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.
