WarioWare is like Bear Walker: The Game

This past week, Nintendo Switch Online members received a very welcome surprise drop in the form of Gameboy and Gameboy Advance titles added to the platform. These titles span across the nineties and early 2000s, from early classics like Tetris for Gameboy to The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap from 2004 on the Gameboy Advance. If you own a Switch and you have a paid online service subscription, these games are a must-download if you enjoy games from that era. The games available at launch are quality titles, of particular note two very well-loved entries in the Legend of Zelda series.

One of the included games, 2003's WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! is worth particular attention because of its unique and novel design and gameplay. That gameplay, while difficult to easily categorize, is explained concisely in its title: WarioWare is a sequence of vanishingly brief "microgames" meant to be played in rapid succession. These games individually last usually only around 5 to 10 seconds, and the challenge lies in understanding the sudden rapid changes and reacting accordingly, with a gradually accelerating timer. If it sounds stressful, the presentation and design choices center on a spirit of goofy and offbeat humor that is disarmingly light-hearted. 

I wanted to draw attention to WarioWare because I find it to be not only a great game, but a great example of the iconoclastic creative energy our team at Bear Walker seeks to exemplify in the world. This wildly unconventional game broke every understood norm present in game design at the time it was made. Warioware started its life as an after-hours side project for the staff at R&D1, who collected suggestions for Microgames from staff members on sticky notes. That pile of sticky notes, the collective artistic expression of an entire team, grew into a game that won over a legion of skeptics and became a celebrated franchise that has spawned 11 games across two decades. Our company respects the heck out of that, and our approach to our products comes from a similar philosophy of embracing new ideas and refining them with time-honored techniques. 

If you're following our brand, you likely share our appreciation for the classics of pop culture. From its beginnings as a passion project from within the development team behind Mario to its kaleidoscopic variety of design concepts, Warioware is a true classic. If you like what we do here at Bear Walker, and you're a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber, give it a spin. The worst that can happen is you'll have a great time.