The Weekly WTF: The Face-Fapping, Snot-Shooting Weirdness of ‘WarioWare’

Bad Wario! You used to be innocent. As family-friendly as anyone else in Nintendo's vast repertoire of freaks. Sure, you had a tendency to turn into a vampire when a bat bit you on the ass, and you totally looked like a sex criminal, but who doesn't have their quirks?

He couldn't help looking like someone's pervy uncle, after all. But with WarioWare, Mario's nefarious alter-ego turned away from simple platformers and entered the land of 'this is some crazy shit, right here.'

The series first hit the Game Boy Advance in 2003, with WarioWare Inc.: Mega Microgame$! Spelt dickishly it may be, but this was a immediate ball-busting hit nobody saw coming. New and original minigame compilations are something special indeed --they're usually piss-poor slices of laziness for your kid sister who doesn't know any better-- and this was certainly that. It was very, very that.

The WarioWare gimmick lies in the microgames of the title. These are sub-five-second oddities, fired into your terrified face in rapid succession. Each is controlled with only the d-pad and a single button, and you're guided by just a single word clue. With these meager tools, you have to figure out just what in holy hell you're supposed to do, and do it, in that time limit.

Which is demented enough, as you'll see below. But what really ramps up the crazy-ass is the content of the microgames themselves. You'll guide a midget on a skateboard up Wario's nostril, and around the Indiana Jones-esque hazards inside. You'll play a couple seconds of the original Zelda, Urban Champion and other retro classics. You'll hide under the covers so Ma doesn't see you playing your Game Boy past your bedtime (and probably shit your undercrackers when she suddenly emerges from the TV in your bedroom, like that creepy dead girl from The Ring).

WarioWare seems to get a little nuttier with each new iteration. WarioWare: Twisted! was controlled almost entirely by a gyroscope in the game cartridge. Motion controls, in 2005, were greeted with the kind of amazement you'd expect from a hairy-assed caveman being handed a laptop. Then there was the DS's Touched!, which introduced all manner of weird new ways to use a stylus.

Most peculiar, though, is the set of collectibles you can earn in the games. There is usually a 'playroom' of sorts, in which you can dick around with these items. And a very Japanese, bizarro selection it is. You'll be treated to a touchscreen X-ray machine to examine the contents of a cow's guts. Then, your Wii U Gamepad will become a teacher's face, into which you can bellow to prevent your lazy-ass pupils from falling asleep.

We won't even mention the 'spraying cream on the face' toy, because that's just the sort of innocent thing that depraved minds will convert into sleazy sextacular innuendo. Suffice it to say that's it's pretty freaking weird around here.

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