Wario World

"Have a rotten day!!!"

Since his inception in 1994, Wario has always been the un-Mario, the person you'd never expect to see in Mario. Wario has always gone the opposite route from the Mario series. Mario games are linear; Wario games dare shed this problem. Often times Wario is made invulnerable, and focus is put more on hardcore puzzle platforming then on just simply running through a level. Now that Wario has graduated to the home console, he can reinvent his franchise once again to be about as different from Mario's 3D outings as it can possibly be.

EAD and Mario's mastermind, Shigeru Miyamoto, have always stayed far away from anything related with Wario. Wario is the brainchild of both Hiroji Kiyotake and the geniuses at Nintendo R&D1. Over the years they have come to focus more or less exclusively on Nintendo's handheld systems, so when it came time to reinvent Wario for the consoles, R&D1 needed some help, and so they turned to Treasure to lend them a hand.

And so it came to be. Nintendo and Treasure shacked up once again, since Sin and Punishment, to create a Wario game for a New Age. The results are about what you'd expect from such a meeting of minds. The game is both an extension of the ideas in the Wario Land series, and the beginning of its own identity. This effort puts a much greater emphasis on action, a direction the series was taking steps toward already with Wario Land 4, but at the same time, it preserves the things that made the series classic to begin with.

Wario World's story begins in much the same way as all Wario games. The game opens with our protagonist enjoying his favorite activity, cackling maniacally alone amongst his riches, when suddenly a cursed gem threatens his fortune. The gem begins transforming his gold into monsters and quickly lays waste to Wario's precious castle in order to rebuild a bizarre kingdom. Wario's once friendly abode is turned into an alternate dimension. Not fond of having his wealth stolen, Wario sets out on his adventure to right this injustice and regain his riches.

Gameplay in Wario World, as I said, takes elements from previous Wario titles, and manipulates them. In each stage, Wario has to find eight red crystals. Players find them in Mario Sunshine-like obstacle courses and puzzles. On his way, he must fight loads of enemies with his trusty punch, butt-stomp, and dash attack. Along with those attacks, he has two new attacks. When he picks up an unconscious enemy, he can either execute a Tornado Spin, which is very neat done, or a devastating pile-driver attack. Hitting the A button while dashing also causes Wario to do a dash jump attack, which can prove useful in solving some of the game's puzzles. Players can only rotate the game's camera in a few parts of the game, this limitation of camera use helps add to the games challenge in the latter levels.

After completing each stage, the player is given the choice to go back through the level and find more items, or the player can go on to fight the level's boss. The game contains about 12 total stages, each of them have their own distinct flavor of boss. The game's beginning bosses don't require too much thought in order to beat them. A few simple punches will send them to the ground, giving Wario the chance to grab, spin, and huck the enemy out of the stage. Rinse and repeat about 5 times and you can beat the boss. Later bosses require a decent amount of puzzle-solving skill and were quite well developed. One boss requires you to ground pound the floor to knock him off a teetering lava platform. Luring him towards the edge of the platform can do this. If you get sick of the game's platforming stages, then you will surely enjoying the refreshing taste that the game's boss battles offer.

Aside from just finding each of the level's eight crystals, player can also seek pieces of a gold Wario statue, valuable treasures, coins, and gnomes. Saving a gnome gives players some advice on how to beat certain enemies and bosses. Collecting coins is now only an essential part of the game's story, but also an essential part to the game. Each time you die you get a chance to continue at the same point by spending 200-300 coins, this is similar to previous Wario titles. You really don't have to worry about normal platforming deaths in this game as well. If you decide to fall of a cliff, instead of dying, you are sent to a small maze area where your task is to search for a way out. Each stage has a progressively harder maze area, and in each maze area, enemies are strewn about in order to steal coins away from Wario. In a way, what Treasure did makes it more agonizing then simply dying.

It really felt like Wario World was one of those games originally designed for release on the Nintendo 64, but was later pushed back for a Gamecube release, much like Eternal Darkness and Kirby: Air Ride. You rarely see parts in Gamecube games that require the use of the analog stick to spin an object. People complained about something like this wearing out controllers on the Nintendo 64. Aside from just gameplay, graphically, Wario World also feels this way. Aside from Wario and the game's bosses, the character models are just ho-hum. Certain parts of the game look a lot better then others as well. For instance, the center world, where Wario runs around selecting a stage, looks a lot less detailed then any of the game's levels. I'll give Treasure credit in that they did a good job giving diversity to the game. Most levels in game use the same tileset throughout their entirety, each level in Wario World is different in its visuals. For instance, the first stage of the haunted area of the game is a haunted house; the second is a deranged carnival. I really liked this aspect of the game, more developers should think about things like this when coming up with levels for a platforming game. I also really liked some of the effects used during the game. The water splashing and lava effects in the game are really pretty on the eye.

Often times, Wario's all too redundant one-liners annoyed me. Throughout the game he mumbles out things such as ''Have a rotten day!'' and other devious sayings. I know it was probably intentional that his voice would be annoying, but they could have thrown in a couple of more punchlines. The game features the same kind of sound a music you would expect from any Nintendo platformer. Music with a simple, yet rhythmic beat, that doesn't get annoying and suits the pace of the game.

Casual gamers will most likely be able to beat the game in less than 10 hours, at most. Hardcore gamers will enjoy the ability to replay stages in order to find all of the game's collectables. Those who collect more are treated with a few connectivity bonuses that unlock features in Wario Ware and preview stages. All in all, one can't ignore the fact that Wario World is indeed a short title, yet it still redeems itself in the fun that can be enjoyed by playing the game again, this is a quality that most Treasure games have secured.

Even though Wario World will probably never be a million seller, it is still a pretty good game that shouldn't be missed. Platforming fans will enjoy the game's simplistic, yet action-packed playability, and casual gamers will find the challenges to be quite fun. Wario World, even though short, is a nice step in brining the Wario Land series into the world of 3D!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/23/03, Updated 07/23/03