Video Game / Game & Wario

BEST GAME EVER!

Game & Wario is a a video game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Wii U in 2013. While the game does not contain the title, it is an installment of the WarioWare series, though one that places less emphasis on the series' usual gameplay style.

While watching TV one day, Wario sees a news bulletin regarding the hottest new gaming system on the market. This new system uses a unique controller with a second screen on it, and is used in junction with the TV screen to allow for all kinds of exciting new ways to play games. As is tradition, Wario gets dollar-signs in his eyes and immediately prepares to jump on this new system with the best game ever and make millions. The other members of WarioWare Inc. also find out about this new system and join in with their own games.

The usual microgame-based gameplay of the WarioWare series takes a backseat in this installment, as Wario and friends have instead created a series of longer, more substantial minigames. Each minigame is designed to make use of the unique features of the Wii U Gamepad, including the motion controls, the touch screen, and the dual-screen setup. Some minigames require the player to hold the Gamepad in different ways to allow for different kinds of challenges.

In order to clear each minigame and move on to the next, the player simply needs to finish the first stage. However, most minigames contain multiple stages and variations to keep the player busy. As they play the game, the player can earn tokens they can spend at the Cluckade, a gacha machine where they can win various extras, such as interactive toys, cards that offer hints for the main minigames, and more.

LIST

• Aborted Arc: Half of Wario's employees left him to work for Diamond Software in D.I.Y., which also drove a rift between 9-Volt (who left) and 18-Volt (who stayed). This is completely disregarded in this game, as everyone is back to working with Wario, and 9-Volt and 18-Volt are friends again.
• Almighty Mom: This game marks the proper debut of 9-Volt's mom, 5-Volt, who had only appeared in shadow up to this point. 9-Volt's minigame, "Gamer", depicts her as some kind of omnipotent monster who's constantly stalking him to ensure that he isn't staying up past his bedtime. On the clear screen, 9-Volt does admit that her depiction here is exaggerated, though.
• Aliens Steal Cattle: The first stage of "Taxi" takes place on a farm, where the aliens are abducting different farm animals, including cows.
• Animesque: Several of the minigame title screens utilize a "realistic" anime aesthetic—which makes the human characters prettier and the non-human characters more anthropomorphic.
• Art Evolution: This game brings a more definite art style change compared to previous games, as all the characters besides Wario himself are now drawn with thick outlines and solid black eyes, similar to Rhythm Heaven.
• Art Shift: Every character minigame title screen in Game & Wario gets this to a ridiculous degree. Justified as those were supposedly done by the characters themselves, who would all have different preferences in artstyles:
  • "Arrow", Wario's game, evokes an old-school Alien Invasion movie poster.
  • "Shutter", Mona's game, utilizes a Synthwave aesthetic.
  • "Ski", Jimmy T.'s game, looks like a magazine ad with a soft, hand-painted look.
  • "Patchwork", Kat & Ana's game, consists of toddler scribbles, perfectly nailing the look of a crude 5-year-old's drawing.
  • "Kung Fu", Young Cricket's game, is reminiscent of an old brush-drawn Martial Arts Movie poster.
  • "Gamer", 9-Volt's game, resembles something coming from an old video game magazine like Nintendo Power.
  • "Design", Dr. Crygor's game, looks like a classic Golden Age comic book. "Fruit", Penny's game, uses a similar style, but with more saturated colors.
  • "Ashley" has a realistic but slightly animesque style, with Ashley and Red both looking noticeably older.
  • "Taxi", Dribble and Spitz's game, looks like a Dark Age comic book with jagged outlines.
  • "Pirates", Captain Wario's game, resembles a paper cut-out diorama, which carries over to the game itself.
  • "Bird", Pyoro's game, has a gothic pencil-drawn style. The actual game uses a claymation style on the TV screen and a Game & Watch style on the GamePad.
  • "Bowling" has a realistic design, with the non-human characters resembling mascot costumes.
  • "Sketch", Orbulon's game, is a highly-detailed sketch.
  • "Islands", Fronk's game, looks like a travel poster.
  • "Disco", Mike's game, looks like an airbrushed album cover from the '70s.
