Platform	Game Boy Advanced
Available	March 21 (Japan)
Price	4,800 yen
Genre	Mini-Game Action
Developer	Nintendo
Publisher	Nintendo

N.B. -- This is not a REVIEW. These are impressions following about three hours play of the game. Some scenario spoilers present.

Let's get one thing straight before going any further:

Made in Wario is quite possibly the craziest, most ciminally insane video game you'll ever see from Nintendo. It's Being John Malkovich for the video game world. It's mind bending insanity, and its appeal is very hard to pin down in words. With that disclaimer, let's continue.

Where to begin? The game defies all major video game conventions. Switching on for the first time, you're treated to a cut-scene of Wario.... well, he's just being indescribably strange. I don't think my brain chose to retain the specific information, but I believe it involved Wario doing ballet in his room before climbing into a small stereo system.

Before I knew it, the game had begun.

The game itself is structured as 10 groups of mini games, each group set around a different story theme. Each story theme stars an utterly random, but pleasant enough character with a simple dilemma which forms the backdrop for the various mini games.



Each story consists of 15-25 mini games, and a final 'boss'. Now when I say 'mini' games, I'm talking 2-3 seconds per GAME. Unusual, to be sure.

But herein lies the genius of Made in Wario. Most games have gradual learning curves, a character progression system, evolving levels.... and such. Made In Wario throws all that away and challenges you to re-learn a new game scenario every five seconds. The learning curve IS the game -- how fast can you figure out what you have to do, and then do it?

Every five seconds you are presented with a new screen, with perhaps just a banana, a monkey, and a see-saw -- and you have nothing except pure intuition to guide you. Experiment with the A button, and direction pad. You might find you can move the monkey. 'A' drops him, and on the right area of the see-saw, you will flip the banana into his hands. A win. Move onto the next game. Bang bang, hardly a chance to breath. Faster and faster they come at you. Five seconds to solve each one.

Luckily, if there's one thing Nintendo is great at, it's intuitive learning curves. I doubt any other developer could have gotten away with a game so reliant on player-intuitive design. Even with hundreds of these mini games, the vast majority are so well logically thought out that you can literally look at each one and know within half a second what you're meant to do.

Made In Wario is a weirdly cognitive experience, with a purely reaction-based back end. Initially it's a brutal, brain assault of a game. Usually at some stage, developers will allow the player to become comfortable with the controls and used to the challenge curve. Here, you aren't given even a second to sit back. Wildly varying mini-games come at you in increasing speeds and greater intensity, forcing you to learn and unlearn at blinding speed. And if you fail four games, you back to the beginning the group.

The experience feels oddly like 'How To Be A Millionaire' -- as you keep winning, the stakes get higher, the games get harder, and the puzzles come faster. It's a sure time driven test of the player's ingenuity.

Despite the masterfully logical implementation of the puzzles, the total abandon of logic used to design the mini games -- well, it ventures beyond the surreal. Dogs cry, cats nap, Frankenstein spews lasers, noses are picked.



And in what's becoming an increasing Nintendo trend, we also get some homages to classic NES fare like Metroid, Zelda, and Mario Brothers:



After a few hours though, to be honest, it's pretty derivative stuff. One can finish the game within about two hours, and true, there are some nice mini games to unlock (Dr. Mario, and some SNES quality Zelda-esque mini games). But the real fun of the game lies in the initial 'shock and awe' factor of trying to decode and complete these bizarre mini game scenarios, three seconds at a time, coming at you like a hail of bullets.

In its first two hours, Wario succeeds like few others: it taxes purely creative parts of the brain that few other games have reached. But as you become increasingly familiar with the mini-games, their simplicity becomes a liability and you might find yourself looking elsewhere for a more substantial gaming experience.

Made in Wario can best be summed up in one sentence: Nanaon-Sha meets Monty Python. Back when Parappa rapped his way into the world and kick started the music game revolution, Miyamoto was quoted as being 'mortified' by the sheer genius of the game.

Well, now Nintendo can claim some revenge. While it lasts, Made in Wario is the freshest game since Nanaon-Sha's masterpiece.


- Justin Keeling
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