| Mawaru Made in Wario review |
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Still riding a year-long wave of gimmick controllers and mobile phone games, the theme of this year's Tokyo Game Show was "A New Experience For Everyone". Anyone with experience of gaming and half a brain should need no visit to the Urban Dictionary to work out the subtext there - it means "Make more vacuous rubbish for idiots who know nothing". Make more Eye Toy. Make twenty thousand more versions of Snake. Make Harry Potter games that link up to the PS2 webcam to allow kids to go inside Hogwarts. Bah weep head in oven.
Until now the only thing to be thankful for was the fact that Prisoner of Azkaban stopped short of allowing players to put themselves in the picture with Hermione Granger - your reviewer reads Something Awful, has seen the Emma Watson fansites, and has enough trouble sleeping as it is. What's really knocking the old guard for six - we miserable old sods, we drinkers of gaming real ale - is that the current wave of vacuous toss is... well...it's actually really good. The new lineup of mobile phone games is awash with glittering masterpieces such as Final Fantasy and the Far East of Eden series by RED (of Sakura Wars fame), only this time you're going to be able to play them as online RPGs. Even Sega's Eye Toy bid is turning heads, allowing you to use your hands as an analogue controller to play on (amongst other things) the Super Monkey Ball table. Okay, so your shoulders want to fall off after about five minutes, but it's a step in the right direction.
And so we come to Nintendo's latest bid to delight pubgoers - Mawaru Made In Wario. The unit itself weighs in at a wallet-friendly 20-25 pounds, available only in Japan (thus far) and comes with a rumble pack and motion sensor built in. The games are played by rotating the gameboy itself, or by rotating yourself on the spot. That's it. There simply is nothing more to say about the game mechanic, as this simplicity works in perfect harmony with the basic nature of the Made in Wario minigames. Each is played for five seconds before shifting to the next one and the insane randomness which gave the original its magical touch is there in full effect. One second you are rotating the machine to play a piano, the next to shake pudding out of a can, the next to control Samus Aran in morph ball mode, the next to pilot a 747, and so on for hour after hour of your nightmare journey through the minds of Nintendo's best and least well-hinged. What we're talking about is the traditional Made In Wario hit, made ten times as intense by the inclusion of one of the greatest gimmick toys ever to be so laughably affordable. Allow us to demonstrate with a simple table.
Play Time: 0-10 Minutes.
Player Aspect: Huge idiotic grin. Eyes like saucers. Muscles twitching and swaying idiotically. Periodic and unpredictable spasmodic laughter.
Play Time: 10 Minutes - 3 Hours.
Player Aspect: Thousand-mile stare. Fixed psychotic smile. Rythmic sideways motion of entire body.
Play Time: 3 Hours - Forever.
Player Aspect: Tight controller motions. Fixed expression of absolute concentration. Occasional Tourette's-like outbursts of loud cursery.
All well and good, you may say. So it's a cool toy, but is there a solid game underneath? My goodness, yes. Without the gimmick, the Made In Wario series represents the revival of the simple joy and addictiveness of the Game and Watch. With the addition of the gimmick it receives an injection of fresh thinking, euphoric childlike fun and the benefit of unbelievably precise analogue control. Add to the mix a mountain of executive toys which can be unlocked through repeated play. The cheese grater which you can use to shred radishes and cars, for example. The cat which you stroke with the analogue controls. Patterned scrolls which cycle psychedelically with your every move. Oh, and all this on top of the fact that Mawaru contains over TWO HUNDRED games to discover, level up and score attack.
To import or not to import, though? Let the buyer beware that there is a slight language barrier. A few of the games (out of two hundred plus!) feature very simple Japanese word games, but nothing that isn't avoidable, flukable or just plain learnable if you have the intelligence God gave you. It's a VERY minor irritation and not one that's anything to do with the game itself.
In short, there's not a centimetre of Mawaru Made In Wario that doesn't (over)flow as a smooth, funny, original and addictive package. What, you REALLY want us to say something bad about it? Okay, you can't play it on a train or in a car because the unit picks up the motion of the vehicle and you just end up punching someone in a desperate lunge to stop a cat from falling off the top of a building. Ah, sod them. The cat's more important. |
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System: Nintendo GameBoy Advance
Genre: Puzzle
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1
Version: Japan
Reviewed: Nov 2004
Writer: Simon Dominguez
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Pros:
- Amazing fun
- Hilariously surreal
- Packed with replay value
- Cheap as chips
- Tons of retro references
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Cons:
- I've got a cold this week
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