  • "Miiverse Sketch" shows crude scribbles of each of the cast.
• Ascended Extra: After having only having appeared in previous games in shadowed cameo appearances, 9-Volt's mother 5-Volt becomes an actual character with a full design for the first time, and plays the role of the main antagonist in "Gamer". Future games will upgrade her to a full member of the WarioWare Inc. crew, even getting her own dedicated stages in certain games.
• Asymmetric Multiplayer: While the Wii U Gamepad is the only controller compatible with the game, some of the multiplayer modes allow players to play with different objectives by hiding the Gamepad screen from the others.
  • In "Sketch", players take turns holding the Gamepad, and whoever has it is tasked with drawing pictures to convey a word that is shown on their screen, but not on the TV screen. The other players look at the TV screen, which displays the Gamepad player's drawing, and shout out what they think the word is. When someone guesses the right word, the Gamepad player briefly stops the game to award that player with a point, and the player with the most once everyone has had a turn to draw is the winner.
  • In "Fruit", one player is a thief who uses the Gamepad to move around the screen in a crowd of similar-looking characters, and must steal a certain number of fruits lying around the screen. The remaining players are agents who watch the TV screen and have to figure out which character the thief is. Once the thief finishes stealing the fruit, the other players take turns passing the Gamepad around to make their guesses. If any of the agents guess the right character, they win, but if no one guesses right, the thief wins.
• Attack Its Weak Point:
  • The large Wario robots in "Arrow" have multiple weak points the player must hit with their arrows in order to finish it off. First, a series of large growing screws all over the machine's body that must be hit with one arrow each. Then, the machine opens its mouth, revealing a large upper tooth that must be hit three times. Finally, one last arrow must be fired at the machine's core to finish it off.
  • The motherships in "Taxi" have to be shot in specific spots in order to be destroyed. First, Dribble and Spitz have to drive around to get good shots at targets on different points on the outside edges of the ship until they're all destroyed. Next, the center of the ship will open up, which they must hit five times in order to finish the ship off, but shields protecting the weak point move around and block their shots.
• Auto-Scrolling Level: The final level of "Shutter" has Mona standing inside a train, which automatically moves back and forth between two stations, with Mona only being able to see what is currently outside her window. With the stage being much wider than usual, she will only have chances to take pictures of the models she's looking for when they are within the sight of her train car.
• Book Ends:
  • The first game, "Arrow", and the final game before the credits, "Pirates", are both hosted by Wario. Both games can also be considered inverses of each other, with "Arrow" being about the player firing arrows at enemies, while "Pirates" challenges the player to protect themselves from arrows that enemies are firing at them.
  • The tutorial for the Hard Puzzles in "Patchwork" is a puzzle of Kat. The final regular puzzle of the set is Ana.
• Bowling for Ratings: After the cast of characters at the end of the game, the main characters decide to go bowling, setting the stage for the next minigame, "Bowling". The minigame itself challenges the player to knock down bowling pins shaped like many of the main characters by holding the Gamepad vertically and using the touchscreen to roll balls at them. As the ball rolls down the lane, the player can tilt the Gamepad left and right to steer the ball.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: One of the bonus toys involves driving a toy car around a room using the Gamepad. The Gamepad's view is from the car driver's perspective, and the TV screen shows an overview of the room from one of the walls. If you look at said wall from the car's perspective, you see a TV showing yourself playing the game from the other side of the screen (it uses the Gamepad's camera to do this).
• Color-Coded Multiplayer: The Fronks in "Islands" each have one of five colors to indicate which player they represent. Blue for player 1, red for player 2, green for player 3, yellow for player 4, and purple for player 5.
• Company Cross References: Various characters from the Rhythm Heaven series make cameo appearances at certain points of the game, that series having many of the same developers as the WarioWare series.
• Console Cameo:
  • The new game system that Wario is developing for uses a controller that is closesly modeled after the Wii U Gamepad, with the same button layout and the same large screen in the middle. It's not exactly the same, though, as the shape is a little different, and it has an antenna coming out the top.
  • A Virtual Boy can be seen in 9-Volt's room in "Gamer".
