Nintendo Okie

WarioWare has been around in some form or another since the days of the GBA. It’s, for those who’ve never heard of the franchise a game based on a series of micro games. These games are very short, usually five to ten seconds long and have you doing various things like pulling pizza slices from a pizza tray and in the Wii version of WarioWare Smooth Moves using the Wii remote to gesture. They’re very unique and have been a lot of fun since the very beginning. It never ceases to amaze me how creative the folks at Nintendo R&D 1 have been coming up with as many different ideas as they have for this franchise. WarioWare D.I.Y. shakes things up a bit and puts you in control with the ability to create your own games and build assets for the games included in the package.

Howdy:

Lots to Do

WarioWare D.I.Y. comes with 90 games on the cart. They’re spread across themes from some of the more popular characters in the WarioWare franchise. The DS version of the game includes Mona, 9 Volt, Ashley, Jimmy T, and Orbulon. Wario is along as your “boss” when you are creating your own games and he’ll be in charge of the D.I.Y. section. All of the games in Wario Ware D.I.Y are touch based and you’ll use the stylus to perform all the actions in the game. You’ll be doing everything from breaking brick walls, to fighting off jellies in a Legend of Zelda mini-game. The variety is quite astounding considering you’re essentially doing the same thing over and over. They’ve managed to do a good job making the games fun and giving you the feeling of doing many different things.

Create Your Own Games

WarioWare D.I.Y. says everything you need to know about the game in it’s title. It really is a do it yourself game. The creation tools do a very good job easing you into the process. The tutorial is lengthy enough to help you understand how you go about creating games. In it’s own terms it boils it down to creating a play. You need to create the background, the actors, music and the script. You do this with a simple touch based interface that has quite a lot of depth to it. You have the option of going in and drawing everything by hand pixel by pixel for those talented enough to do it. For those less artistically inclined, like myself, you can take any of the assets in games already created and use them in your own game, or you can use some of the pre-made stamps that you can mix and match to create your own art assets. When it comes to the music section of the creation tools they’ve made this simple as well. You have two options when creating music. You can go in and create the music using a Mario Paint style graph to create your music or you can have the game create the music for you. You just enter a few simple suggestions for style and it creates a song for you. Once you’ve created the assets for the game it boils the game creation down to one simple phrase; “If A happens, do B.” All of the AI in the game is based on this simple concept. The tools themselves are so good that this can be as simple or as complex as you’re willing to do. If you are comfortable with only making simple games then you can do that very quickly. If you’d like a lot of things to happen the tools are set up to allow that. I’m sure that there are going to be games created that even the folks the made the game didn’t think were possible.

User Created Content

Not only can you create your own games in WarioWare D.I.Y you have the ability to download new games from people on your friends list or from the WarioWare Distribution Center. Nintendo themselves are offering up new games each week created by famous game designers like Masahiro Sakurai, the folks from Gaijin Games or Yoshio Sakamoto, the man behind the Metroid franchise. Getting these games is as simple as connecting to the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and finding them in the store. You’re limited to what Nintendo has put up for download, unless you get the games from your friends. The process is very simple connecting to the Warehouse will show any games available from your friends. You can also access the Ninsoft Store to see what’s available from Nintendo. Uploading games for your friends is as easy as accessing the Warehouse and putting new games in your crate for friends to download. The best aspect to this service is the ability to trade games between the Wii and DS versions of the game. The Wii has 72 unique games that are not available through the DS version You can download these to your DS to take on the go or you can upload your favorite DS micro-games to your Wii to play with your friends on the TV. Not only can you create new games you can also create your own 4 panel comics or your own music using the Mario Paint style music creator.

See Ya’:

It’s a Solitary Affair

The one real bad aspect to this newest incarnation of WarioWare is the fact that it’s really a solo experience. WarioWare has always had a multi-player focus and it’s been about getting together with friends to pass a DS or Wii Remote around playing these games together. WarioWare D.I.Y. removes that multi-player aspect and focuses on the single player game. There’s nothing that says you can’t still pass the DS around, but there are no multi-player modes to this game at all. It’s seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to not have some form of multi-system, or even single system multi-player.

Tapping is All You Do

When you’re playing the games the only gesture you’ll use is a tapping gesture. There are no uses of slashes on the touch screen, the microphone, or the DSi camera. The last one is forgivable because they made the game accessible to all versions of the DS. I can see how they wanted to keep the input simple to make game creation as easy as possible, but it would have been really nice to have some other control options available. The tapping is very creatively used and doesn’t get terribly repetitive, but I can see how it would get old doing the same type of motion repeatedly.

Despite the few flaws that the game has WarioWare D.I.Y. is another stellar entry into the series. User created content has really been growing more and more this generation and it’s really refreshing to see Nintendo taking advantage of this. There’s going to constantly be new content available for the game. They’re holding contests based on themes in addition to all the regular content they’ll have available so it will be a very long time before you run out of games to play. There really is no reason to not own this game if you have a DS and you’re looking for a really good time.

Final Score: 5/5 Excellent

Review copy of the game provided by GolinHarris (Nintendo PR)

Played all the available micro-games, created 4 of my own, downloaded all games available at the time of the review. Tested connectivity between DS and Wii versions of the game.

Total Play Time: 9 hours