WarioWare: Touched!

"Not Quite a Touch of Genius as it Could Have Been..."

When I first heard of Wario Ware back when the series was unheard of, I did not pay it any heed. A collection of mini-games for the Game Boy Advance? There had been dozens of those, most of them bad. Yes, Nintendo was behind it, and yes, Wario was the star. But Nintendo had its shares of bomb off shoots (the most recent one that I can recall being Mario Pinball), and thus I never really acknowleged it.

Then I saw the box at a local gaming store. And I saw the back. One image, more than any other at the time, caught my sight: Metroid. Pure, unaltered, Metroid. NES Samus fighting an NES Mother Brain.

Though I did not know this at the time, this screen was from a small mini-game where you shoot as many missiles into the Mother Brain as fast as you can before time runs out. Though I was dissapointed with not being able to play Metroid in the NES format on the go, I still played the game.

It was fun. Very fun. So much fun, I played, and played, and played and...was done. In SIX HOURS. In the time it took me to tackle a 2D Metroid game enough times to see the secret endings, I beat 85% of the mini-games, unlocked dozens of games, and beat all of the bosses. A few days later, I rarely touched the cart.

When the Game Cube Wario Ware was released, I bought it, hoping that whatever new games and the multiplayer mode would be enough to keep me going. And it did, for a time. The two-player mode was enough to get my sister to play, and the new games were fun, but were only for multiple players.

Then (in the US, anyway), Wario Ware Touched! was revealed to be coming. I had high hopes for the newest collection of mini-games: Using the touch screen and dual screens, the newest time killer was to sport completely new games, feature all-new options, and was to keep the fast-paced formula.

Or, rather, it was SUPPOSED to.

See, what some may not be aware of is that Wario Ware Touched! started life as a tech demo at E3 2004. And at E3 '04, Wario Ware was viewed as one of the most entertaining games. Everyone loved the touch screen controls, and the graphics were typical Wario Ware: complicated or primitive, yet always meeting the required wierdness while being functional.

Then the game is launched. Now, I was estatic over the launch, so much that I did not even realize the high price at launch: US$35. This was unusually high for a non-EA Games title (at the time, at least), but I bought it anyway.

Loading the cart, I immediately enjoyed the opening movie, which included classic jokes (a "fairy" asking if you dropped one of two items, or a third one, the real one), with Wario, being Wario, went for all, as well as references to the GBA, GBASP, and DS. The title screen was kin in design to the Game Cube release, with constant jokes running around.

And then...I began to loose hope.

See, one of the nifty things I liked about the original was the PC-like feel. Sure, you were supposed to be Wario working on a new game, but it was a very nice touch, and the style would have worked for the DS. The Game Cube didn't use the PC-like skin, but it wasn't really a big thing: it was more for multiplaying.

Now, if you think I'm over-reacting, I like to point out that being as it is NOT a PC-like menu system, we are given a massive "play area," where unlocked games, characters, and other options are found. If you wait long enough, the various items move around, and you need to either touch and drag them to where you want them or click "arrange." While this is a nice touch, I just got annoyed after a short time, as I got sick of them not being in the same place.

Still, undetered, I went on. The character story scenes were nice, and the 3D map was kinda cool, if pointless. The stories were primarily stills, and I have to admit - most were amusing. Each character had a theme, but unlike the original where the characters's themes represented a genre, such as sports, fantasy, or sci-fi, this time they included play types on top of the genres: in the Ninja games, you have to slice; Mic's, you use the mic (mainly, to blow things), in 9-Volt's, you do a massive assortment of various controls to old-school Nintendo games.

Overal, the modes were fine, the games themselves quite engaging, though, as with the GBA Wario Ware, 9-Volt's were my all-time favorites, yet I was stunned at the lack of SNES and N64 titles for references. See, in the GBA releasee (and the GC title as well; see my review), the hardware could display up to the SNES and GBA in terms of old game references, and the DS was easily capable of short N64 or high-end SNES titles (say, Super Metroid or Super Mario 64). Yet, most of the games were old, obscure arcade titles (either hold-overs from the first game or ones I had never heard of), or NES games. Heck, the Metroid reference is NES again, not using any other games from the series.

The lack of newer references, and the fact that even fewer systems were drawn on for games (no Virtual Boy reference this time around; maybe Nintendo was sore from the early rumors of the VB's relation to the DS...), and most of the games were already used in the prior game. Yes, you could do more now, but what would be the point?