• Continuity Nod:
  • "Arrow" involves keeping robotic Tiny Warios from stealing your strawberries, referencing the Tiny Wario stage from Smooth Moves, where the Tiny Warios swarmed a strawberry bush.
  • The main premise of "Gamer" involves 9-Volt playing games when he's supposed to be sleeping, while 5-Volt tries to catch him, which previously happened in his ending scene from Twisted!
• Creative Closing Credits: The interactive "credits" in Game & Wario feature hand-drawn noses representing every person who worked on the game. Each person has a role (such as voice acting or graphic design) and various "traits" (such as "Wears glasses" or "Doesn't like peas") assigned to them. Using the GamePad, the credits can be sorted based on any given role or trait.
• Dance Party Ending: In "Ski", if Jimmy manages to win a trophy, the ensuing results screen will show him dancing alongside some of the Ski Bunnies.
• Defanged Horrors: "Gamer" is essentially a humorous cartoony take on a horror game, with 5-Volt being portrayed as a monster that 9-Volt has to avoid being spotted by while playing games during his bedtime.
• Dramatic Wind: When Ashley prepares to cast magic to enter the picture book at the beginning of her game, the scene is accompanied with wind that dramatically ruffles her hair. Unfortunately, this wind ends up causing the book's page to turn as she casts the spell, causing her to enter the wrong page by mistake.
• Driving Game: In "Taxi", Dribble and Spitz drive their taxi around a series of stages while shooting down UFOs trying to capture their customers. They must pick up the customers once they fall from the ships and drive them to the shelter in order to score points. The player can drive around in two different perspectives; a bird's eye view on the TV screen, and a first-person view on the Gamepad screen.
• Exposed to the Elements: Doing well enough in "Ski" can cause Jimmy to remove his jacket while he's skiing, resulting in him going through the snow with no shirt on. He doesn't seem to mind, though.
• First-Person Snapshooter: Mona's minigame is "Shutter", in which the player holds the Gamepad like a camera and moves it around to take pictures of characters that appear on the TV screen. The TV shows everything in the current stage, and by moving the Gamepad around, the player can aim at and zoom in on the specific characters they are supposed to be looking for before taking the pictures.
• Flying Saucer: The main enemies of "Taxi" are alien spaceships that abduct the customers usind tractor beams coming out the bottom. While their design is more boxlike, they do resemble the stereotypical alien "disc" shape.
• Four-Seasons Level: "Arrow" has four levels, each of which take place during one of the four seasons. The first level is in spring, and each subsequent level moves to the next season, ending with winter.
• Gameplay Grading:
  • In "Ski", the player can receive gold, silver, or bronze trophies if they manage to clear the course within specific time goals.
  • The player's score for each prompt in "Design" is determined by how closely they match the criteria that Dr. Crygor asks for, as well as how neat their drawing is. At the end, they can receive a trophy if their overall score is high enough, and the robot they make will be better depending on how high they score.
  • "Pirates" awards the player with a letter grade in four different criteria depending on how well they do over the course of the stage. They will then receive a ranking based on their average letter grade.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: 5-Volt's eyes glow bright yellow any time she gazes into his room during "Gamer". As long as the eyes are glowing, 9-Volt must hide under the covers and pause his game, or else it's game over.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All:
  • Each stage of "Kung Fu" has three different-colored scrolls that Young Cricket can collect. Grabbing all three within a single run of a stage will earn the player a Cluckade token.
  • Every stage in "Taxi" has five treasure chests that Dribble and Spitz can find by shooting certain objects the game marks to reveal them. They gain extra points for collecting them. There are also ten stars that fall from the sky after the mothership is destroyed, which they can use the extra time to collect for even more points.
• In a Single Bound: Young Cricket can only move around by bouncing in "Kung Fu". Each time he lands, he instantly bounces back up, and the player steers him through the air by tilting the Gamepad around.
• Instant Bandages: If Ashley takes too much damage quickly during her self-titled game, X-shaped bandages will appear on different spots of her body.
• Interactive Start Up: The title screen to "Pirates" allows the player to move the camera around by moving the Gamepad.
• It's the Best Whatever, Ever!: The intro cutscene has Wario declare that he's gonna design the best game ever for the hot new game system, a claim that he also says on the back of the game's box.
