Everyone has that one game that is considered to be great by a large number of people, but just doesn’t connect with them. On the flip side everyone has that one game they just love, but everyone else hates. Wario’s Woods is the former for me. It was well loved among many critics, but it just doesn’t sit well with me. I love games like Tetris and Dr. Mario so I downloaded Wario’s Woods from the Virtual Console thinking it would be another game in that style that I would like. I didn’t.
Wario’s Woods was released in 1994 and was the last retail title for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was also released for the SNES on the same day, but the NES version has fewer game play options and scaled down graphics than the 16 bit version. The game play is simple enough. You, as Toad run around inside a tree collecting monsters that are varying shades of color. You stack these monsters up in groups of like colors and place them beneath bombs that will appear at the top of the screen. The bomb of the same color will eliminate the stack of monsters once they connect. You could pick up single monsters with the A button, while the B button allowed you to pick up stacks of monsters. The goal is to clear everything off the screen. Eventually after clearing enough levels you would encounter a boss fight with the titular garlic loving baddie.
There were a number of different strategies that could be employed and you could even combo columns together where destroying one column may actually cause the destruction of another. If you had a friend you could play in a two player head to head mode.
As far as puzzle games go it just didn’t click with me. The movement of Toad combined with the different ways to pick up monsters wasn’t something I was interested in. I much prefer the falling block style puzzle game compared to the match 3 style game play, which is more of the style of Wario’s Woods. The game also didn’t look very good. Despite being late in the NES lifestyle the game just looked ugly to me. There was a much better looking, better sounding version released on the same day for the SNES and it might have been a better idea to have the on the Virtual Console.
Despite all that this was the game I played for Retro Redux this week. I didn’t like it. It’s the one game I’ve purchased on the Virtual Console that I regretted buying. I thought I would give it a try because I’d heard good things about it, but it wasn’t for me.
