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.
