WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Game$!

"Still Fun on Gamecube."

Wario Ware: Mega Mircogame$ literally appeared out of no where back in Late May 2003 with the silliest of purposes: have a bunch of little games that would last on average a grand total of five seconds. Nintendo would make millions! However, very few people got to experience Wario Ware’s great idea (at least in the United States, in Japan is sold quite well) so it did not really take off. However, most critics agreed that this GBA phenomenon deserves plenty of credit. I personally loved Wario Ware for it’s quirky charm; it certainly was my pick for the best Gameboy Advance title of 2003. Now, flash forward to early April 2004, and Wario Ware: Mega Party Game$ for Gamecube comes out. However, this is not Wario Ware 2. Literally, the game is every game that was in the GBA version, with a couple of new games that require more than one to play with. If you happen to already have the GBA version, and you are looking for some brand new action, it will not be found here. However, it certainly makes the game easier to enjoy for multiple people.

In the first game, Wario saw that games are a great way to make money, so he suckered all of his friends to make games for him, and he gets all the cash! Well, the story is pretty much exactly the game thing. Except for the suckering part. He already got all the games he needs. The manual (secretly disguised as Wario’s new diary/autobiography) talks about how he is making a new game to get loads of cash. As Sean “P. Diddy” Combs would say, “It’s all about the Benjamin’s, baby.”

For a single player, the only thing that you could do is the excellent single player mode, where play different types of microgames to unlock other modes of play. Each game is separated in to a different genre, from sports to nature, to one all about classic Nintendo games. The games range from the easy, like dodging one car, to the hard, like trying to figure out what pipe would give water to make your instant noodles, to the bizarre, like sniffing up snot in the pearly moonlight. Also, there is now a new time trial mode, which really tests the player’s skills in high speed. While the single player is interesting, most people who would buy this game more likely already had the GBA version in their possession, so nothing new or hard there.
However, something really new would have to be the great new multi-player modes that have been added. Most of them are quite fun to play, and offer a few interesting ideas to spice things up a bit. Each character has their own version of multiplayer gameplay. For Example, Jimmy T has each person up on a stage, and they need to give your fans a rousing show by playing mini-games. Sometimes it may just pick one person, but it may pick everyone all at once. Wario has you moving around the screen as a character, trying to block one person from doing minigames, while Orbulon has you as a flashlight trying to help someone play mini-games. Dribble and Spitz make you play a crazy game of minigame asteroids…or some type board game. Dr. Crygor has one where you need to be the one most playing a game while a balloon on the television bursts. Kat and Ana have a strange turtle balancing one, that lets you play the most multiplayer minigames. 9-Volt uses E-Cards to play mini-games. However, the weirdest one out of all of them has to go to Mona, where you must obey a doctor while doing mini-games. If you do obey them, then your gaming pals should give you applause. However, the game needs…not greedy players. Otherwise, I’m sure it would work.

Each Minigame looks like you are playing the GBA version on the Gamecube with a Gameboy Player. Literally, nothing was touched up on them, and it is very disappointing. Because the blow-up process does not touch up anything, most of the time, the minigames look a little grainy. They still move fluidly, but the minigames where the graphics are certainly lacking, they look horrid (for an example, Chicken Pinch, which has simple black and white graphics, looks even worse, like something like F-Zero looks exactly like the SNES version.) Also, the traditional “waiting” screens in-between in each have been replaced from the GBA version; now there are only 2 of them, the standard pig elevator, and a CD Boombox. These screens do not look like blown up GBA games; They are clean and are higher resolution, so the transition from the waiting screen to the game makes each game look just that much worse.
The games themselves are all in 2D, but there are a few polygons slipped in there, and frankly, they should have stayed with 2D. Every 3D character mock-up looks plain horrible. So, to put it nicely, the game does not look good, but you only need to look at the grainy images for five seconds, so it doesn’t really harm the game.

Wario Ware for GBA has excellent music for the system, with every minigame has their own slightly distinct music. Also, every character having interesting (yet slightly hard to hear) voices. Well, the same music is back, though slightly re-mastered, to make up for the GBA’s mono speaker. Each piece of music lasts just as long as there game, and keeps getting faster and faster, creating a greater sense of urgency while doing the games. They also created brand new music for the multiplayer games, and that sounds nice. Overall, the music is still fine, but the voices take a major downturn. They sound exactly the same, and that is just not acceptable. And now half of the time, they voices make totally no sense, since what they said usually had a connection with the GBA waiting picture. So, the game is a little weak in the audio department.

However, no matter how bad the graphics look, no matter how screechy the sound becomes, the game is still enjoyable to play. Literally, its replay value is through the roof. Every time you play a game, it is always a little bit different. The game is still one of a kind, and nothing can take that away. It does take a long time to get passing grades for all 200+ minigames, and trying to get even higher scores in all of the single player games. Time Attack is brand new option; and is very addictive.

And, everything is being offered up at a snazzy 30-dollar USD price tag. Which, strangely, is the exact same price of the GBA version. While the GBA version has the better overall single player experience, the Gamecube version has the better multiplayer games (while 2 player Chicken Race was very enjoyable.) it is a toss up to which one that you feel would suit more to your liking.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/18/04