• Kaizo Trap: In "Gamer", it is entirely possible to still get caught by 5-Volt even after clearing the Boss Stage. You're not safe until the "Game Clear" screen comes up.
• Lethal Lava Land: The final stage of "Kung Fu" not only contains pits of lava that Young Cricket must avoid falling into, but lava spouts that shoot up from the pits that will damage him if he touches them, sending him back to a checkpoint.
• Level Ate: In Game & Wario, Ashley tries to explore a book filled with pretty scary stuff. But when she inserts herself into the book, the page turns, and she ends up in a world filled with sweets, donuts, and candy. Red is happy, but she's utterly annoyed.
• Luck-Based Mission: While "Islands" is primarily a skill-based game, there are various randomized factors that can impact the game's outcome. Most prominent are the seagulls, which can randomly steal a Fronk from the island and throw it into the water, or drop a randomly-colored Fronk onto the island to cause the puck on Roulette Rock to spin around and change places. Additionally, the puck on Roulette Rock moves to a randomized space whenever it is hit, and changes the value of Fronks on that space, while Arrow Atoll has four islands that change to a random value anytime they collide with each other.
• Macro Zone: The third stage of "Taxi" takes Dribble and Spitz driving their taxi through a giant room inside a giant house. The room even contains a giant man lying down on the floor eating chips, and some giant cats. They can drive the taxi around atop cardboard boxes, books, the man's side, and a massive bookcase. The main patrons they have to rescue in this stage are insects like ants, ladybugs, and beetles. This same room is used for the setting of the unlockable TAXI Toy, allowing the player to drive freely around it with no objectives.
• Mini Game Game: Rather than being based around the usual microgame-based gameplay the WarioWare series is known for, Game & Wario instead consists of 16 longer, more complete minigames with multiple levels in each.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Ashley finds a picture of a scary monster in a surreal landscape within the pages of a book that she was looking at, and wants to enter this page using magic. Unfortunately for her, an inconvenient gust of wind causes her to accidentally enter the next page, which showed a picture of sweets and desserts. She is furious with this development, and immediately wants to leave.
• Non-Standard Game Over:
  • While "Gamer" operates on the usual WarioWare rules of giving the player four lives to clear the required number of microgames, if 9-Volt fails to hide under the covers when his mom comes to check on him, the game will instantly end in failure, regardless of how many lives he has left.
  • Tippy Tower in "Islands" is a particularly dangerous stage. If the Fronks weigh down the tower on one side to the point that the entire island tips over and sinks into the ocean, the players don't just lose points, but the entire game immediately ends, and the last player to launch their Fronks automatically comes in last place, while the other players maintain their scores from before the last move.
• Nostalgia Level:
  • While most of the game moves away from the traditional WarioWare gameplay, "Gamer" still features the usual microgames, albeit with a new double-screen twist. Additionally, there is an unlockable side mode where you play as 18-Volt, who plays like a regular WarioWare game without the added gimmicks.
  • The final single player minigame is "Bird", a remake of the Pyoro minigame from the first WarioWare game.
• Obstacle Ski Course: "Ski" features Jimmy going skiing down various courses on a snowy mountain. The various hills he can go down include obstacles such as mud puddles, snow bumps, ramps, and speed boosters. There's also an endless slope where he has to avoid falling off the course completely, with some holes that appear sometimes.
• Oddball in the Series: The typical microgame-based gameplay from the other WarioWare games is mostly absent from this one, which instead focuses on a series of longer, more substantial minigames, though 9-Volt and 18-Volt's minigame is similar to the typical microgame-based gameplay.
• Parasol Parachute: At the beginning of "Ashley", as Ashley and Red are falling into the book world, Red briefly turns into a parasol that Ashley uses to softly land on the ground.
• Pepper Sneeze: The opening of "Arrow" has Wario violently sneeze after a mouse pours pepper on his face while he's sleeping. This inspires him to include this as a mechanic in the game itself, where the player has a limited number of pepper shakers they can sprinkle on the nose of the arrows they fire, making them much larger and more powerful.
• "Psycho" Strings: Heard on the title screen for "Gamer".
