WarioWare: Get It Together! review – wild microgames with a social spin

WarioWare has always been the home of proper videogame panic. I mean that in a good way, I think. Tiny games that come at you from all angles, one after another. Read the instruction. Understand the instruction. Navigate the bizarre art. Win the game. Do it all over again. Quicker! Trickier! Chop the carrots! Catch the toast! Shave the eyebrow! Not eyebrow! Augh!

WarioWare: Get It Together! reviewPublisher: NintendoDeveloper: Intelligent Systems, Nintendo EPDPlatform: Played on SwitchAvailability: Out on Switch 10th September

Ever since the first game, back on the GBA, this is a series that has pared all of gaming history down to the simplest and most satisfying of interactions. That sounds pretty straightforward! But it’s also thrown these interactions at you with a relentless pace. And so there is a giddy kind of panic that I only experience when I’m playing WarioWare. Playing it is a bit like getting your coat stuck in a train door as it’s pulling away from the platform It’s a game that you have to race to keep up with.

This is doubly true of WarioWare: Get It Together! Wario games often have their design agenda set for them by Nintendo’s new hardware. That was definitely the case for outings on the DS and the Wii U. So Get it Together looks at the Switch and thinks of all those early lifestyle ads of people playing Mario Kart by rooftop bars or filling the back row of a bus for a quick blast of competitive Tetris. This is a really social spin on WarioWare – even, intriguingly, if you’re playing by yourself.

WarioWare: Get It Together! – Announcement Trailer – Nintendo Direct | E3 2021 Watch on YouTube

This makes for a pretty huge change for the series. Traditionally – if you can mention a concept like tradition for a series as anarchic as WarioWare – microgames were split into themed sets and presented by special characters. 9-Volt would handle all your Nintendo-themed games, for example, while cabbies Dribble and Spitz would – actually I forget what they’d do, but they’d drive a cab while doing it. This time, there’s still a bit of that stuff, but more importantly you now use different characters to control the games themselves. They fly around on the screen and everything. And the roster keeps growing.