When considering all that, Nintendo throwing me a bone with WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! in the midst of those halcyon days is nothing more than fate. It is extraordinarily, gut-bustingly funny, combining absurdist Japanese humor with the grossness of Nintendo's crudest mascot. It is only sensible Wario would be responsible for this madness: Mario's twisted doppelganger has always elicited a sense of self-centered absurdity, and so it is his natural duty to present the inner mechanizations of him and his buddies, be they for greed or the expression of art. Mostly greed, yes, but I'd like to think there is an inherent art in picking your nose.
What results is the physical manifestation of interactive absurdity, one born with an innate sense of addiction. WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! plays something like this: after being introduced to a member of Wario's development team, you're directed to a sequential flow of five-second "microgames" that you must complete in the time allotted. Said microgames all revolve around abstract tasks -- Count the frogs! Stomp the Goomba! Pick your nose! -- and the more you complete, the faster they go. The higher your score, the less time you'll have. The more you succeed, the more likely you'll fail. Like Tetris, it's an endurance run we attempt to tackle again and again, having successfully fallen victim to its "just one more time" craving.
The games just keep getting faster, and faster, and faster, until they're reduced to split-second exercises devoid of comprehension: the sound futilely garbles, the gameplay devolves into automatic button presses, and any and all context fades away as we're just laughing at it all. And yet, laughter is just much our hook as it is our enemy; look away to stifle a laugh when your score reaches the sixties, and you've already lost. Funny thing is, we don't even care: there's no frustration, just laughter as we have no one to blame for ourselves for losing concentration. Playing WarioWare is joy, devoid of any aggravation or cynicism (well, barring Wario conning his employees, anyway).
It's a natural-born addiction, be it tackling the game's microgame collective stages or earning high scores in Grid Mode. The latter is where WarioWare's replayability exponentially explodes: each of the 213 microgames has a minimum score that, when attained, adorns that game's square with a beautiful red flower. Cycling through their three stages of difficulty, they too capture us for the sake of completionism; for the record, my highest score belong to the Spunky Monkey game -- featuring a monkey furiously hopping from tree to tree to reach a banana bunch -- wherein I got 207 points. Never again shall I touch it in my original cartridge, for it is perhaps the finest accomplishment of my youth (Hmm, could I perhaps surpass it in my Ambassador version for 3DS...?).
Needless to say, the microgames themselves engage us in both function and expression: whereas part-timer Mona's particular brand of weirdness will surely test the limits of your capacity and willpower in handling Japanese weirdness, even the more grounded themes in dancer Jimmy's sports games and ninja kindergartners Kat and Ana's nature collection possess fleeting moments that you make you go "what the hell did I just witness?". Be it Breakout-esque knock-offs with a Japanese man as the paddle or helping a beautiful anime woman sniff up a giant loogie, it's as if we're strapped the hypnotic fever dreams of demoralized, debilitated Nintendo developers, engaging in subliminal messages involving realistic renditions of Mario and Bowser engaging in Street Fighter-esque manuevers as a Japanese song about buttered coupes swaying in the ocean waves plays in the background.
The sound is really the star; much of it, I am told, hails from Wario Land 4 -- the previous Wario game for Game Boy Advance, and a game I've only played for maybe five minutes -- and while some may lament the absence of originality in favor of recycling, it speaks to how well the sound's used that makes it so funny. There's Nail Call, where a nail plunges from the heavens all the while unleashing a mighty human shriek; Right in the Eye, featuring an anonymous hand delicately attempting to thread a needle as an omnipresent crowd whispers in anticipation, as if spectating a cutthorat golf game; Sunny Side-Up, wherein cracking egg yolk into a frying pan is greeted with a heavenly chorus.
It's not just the sound effects, either; just observe the solemn music in the unlockable Paper Plane game. Another tune from Wario Land 4, this melancholic track accompanies a paper airplane as swerves downwards within an abandoned tower, conveying the aircraft's delicacy upon crashing into any platform impeding its path. Evolving from a lamentable flute into a full-blown ballad, its tongue-in-cheek framing of an utterly pointless scenario -- as if it's a beautiful metaphor of life fragility -- is what ultimately threatens (and eventually dooms) my concentration whenever I play it.
It is most certainly, however, the most unique -- and without absolute question the weirdest -- and so an invitational hook must real us in. Case in point: our status as an omnipresent avatar, who not merely engages with the cast and plays their games but actively takes part within their respective anecdotes, be it as a demon-possessed shogun or a mermaid seeking the ocean via taxi. Aside from Kirby's Adventure, I cannot recall another Nintendo game so naturally authentic in its desire for us to join its world; granted, WarioWare isn't as beginner-driven as Kirby, but its accessibility is the portal for wherein we are celebrated for our success, granting catharsis by rapidly clearing one challenge after the other. In the context of WarioWare, we are a living, breathing member of the family.
It's why the menu theme remains one of my all-time favorite GBA tunes: it is WarioWare's only source of any repose, a theme where I'm welcomed home by old friends who without question accept I am every bit as bizarre as they are, right down to child genius/fellow Nintendo geek 9-Volt and his collection of Nintendo-themed microgames (not that I had any idea what the baseball machines or the Color TV racing games were, but hey, I appreciated the nostalgia). To claim WarioWare holds here some elaborate metaphor on the meticulous balance between calm and mirth would be fallacy, but as a child who valued such a frame of mind, it was everything I ever needed; for all I knew, it was made just for me.
With the Game Boy Advance's Nintendo output being largely defined by ports, remakes and sequels -- all great, mind, but even with the likes of Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword and Mother 3, ther remains a depressing trend on the familiar -- WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! perhaps stands as the handheld's best original title; to my mind, only sequel WarioWare: Twisted! compares, and even that may be crippled by said sequel's dependency on a peripheral device (the gyro sensor) destined for deterioration. On a public scale, it's the addictive, frenzied turn in direction for Wario; on a personal level, it's representation of Nintendo understanding me, as an individual who's not quite always there. If takes me being labelled as a freak for being so into the philosophy of digital nose-digging, so be it.
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