• Retraux: Pyoro's game, "Bird", is a remake of the original Pyoro from WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$. While the TV screen shows a version of the game with HD claymation-styled graphics, the Gamepad screen simultaneously shows a version with graphics inspired by a Game & Watch game.
• Rhythm Game: In "Pirates", Captain Wario issues commands to his henchmen to have them shoot arrows at the player. The player must use their Gamepad to block the arrows by moving it in the direction that Wario calls out with the same timing on the following set of beats. Each time the player finishes blocking arrows, they must move the Gamepad down in time with a command that says "beat... down!" to shake the arrows off, after which Wario will start his next series of commands.
• Shooting Gallery: The first minigame is "Arrow", in which the player fires arrows at Tiny Wario robots in order to keep them away from their strawberries. The player turns the Gamepad on its side to orient the screen vertically, then uses the touch screen to pull back on their bow to fire arrows. To aim their bow, they move the Gamepad around.
• "Simon Says" Mini-Game:
  • In "Pirates", Captain Wario commands his minions to fire arrows at the player from four different ships in four different directions. The player uses the Gamepad as a magical shield, and must move it to face the ships in the correct order and with the correct timing in order to block the arrows. The finale changes things up, instructing the player to strike different poses and hold the Gamepad in specific places while bouncing in time with the music.
  • "Disco" is a two-player competitive version. Two players hold either side of the Gamepad, and take turns creating sequences of beats that the other player has to match by tapping the three buttons on their side of the screen.
• Spooky Photographs: The third stage of "Shutter" tasks Mona with taking photos of different ghosts. Since the ghosts are all invisible outside of photos, she will need to keep an eye out for specific strange occurrences in order to find them.
• Springy Spores: Certain stages of "Kung Fu" have large mushrooms Young Cricket can jump on. Landing on these will send him bouncing much higher than his normal jump.
• Sugar Bowl: In "Ashley", Ashley and Red end up inside a pastel-colored world made of candies and sweets after Ashley casts a spell meant to take them into the pages of a book she was looking at (Ashley had intended to enter a page featuring a scary monster).
• Super Drowning Skills: Young Cricket cannot swim in "Kung Fu". Landing in the rivers in stage four counts as falling into a pit, and will send him back to his last checkpoint.
• Tank Goodness: The bosses of "Arrow" are large robots modeled after Wario, all of which are attached to tank treads.
• Temporary Online Content: "Miiverse Sketch" was an online version of the "Sketch" minigame where the player would be given one minute to make a drawing of a word chosen from a randomly-selected pool, and their drawing would subsequently posted to Miiverse for other users to see. Following Miiverse's discontinuation in November 2017, the mode is no longer playable, and players can no longer view each other's art.
• Thanking the Viewer: The cast of characters ends with a special thanks to the player, complete with their name and the photo they took of themselves at the start of the game.
• Timed Mission:
  • Each stage of "Shutter" gives Mona three minutes to get all of the photos she needs. Once she has them all, she can end the stage whenever she wants, or she can keep trying to get better photos until time runs out, but her time bonus will be better if she ends earlier.
  • In "Kung Fu", Young Cricket has a limited amount of energy that goes down over time, and he has to reach the end of the stage before it runs out. He can increase the amount of energy he has by eating dumplings he finds all over each stage, or by grabbing any of the three scrolls.
  • In "Taxi", Dribble and Spitz only have a limited amount of time to rescue customers from the UFOs before the alien mothership arrives. Once it does, they have three minutes to take it down before it makes off with the shelter, at which point the game ends in failure. If they manage to destroy the mothership early, they can use whatever time they have left to roam the stage to collect the ten bonus stars, or pick up and drop off any customers they missed.
• Time Trial: The initial main mode of "Ski" simply challenges you to reach the end of each course in as little time as possible.
• Wingding Eyes: Ashley gets X-shaped eyes and Instant Bandages if she bumps into the walls or flying obstacles too much.
• You Dirty Rat!: The opening of "Arrow" has a mouse break into Wario's house and steal his last strawberry before running away, with Wario giving chase. This turns out to be a dream... and in the real world, the mouse pours pepper on the sleeping Wario's face, making him sneeze and wake up.

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