"I would rather buy a game from Wario than from EA"

That Wario sure is a greedy one, if plundering pyramids and stealing treasures didn't make him rich enough, he has also started a game company to bring in some cash. Wario and his new friends have made quite some games already, only the thing is most of them don't last longer than 3 seconds! If they were like Electronic Arts, they would have sold the games separately, but Nintendo was nice enough to put more than 200 of them on a Game Cube disk for one of the coolest party games for the Nintendo Game Cube namely: Wario Ware Inc., Mega Party Microgame$!

Wario Ware has a one player mode which is similar to the one which was in last years Game Boy Advance's version which I haven't played because the premise of 3 second mini games didn't sound that cool to me, or at least not while playing alone. The problem with party games in general is that they are never really fun in the one player mode. In the one player main mode of Wario Ware the mini games are split up in different genres which are represented by one of the games crazy characters. Disco boy Jimmy loves sports games, Dr. Crygor likes realistic games, Wario has games with himself in it and so on. To advance you must get trough each of the characters genre specific mini games. At the end of the stage awaits a boss game which takes longer to complete. You get four lives and if you fail you'll still go to the next mini game. If you finish this mode you get stuff like movies, time attack modes, hard modes and so on. But like I said this kind of mini game based video games gets boring quickly if being played alone, not to mention your sanity takes a serious hit from playing all those three second games which are speeding up constantly going faster and faster. Oh, my poor brain….

The game really shines in multi player with a lot of different modes which are actually fun to play. Some modes are just the coolest like Wobbly Bobbly or Milky Way Delirium. You can also expect some new in games in multi player mode which playable for two, three or four players.

Graphics 5/10

The graphical style of the game is sometimes really weird but as far as the graphics go it is the same as for the GBA which is not quite Game Cube standard. It doesn't bother me that much because of the 3 second time limit in most games you won't have much time to notice the graphics anyway. I always choose game play over graphics and Wario Ware really rocks on the game play, even when the graphics sometimes look like they came from the Pong era.

Sound 9/10

I'm not sure but I believe the music and sound got a Game Cube make over which sounds really great. There is also a lot of voice overs from the characters, but some of the things they say are quite weird. No complaints here

Game play 8/10

The challenge in the game is to find out what exactly is it what you must do in a mini game. Mostly you only use the stick/ directional pad and the A button, unless you are told otherwise, but these simple controls make the game easy to understand for everyone and fun to play.

Replay 7/10

I find those mini games strangely addicting but this game, like all party games really lasts on the multi player.

Overall 8/10

I really found it was time for a good new multi player party game and Wario Ware really delivers on that, but don't play it to long or you might get insane!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/13/04