WarioWare: Move It! Review - Assume The Form

There’s a microgame in WarioWare: Move It! that asks you to slay. You merely need to move the joy-cons in a slashing motion to vanquish a monster, but in my mind I was becoming the Nintendo equivalent🥀 of♉ an unstoppable fashionista. My friends and I burst out laughing afterward about how ridiculous this moment was, ruining our groove as we tried desperately to conquer one of the story’s hardest levels. The game is filled with brilliant jokes like this, maintaining the series’ zany unpredictability with every character and microgame it throws at you.

Move It! is framed as a vacation where all the characters from decades of games reunite for a cheesy island adventure. It’s like Super Mario Sunshine - if the cast had far less respect for the locals. The second our titular character arrives he gets overexcited and steals a pair of precious artefacts from a nearby temple, which h🍃appen to be in the shape of a/two Joy-Con. You, along with Wario, will use these to act out a variety of ‘forms’ required to complete hundreds of microgames. You might be stretching your arms up into the sky to mimic a pair of window wipers, or positioning your hands like they’re clutching a pair of weights to put out virtual fires.

Kevin Afghani - the new voice of Mario - is also present here as the voice of Wario. He does a killer job bringing th🌊e garlic chomping weirdo to life.

Some are more demanding, like a squat where you end up mimicking sumo wrestlers or drawing shapes with your butt, or an ingenious use of the infrared sensor as you make shapes with your hands or beat enemies at a game of rock-paper-scissors. It’s fun and unpredictable, keeping you on💎 your toes - quite lite🔯rally - with a series of ludicrous poses that perfectly capture what WarioWare is all about: erratic bursts of whimsical silliness designed for anyone, regardless of their experience with video games. The most complicated pose requires you to place your controllers on the floor, often turning them over to cook meat across a conveyor belt or plugging holes in a sequence of complicated leaks.

Given that few microgames in Move It! lasts more than five seconds - not counting the boss battles at the end of each stage - it’s impressive how quickly the hours can melt away. The story mode will only take you a handful of hours to clear, and is sadly just as short as past games, if not more so thanks to a distinct lack of challenge this time around. Special poses can be performed to bring you back to life after losing all of your lives, or when playing with friends they can attempt a microgame on your beh෴alf to make sure you don’t take damage. Instead of gauntlets you need to master, stor✤y missions are now a matter of attrition where victory is assured, so long as you keep on trying. This makes a short game even shorter in ways that some might not be able to justify, although the generous offering of multiplayer modes try to make up for it.

There’s a Mario Party-esque board game where you compete in select games to reach a spaceship ready to blast off into space, movement determined by dice roꦅlls and tiles with rules so unfair it felt like Nintendo was trying to personally ruin my life. You can also race towards a snake monster in a spooky labyrinth, compete against friends in a boxing match consisting of random microgames, or even partake in a few endgame bouts of exercise where how hard and fast you push yourself is translated into points on the screen. There’s so much variety, but if you’re like me, you will quickly settle on a favourite to return to time and time again or replay existing campaign levels in pursuit of a higher score.

Your usual museum collating all the microgames you can play at your leisure at any speed is here too, while a theatre features all the cutscenes that begin and end most stages. It is functional, but it becomes clear very quickly that the longevity in Move It! sits in chasing the high scores and playing with loads of others, although you’ll need plenty of Joy-Con to make that possible. Some modes can be played with a single controller, but you’ll need a pair ꦐfor tackling the majority of forms and stages. I found it too short, even if there’s an excess of charm thanks to returning illustrations from the legendary Ko Takeuchi. You’ll even find a handful of cute nods to Rhythm Heaven, a property in dire need of a modern revival.

WarioWare: Move It! is a complicated game to talk about, because at its heart the whole thing is so deceptively simple. You follow simple instructions presented on screen to stay alive and complete bizarre tasks, all of which are framed by adorable characters and fun stories which aren’t important, but remain stylish and lovable enough to ensure this cute package feels complete, despite its short campaign length and a reliance on local multiplayer to draw the most fun out of it. Nintendo has repeatedly said this is a full successor to Smooth Moves on the Wii, and I’d be lying if it doesn’t capture the same joy that comes from waggl🎃ing WiiMotes around in my living room as a kid.