WELCOME TO WAAARIO WORLD!

As of my writing this review, I'll be leaving home for a 1 1/2 week-long vacation in a few days, and I wanted to find a nice, short game to play through before that. Wario World was brought up in the Backloggd Discord server the other day, and that seemed like the perfect game--not only is it short, but I've also been meaning to check out all of Treasure's games for quite some time now. I've been a big fan of Astro Boy: Omega Factor for years now so it's long overdue. A couple days later, and while I'm not entirely fond of it, I'm still very glad I played it! First of all, I just wanna praise how much Wario's personality shines through. It's definitely in large part because of Charles Martinet's stellar voice acting (see above), but Treasure also has experience in the perfect kind of weirdness to complement the eccentric character. If you look at Wario's face as he stands idle, it contorts in such an unnatural yet somehow fitting way. There's also plenty of variety and uniqueness in Wario World's levels and bosses--the latter being my favorite aspect of the game overall. Each one is unique in both gameplay and visual design, and while not all of them are hits (the final boss in particular is pretty underwhelming), they were still pretty interesting on the whole. The OST has some great tracks as well thanks to Treasure regular Norio Hanzawa alongside Minako Hamano, who you might know for her work on various other Nintendo OSTs, most notably a handful of Metroid games. It's unclear who exactly did what, but my favorite tracks definitely have to be those for Greenhorn Forest and Pecan Sands--the first and final levels respectively.

The gameplay is, uh, pretty basic. Nothing inherently wrong with that, of course, but even with the game's shortness it did start to feel kind of repetitive. Granted, I did decide to actively go for 100% completion, so that definitely didn't help in that regard. Some levels are perfectly enjoyable when it comes to getting every collectible, but then there's stuff like the slides in Shivering Mountains that make the process annoying. Also, Wario's Zangief-esque piledrivers and spinning throws--for as cool as they are--did start to lose their charm, and I was deliberately avoiding combat at times on the latter half of the game. There's also the fact that coins become kind of meaningless once you have enough of them. There's no lives, so it's not like your usual Mario romp where 100 will get you another one; the only thing they're used for is paying to restore Wario's health or paying a larger (but still negligible by the end) amount to pick up immediately where you left off when Wario loses all his health. Again, it doesn't help that the game ends with an underwhelming final battle. However, I found out that the Japanese version--which came out nearly a year later in May 2004--adds a whole second phase for the aforementioned final boss; whenever I replay this I'll probably do that one instead. With all that said, I still recommend giving Wario World a shot if you haven't yet. What it lacks in depth and length, it definitely makes up for in its weird style. Hell, I'd say the short length even works to its benefit in making it more approachable. So yeah, thanks for reading, and I hope you (don't) have a rotten day!

also i like the little unlockable warioware demos. getting my money's worth with that GCN-GBA link cable

WELCOME TO WAAARIO WORLD!

As of my writing this review, I'll be leaving home for a 1 1/2 week-long vacation in a few days, and I wanted to find a nice, short game to play through before that. Wario World was brought up in the Backloggd Discord server the other day, and that seemed like the perfect game--not only is it short, but I've also been meaning to check out all of Treasure's games for quite some time now. I've been a big fan of Astro Boy: Omega Factor for years now so it's long overdue. A couple days later, and while I'm not entirely fond of it, I'm still very glad I played it! First of all, I just wanna praise how much Wario's personality shines through. It's definitely in large part because of Charles Martinet's stellar voice acting (see above), but Treasure also has experience in the perfect kind of weirdness to complement the eccentric character. If you look at Wario's face as he stands idle, it contorts in such an unnatural yet somehow fitting way. There's also plenty of variety and uniqueness in Wario World's levels and bosses--the latter being my favorite aspect of the game overall. Each one is unique in both gameplay and visual design, and while not all of them are hits (the final boss in particular is pretty underwhelming), they were still pretty interesting on the whole. The OST has some great tracks as well thanks to Treasure regular Norio Hanzawa alongside Minako Hamano, who you might know for her work on various other Nintendo OSTs, most notably a handful of Metroid games. It's unclear who exactly did what, but my favorite tracks definitely have to be those for Greenhorn Forest and Pecan Sands--the first and final levels respectively.

The gameplay is, uh, pretty basic. Nothing inherently wrong with that, of course, but even with the game's shortness it did start to feel kind of repetitive. Granted, I did decide to actively go for 100% completion, so that definitely didn't help in that regard. Some levels are perfectly enjoyable when it comes to getting every collectible, but then there's stuff like the slides in Shivering Mountains that make the process annoying. Also, Wario's Zangief-esque piledrivers and spinning throws--for as cool as they are--did start to lose their charm, and I was deliberately avoiding combat at times on the latter half of the game. There's also the fact that coins become kind of meaningless once you have enough of them. There's no lives, so it's not like your usual Mario romp where 100 will get you another one; the only thing they're used for is paying to restore Wario's health or paying a larger (but still negligible by the end) amount to pick up immediately where you left off when Wario loses all his health. Again, it doesn't help that the game ends with an underwhelming final battle. However, I found out that the Japanese version--which came out nearly a year later in May 2004--adds a whole second phase for the aforementioned final boss; whenever I replay this I'll probably do that one instead. With all that said, I still recommend giving Wario World a shot if you haven't yet. What it lacks in depth and length, it definitely makes up for in its weird style. Hell, I'd say the short length even works to its benefit in making it more approachable. So yeah, thanks for reading, and I hope you (don't) have a rotten day!

also i like the little unlockable warioware demos. getting my money's worth with that GCN-GBA link cable