Why have I devoted so much time into examining these games? Because they are the easiest for me to use while explaining that so many games are simply older GBA Wario Ware hold-overs, or in new skins with touch controls. Heck, one of the bosses is the same as a prior one, just with touch controls. This is a dissapointing fact, and further proof that the release was a rushed one, centering the design around the E3 '04 demo.

The extras to unlock this time are almost criminal; you can get a metronome, a calculator, a party favor, a kitchen timer, ping-pong, bubble-blowing kit, and a couple variations on the mini-games. You can even blow a grandmother's tea to find your fortune.

No, seriously.

See, instead of letting us unlock arcade games or older NES/SNES/GameBoy/Color (speaking of which, where were the references to the Game Boy games?) to play with the touch screen, we get a ton of unlockables that do NOTHING other than a basic function. Yes, some have games that are fun, and some things are meant to be mindless. I like the horiscope reader in my Neo Geo Pocket Color, but having to activate it in an odd-way and achieve such a random result, I just can't see how it could be fun.

Don't get me wrong, the game is fun, but there is another factor that I havn't told you yet. Two other killing factors, in fact:

1. There are even fewer games in this release than on the GBA cart. I'm not kidding; whereas the GBA cart had over 200 mini games, a Dr. Mario clone, and other arcade-style games to unlock, we get less than 100 new mini games, and a bunch of unlockables that are just...meh.

2. Multiplayer. If you've followed or read any of my reviews, you know I'm not a big multiplaying gamer unless I can rope my sis into playing. But with Wario Ware, I thought that the game might have SOME options, especially after the Game Cube title. But the only two-player game is one that is normally just a one-player game:

Ping-pong.

See, to play this remake of the e-Reader demo Air Hockey, you (or another person) can use either the L or R button to control one paddle, and the other to use the remaining paddle. You can't move the paddle, but you can angle the DS so that others can play. This is a far cry from what the GC Wario Ware could do, and for US$35, I was hoping for some extras for the additional US$5.

And, unfortunatly, this title suffers a flaw that has infected all of the Wario Ware games: once you beat and unlock everything, you're done. Kiss the game goodbye as you take it to your local used game store; the lack of extras hurts this title more than any other in the series to date (again, in the US; Twisted hasn't been released yet).

Yes, the graphics are great. Yes, the music is fun (the Ashley song was kinda cool...), yes, some games were fun. But the games weren't challenging. In fact, you could TELL that the game was noticably slower than the previous version, so much that they were able to map songs to the game timer without problems. Beat a game? Well, sit back and wait; we have to allow for the gamer's that take a full minute to figure it out to finish, but hey! Enjoy the slow countdown!

I sincerely hope that in the next Wario Ware game (not counting Twisted; too late to change anything there) someone gets the guts to suggest including other games to unlock. Heck, why not Warioid? Why not Waritris? How about Warlda? Why not a full classic game (or several; the DS should be able to hold at least a few of these things with the right compression gear) and give it a Wario facelift a la Dr. Wario?

This is why I just can't accept Wario Ware Touched! as anything more than a mild distraction. The game is fun, but if I want a time killer, I'll get Lumines out and loose myself. Wario Ware needs to take another look at itself and where it is going.

For that matter, this is the second game I've reviewed by Nintendo for the DS that reeks of a rush job (read - see Yoshi Touch and Go) to make launch. This game doesn't help my building theory that the DS was a rush job as well, thrown out the door to beat the PSP like Sega did with the Saturn.

In closing, Nintendo needs to take its time with the series if it wants to get any more money from my purchases in the series. If this attitude towards making games continues, I don't have a clue what will happen...

*Final Score: 6 of 10
*Best Feature: Touch controls work for the most part.
*Worst Feature: Touch controls get kinda annoying at times, and the limited ammount of games doesn't help that fact.
*If You Liked: Get Feel the Magic: XX/XY. If that doesn't help, wait for Wario Ware Twisted...
*Guilty Pleasure: Playing the Metroid mini-game and holing on to the Metroid until the last second, then let it latch on to Samus, and watch her health drop. Yes, I'm a Metroid fan, couldn't you tell?

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/09/05, Updated 11/20/07

Game Release: WarioWare: Touched! (US, 02/14/05)