WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Games!

Wario’s insane instant-action hit is back s a mad-crazy party game!

JP release: 17th October 2003
NA release: 5th April 2004
JP release: 3rd September 2004
Developer: Intelligent Systems, Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
NGC Magazine Score: 90%
Mods Used: None

The Warioware series started out as a small minigame within Mario Artist Polygon Studio, a Japan-only game for the failed 64DD add-on for the Nintendo 64. It was expanded into WarioWare, Inc on the GameBoy Advance. The concept is that you play lots (around 200) of 2-4 second long microgames. It’s all really good fun, and it’s first home console iteration is an interesting one.

You see, this is kind of an expansion for WarioWare, in a weird way. It doesn’t contain any new regular microgames, but instead includes all the microgames for the GBA outing. The game doesn’t hide this fact, as the characters themselves are using GBAs. For single player, this is just the GBA game with a lot of the animations (such as the unique themes and endings for each character)

As the main focus of this game is multiplayer, I roped in my partner. A few of these modes have some new multiplayer microgames, although most of the time you’ll be taking turns playing microgames. Despite this, there are different ways to interact with each other. Here are the different games:

Survival Fever

The simplest mode. The game will pick a player to play a microgame and if the fail, they lose a life. Last person standing wins. There’s also a single controller variant that supports up to 16 players.

Outta My Way

Each player takes it in turn to play 15 microgames. The other players run around the screen to obscure the view. You can really mess people up if you know the microgames well.

Card-e Cards

Draw cards to build up a stack of microgames. The player that draws an e-reader card will have to play all of the microgames. If they beat them all, they win the cards. If they fail one, then they lose all the cards they’ve won so far. This really relies on someone getting lucky and having to complete one or two microgames near the end and winning the discard pile.

Balloon Bang

Play microgames until you beat one, then play passes to the next player. Everyone that isn’t playing hammers A to inflate a balloon. If it pops while you’re playing, you lose.

Wobbly Bobbly

This is the game that uses the most of the multiplayer microgames. The winner of the multiplayer game will then play a regular microgame. If they win, everyone will get a turtle added to their stack, but if they lose, they’ll get a turtle. Everyone then has to balance on their turtles. This repeats until one person is left.

Milky Way Delirium

Pick an asteroid to own and complete microgames to earn it. If you surround other player’s pieces with yours, you’ll take over their spots. The game forces you to play aggressively as you need to place to take someone’s pieces if possible.

Listen to the Doctor!

I really loved this one. You play microgames while performing a task in real life – things like holding your hands out, snoring, caressing your controller and whispering a secret to someone. Other players clap you if you did the job well. The scoring is a bit odd, but it’s extremely good fun.

All For One

A co-op game. One person plays the microgames while the others shine torches to help them out.

Jump Forever

Jump over a skipping rope as many times as you can. There’s a pass-the-controller version where you take turns.

Paper Plane

An expanded version of the paper planes minigame, where you compete in a race.

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These games are all really good fun and this showed that WarioWare is perfect for multiplayer like this, I remember playing the Wii version a lot with friends and family, although the games there weren’t as varied as this one, meaning that this WarioWare game still stands out.

Great

Ultimately, Wario Ware is a rare gem. It’s wholeheartedly original, outlandishly quirky and good fun into the bargain. It’s one of the best party games in existence – which is high praise indeed, considering the calibre of GameCube’s four-player titles.
Geraint Evans, NGC Magazine #97

Remake or remaster?

The multiplayer games really should be standard in WarioWare games now – the Switch game was a big let down.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Games!