Monday, March 23, 2015

WarioWare, Inc.: Going Under? (Nintendojo)


Link Here

I believe I've discussed my dissatisfaction with the current state of WarioWare in the past? We had an Intelligent Systems-focus last week on Nintendojo, and I took the opportunity to discuss this. The announcement of Nintendo's entry in mobile couldn't have arrived at a better time.

It's amazing to think that in 2003, we were introduced to such an exciting direction for the Wario series--one I personally had a very strong connection with--and it had all but fizzled out ten years later with the arrival of the shitty Game & Wario. Witnessing that game's reception at Nintendo World Store around launch was one of the most sobering experiences I've ever had as a Nintendo fan

I miss this series so hard. Please restore it to its former glory, IS!

4 comments:

  1. "Please restore it to its former glory, IS! "

    *Nintendo SPD1

    Ehehe, sorry. It just iritates me to see IS always get credited over the series actual creators and core team.

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    1. I'm well aware SPD1 was behind the first title, but I cited IS since they were responsible for the series highs (Touched and Twisted) and its gradual decline into irrelevancy.

      ..then again, since G&W's Iwata Asks revealed the game channeled developers who worked on DKCR/Metroid Prime/Kirby's Epic Yarn/Brain Age, I suppose that was just one massive fuck-up across the board.

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  2. "I cited IS since they were responsible for the series highs"

    All of the games were developed with R&D1/SPD1 and most of the series design and core staff is on the SPD side (Director Goro Abe, char designer Ko Takeuchi, producer Yoshio Sakamoto... etc). Infact, the game with the biggest proportion of IS to SPD 1 staff is... Snapped!. This is further compounded by the fact that SPD 1's other games (Rhythm Heaven, Kiki Trick, Tomodachi Life) are much closer to WarioWare than IS's.

    Anyway, to contribute something beside pedantry:

    Tthe series is probably dead... but maybe that's not such a bad thing. The later games seem to indicate SPD 1/R&D1 are struggling to keep the series fresh (reading interviews, it's very obvious the WarioWare team really doesn't want to make "WarioWare 2" that's warioware's with different microgames), and if they'd rather flex their creative muscles elsewhere, just as 2D Metroid and Wario Land eventually made way for WarioWare and Rhythm Heaven, so be it. I'd much rather have the most creative division of Nintendo do what they excel at.

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    1. Pedantry indeed, though the correction is much appreciated; I've been meaning to research the individual teams involved with the company.

      As mentioned in the article, it's frustrating to witness such amazing character/humor being tied to lackluster software (Game & Wario), so I suppose it'd be best to put the series down as opposed to letting it flounder. At the same time, though, I do think it's a missed opportunity they haven't at least tried something on the 3DS (although we did get the amazing Tomodachi Life) and there's no way they're not going to expand on the series via mobile. It hasn't gone the way of F-Zero yet.

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