feeling like a good way to send off the system it was made for, the music is good enough, having cheery and sinister tracks for whatever is going on at the moment, but none of the tracks are all that memorable, the control is a bit different from what you usually expect in a puzzle game, and it does take some getting used to, which I never really did at the end of it all, and the gameplay is simple enough for a puzzler, taking elements from other puzzle games and sprinkling them all together, for a perfectly average experience.

The game is a mostly typical puzzle game, where you take control of that random Toad that I mentioned earlier, go through plenty of different rounds through plenty of different tree trunks, match up plenty of different monsters together while trying to connect them to the falling bombs, gather up plenty of the coins that will fall down when you win so you could feel better about yourself, then turn off the game and go back to playing Tetris, because why would you bother playing this when Tetris is right there. It is a very simple puzzle game with some neat ideas, and its got the visuals and music to back it up for a good while, but like I mentioned before, not only is the game not really exciting or rewarding enough to where you wanna keep going for hours on end, but there are also somethings in general that are just holding it back.

Unlike many other puzzle games, where you take control of either the pieces or some other aspect of the game to get the pieces to match up, you actually take control of Toad himself, running around in these tree trunks and matching up all of the monsters and bombs yourself. This, in all honesty, is actually a pretty neat idea, and it does make you think differently about how to approach this type of game, since before things start falling down on top of you, you can actually move around the monsters that you are trying to clear out so that you can get rid of them pretty quickly, which is very helpful at times. It also helps that you can also do several things with Toad that you wouldn’t be able to do in other puzzle games, like climbing up columns of monsters to get to the other side of them, or kicking certain pieces across the board, which is neat. And of course, like any good puzzle game, there is a two player vs. mode, where you and a friend can battle it out to see which one of you is the best monster exterminator of them all, and while I myself didn’t try out this mode, I imagine it is the best way to experience a game like this.

Unfortunately, just like with some of the other Mario spin-off puzzle games I have covered on this website, there just isn’t that much here for me to really call this a bonafide classic puzzle game for the NES. It just doesn’t have that same kind of addicting and engaging feel that other puzzle games like Tetris or Dr. Mario has, and as such, it once again can’t keep me really all that interested or excited to play it for more than five minutes. Not to mention, while the idea of controlling an actual character in a puzzle game like this is neat in theory, but in practice, it is kinda sloppy. Sure, you can pull off a lot of maneuvers you wouldn’t be able to otherwise, but you also get plenty of restrictions, like not being able to climb up monsters while you are holding something, which makes the gameplay even more tedious, and the direction in which you pick up things can also take some getting used to. It isn’t impossible to get a handle of, but it is just a little frustrating to do so.

Overall, despite some neat ideas and having all of the elements present for a great time, Wario’s Woods is yet another incredibly forgettable puzzle game from the NES, doing the bare minimum for a title from this genre, and providing a good amount of fun for the time that it lasts, but there just isn’t enough there to keep the average puzzle enthusiast entertained for too long before wanting to move onto something else. I would recommend it for those who are fans of puzzle games, as well as those who were fans of games like Yoshi or Yoshi’s Cookie, but other than that, you would be much better off sticking to much better alternatives that were already out by this point. Not only that, but Wario should also stick to platforming, as he just isn’t cut out for the puzzle lifestyle. I mean, what other kind of weird, out of pocket shit could he pull off other than that? I guess it will remain a mystery… anyway, I wonder what Bomberman is up to?

Game #534

I got this as a beloved childhood favorite of mine (I would play it in Animal Crossing on the Gamecube) on the Japanese Wii U VC as something to just play to destress in between other games. I ended up REALLY getting into it, and playing all the way through to the end of the "story" mode A, something I thought I'd never do as a kid. I mean I was right in a way, since the only way I beat it was using the VC's save states to effectively have infinite lives, because you either need to be super lucky or a combo GOD to get through the last dozen or two stages, but I did it in the end! The game does technically have more levels in A mode after the first 99 that you see the credits after, but I saw the credits so I'm counting this game as beaten (not that I could even beat those levels in the first place)

While the game DOES have incremental level select ever 5 levels you reach, it doesn't have saves, so you do effectively have to beat it in one sitting. The VC also helped with that, because with its save state I could just set it down and come back to that same "session" later. However, you also only get one life when you do a level select (whether it's level 1 or 100), so it's no small feat to get through those final stages with the game's normal save system. Level 88 and 98 in particular took me AGES and dozens of tries each, and there's no way I ever could've beaten this on the actual hardware without a Game Genie or something.

Wario's Woods is a puzzle game made by Nintendo, was the last officially licensed game to be released for the NES in North America, and also had a SNES port. I'd describe it as something like "Orcs Must Die meets Puyo Puyo." You play as Toad in a playing field and need to run around it to manipulate the monsters and bombs yourself as the character. Make lines of 3 or more of the same color with at least one bomb, and it destroys everything in that line. Destroy all the monsters on the field and you progress to the next stage. The board also has two modes it switches between. While Birdo is out, you only receive bombs from the top of the screen, but when the timer fills up and Wario comes out, you'll receive both bombs AND new monsters from the top of the screen, and Wario will make the top of the board lower. You can only raise the top of the board back up again by making matches quickly, and you can even make Wario go away faster and Birdo stay longer by making chains.

Additionally, you can make matches with anything Toad is carrying in his hands, and given the way you can pick things up whilst running up a stack to pull it out of the stack, you can even make matches in mid-air in fairly clever ways, so there's a lot of thinking that needs to go on when the stacks get high if you wanna navigate all the different colors you need to destroy. Add on top of this how some monsters can only be destroyed by diagonal matches and how making a match of more than 5 pieces gets you a colored diamond that can remove every monster (but not bomb) of that color if matched with, and things can get REALLY hectic on later stages.

The controls are also pretty complex for a puzzle game too, being that it's somewhat like a platformer. You can run left and right, but also up walls of pieces and the walls of the board itself, but you can't jump. A picks up a whole stack in front of you (if there's room) and will put down the entire stack you're holding. B picks up the single item in front of you, and puts down the single thing lowest in your stack. Finally, pressing Down on the D-pad will move you to the top of the stack you're currently carrying. HOWEVER, in the Famicom version, pressing Down does nothing, and you need to simultaneously press A and B to move to the top of your stack. This makes that move FAR harder, as the timing to do that is very precise, and I died a TON from accidentally putting down what I was holding instead of moving to the top of my stack. 100% avoid the Famicom version of this game, because that little nuance makes the game far harder in a way that is not fun at all.

The game has a very different dynamic than something like Tetris or Puyo Puyo, since you're controlling a character who manipulates the pieces instead of controlling the pieces like in Tetris or a cursor like in Tetris Attack. I really like this, because it means there's more of an emphasis on what you can do in your immediate surroundings, and less emphasis on making giant chains to KO an opponent or something (although the game does have a vs. mode), which I am very very bad at. It means the game ultimately has less competitive depth than something like Puyo Puyo, and the complex controls means it has less ease of play like Tetris, but it's still a fine puzzle game that I find very satisfying to run through casually.

Verdict: Recommended. While I absolutely cannot recommend the Famicom version of this game due to the control issue I mentioned earlier, the NES or SNES versions of this are well worth picking up if you're looking for a different kind of puzzle game. It's far from the best puzzle game out there, sure, but it's certainly one of the more competent Tetris wannabees to come out in the NES and SNES eras.