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Game Info.

Genre Mini-games

Publisher/Developer Nintendo/Nintendo

Release 4/04

Last Spring was a season of big disappointments for me. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, and Pokémon Colosseum were all three released in a 30-day period. All three were sequels-in-spirit to games I loved from years past (Secret of Mana, Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, and Pokémon Stadium, respectively), and all three ended up feeling more uninspired and muddled-up than their predecessors. The following month, Wario Ware: Mega Party Game$ was due and I hoped to God it wouldn't fail to deliver the way these other hyped-up sequels had. Sadly, in my opinion, it did fail, but not miserably. There is still fun to be had with this game, and it's risen as the only one of those Spring '04 releases I haven't sold or considered selling.

Gameplay
For an account of how the core Wario Ware gameplay works, check out my Wario Ware review. Unlike the true sequels that would come to follow, Wario Ware's second game didn't introduce some cracked-out new gameplay mechanic. It's merely been designed to make the Wario Ware experience multiplayer. The first and most obvious place this attempt fails is in not introducing a wealth of new multiplayer microgames. I'd be surprised if there were more than a dozen total, and there isn't even one mode dedicated to playing them. They show up in the multiplayer modes only as tie-breaker games. While they fulfill that role fairly well, it hurts the brain trying to imagine why the makers of the original 200-some microgames couldn't come up with more, especially now that we know they can pull it off in spades for the sequels.
Let's more properly break down the features Mega Party Game$ has to offer. There are two separate sections for you to play in; single player and multiplayer. The singe player game is basically a sped-up version of the original Game Boy Advance Wario Ware. You can cycle through the entire breadth of the game without the cutscenes in a short amount of time. Once that's completed, a few new modes unlock but aren't anything unfamiliar for fans of the original - a mode where you only get one chance to screw up, a mode where you only play "boss" microgames, etc. That's all there is to the single player half. It feels so unnecessary when you're already a Wario Ware fan.
The multiplayer half is naturally why this game exists. Like Mario Party, you and your friends get together and pick a character from the franchise to play as. Then you can choose a multiplayer mode, each hosted by a different character. Jimmy T's is the most basic. You and your friends' characters are on a dance floor. The spotlight moves to one (or more) of you randomly, and those players have to play a microgame. This goes on, getting faster and faster, for however long you can make it before losing 3 times. As obvious and simple as this mode seems, it turns out to be one of the most enjoyable of the bunch. There's nothing about it that gets old.
Dr. Crygor's sees players standing in a line, waiting to play a microgame. Rather than having lives, when you lose, you just have to play another microgame until you win one. The trick is, all the players in queue are pressing A rapidly to pump up a balloon, and if this balloon explodes while you're up playing the microgames, you lose. Again, very simple, but clever and light-hearted.
Mona's is probably the most interesting of all the multiplayer modes and is exactly the kind of originality this package should have explored more. You and your friends are at a doctor's office, taking turns playing a microgame for him. (This doctor is one of the freakiest characters. He looks and acts like nothing else in the Wario Ware franchise. It's so great.) Just before doing so, he commands you to perform some kind of action while trying to get through the microgame. These range from telling a joke to your friends to playing the game with your toes to staring at one of your opponents while playing (this one is especially difficult). After playing and hopefully performing, your friends have to tap A rapidly to clap for you. In the end, whichever player was applauded the most wins. It's as simple as that. The one complaint I could have about this mode is that the winner is all but totally arbitrary. My friend also suggested the addition of being able to input your own text commands for the doctor to give would've been fantastic. But it's still an extremely fun diversion as it is.
The rest of the multiplayer modes range from "hey, neat" to "eh" to "what the heck am I doing with this?". Kat & Ana's is strange and complicated but is half just the multiplayer games, which will keep you coming back to it. Wario's is neat but a little boring. Orbulon's is interesting but irritating. And then there are Dribble & Spitz's and 9-Volt's, which are just ridiculous and deserve almost no play. A few good extra multiplayer games also make their way in, like a jumprope game in which each player jumps exactly once before passing the controller to the next. As you can probably tell, the set-up of the gameplay options is a little unorganized and leaves you feeling, even while you're having fun, that there's really not enough to it all. The game simply lacks substance, and unlike Nintendo's other modestly presented games like Electroplankton, doesn't feel comfortable in those clothes.
7/10

Control
Since nearly all of the microgames are straight out of the original Wario Ware and they all control the same, I can't really complain about the controls in this game. The same word pop-ups pop up before each microgame, instructing you briefly on what to do. As with the old Wario Ware, this turns off some players, but to me seems the only way this sort of rapid-fire gameplay is possible, and I absolutely love it.
9/10

Graphics
While I try not to expect too much from the graphics when I first get into a game, I've gotta' say, this is one of the biggest disappointments I have with this game, and there's a reason for it. Back in the day, when a game would have two versions for the Game Boy and, say, Super Nintendo, you didn't really have reason to expect a drastic visual overhaul. But Game Boy Advance to GameCube is a totally different story. The menus have to look flashier, the characters should be in 3D or at least animate smoothly in 2D form, and the new features (in this case, the 10 or so new microgames) should add to the aesthetic experience. None of these are achieved in this port. It's really a shame.
5/10

Sound
The great music of the original Wario Ware is all reused in the single player modes. The multiplayer soundtrack is new and definitely has more of a specific style than in the other Wario Ware games, and I appreciate that.
8/10

Replay Value
What can I say; as a party game and just a party game, it works. It's definitely a less time-consuming and less obnoxious alternative to the countless Mario Party sequels. The four or five multiplayer modes that are worth anyone's time are each something brand new for the "party game" sub-genre and have kept my friends and I entertained for hours.
As for the single player mode, it's really just a toned-down version of Wario Ware for Game Boy. Nothing really big to come back to here. Some kind of crazy co-op action would've been nice for this lacking half of the game and would've been in step with the "Atsumare" theme of the game ("Atsumare" being the title for the game in Japan, the word "atsumare" meaning "come together" in Japanese).
8/10

Overall
If Wario Ware for Game Boy didn't exist at all, Mega Party Game$ would be a neat little game with hundreds of crazy mini-games and a small horde of interesting multiplayer modes for you to kill some time in. That alone would be a great game, in my mind. However, because you could just go out and buy the original Wario Ware for a year before this came out, the GameCube version is nothing BUT the multiplayer modes, and those really aren't enough to impress. I'll have to give it a "good" rating of 7/10, though, because of the few multiplayer modes that are actually a lot of fun. I will say if you're a player who only really plays games multiplayer and doesn't own a GBA, SP, or DS (systems on which much better Wario Ware games exist), Mega Party Game$ is a nice distraction and should entertain you and your friends for many weekends to come.

FINAL SCORE: 7/10
=Good=
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