Review | Video game review: Nintendo WarioWare game Get It Together is a breath of fresh air – short, sweet and utterly ridiculous
- Mario clone Wario’s narrative is that he is a failed Nintendo game maker, and this is a collection of short, very silly games – think of them as B-sides, maybe
- The latest includes kindergarten ninjas, a disco-loving, jumping athlete and an alien who is a fan of the arts
Modern video games are too often designed to be endless. And we still talk about their length as a positive rather than the padded detriment it most often is.
Not with the Nintendo WarioWare games, though. Wario is a head scratcher, a brutish yet seemingly harmless foil to Mario, more a jealous nuisance to our plumber hero than an actual villain.
We feel sorry for Wario – basically a less coiffed version of Mario – rather than fear him. So it’s no wonder he’s become an ironic cosplay favourite – we empathise with him. He’s an outsider in pink pants, who really just wants respect. But instead of a castle he has a ramshackle house full of garlic cloves. Like all of us, he’s trying to keep up with the more lucky.
Then there’s the meta nature of the games themselves: the narrative is that Wario is a failed game maker. While this raises other questions – is Wario actually aware of the Super Mario Bros games and resentful of the fame they’ve brought Mario, and, in turn, actually jealous of Nintendo’s developers? It’s best not to think much about any underlying storyline.
I admit that the WarioWare games – the latest being the Switch title WarioWare: Get It Together! – are ridiculously dumb. These aren’t the exquisite level designs of the Mario games, but are instead a host of “what ifs” that make sense if you’re sitting around eating pizza.
WarioWare games are Nintendo at its most wacky: 10 seconds, one action verb as a directive and then go! I’ve always kind of thought of them as Nintendo outtakes, the B-sides so ridiculous they couldn’t be left on the cutting-room floor. Yet this is not a so-bad-it’s-good situation – the WarioWare games nail a sort of playful, goofy childishness that only video games can really get away with.
How about a game in which we remove a fork from Wario’s stomach? That’s here in Get It Together. Or how about a game in which Wario is a rock floating through space trying to attack flowers? Yep, perfect. Or how about a side-scrolling game in which we try to collect contracts and get to work as fast as possible? It sounds a little capitalistic, but perhaps amid our work-from-home lifestyles this is the ultimate fantasy. I’m in!
They won’t change your world, but if you’re looking for a party game to weather whatever stress or anxieties are lingering in this late-pandemic era, you likely won’t find one as mindlessly fun as WarioWare: Get It Together!
While it can be played solo, which was the only mode I was able to sample, it is clearly meant to be played with friends. There are games, designed to be played together in one room, that can accommodate up to four, but the vast majority will handle two players. The variety this time comes from the breadth of Wario’s friends – yes, he has them – as they each have their own quirks.
A disco-loving athlete, for instance, jumps wildly with his arms in the air at your command. A pair of kindergarten ninjas can’t stop jumping, but each one can also only attack in one direction. Depending on the game, this can result in cooperation or mayhem. I’m partial to Ashley, a tired-of-this-nonsense witch with a devil-cat named Red as a pet.
Or play as Orbulon, an arts-loving alien whose face looks unintentionally like a contraceptive, or 5-Volt, a video-game-sceptic mom whose frustrations allow her to safely combust. Everyone is broadly drawn, and characters only have one action move, ensuring that even the most inexperienced players can be plucking off digital arm hairs
in no time.
Of course, this is Nintendo, so there are details aplenty amid the absurdity. I like, in particular, a game in which we light up stars to reveal Wario constellations. As an insomniac, I found its bite-size timed challenges relatively relaxing in the middle of the night. Connect the dots, and there’s Wario as an archer, a snake or a lion.
While Wario may never supplant Mario in pop-culture domination, I say bless his celestial ambitions.
