WarioWare: Move It!

Genre: Arcade / Party Game

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local) / 2-4 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

WarioWare: Move It!, released on Nintendo Switch in 2023, is the second title in Nintendo’s long-running oddball family-friendly Arcade / Party Game franchise to reach the Nintendo Switch, which is itself a bit odd because this is the sort of game I suspect that many players would have assumed that this series would lead with on the platform. The prior game in the series, WarioWare: Get It Together! was a far more creative entry in the franchise, but also one that deviated quite a distance from what we’ve come to expect from the WarioWare games. Meanwhile, WarioWare: Move It! is a more traditional entry in the fast-paced “microgame”-driven series. In fact, it’s so traditional that this game seems to be a direct successor to the Wii entry in the series, WarioWare: Smooth Moves.

As with Smooth Moves, Move It! is controlled primarily via the Joy-Cons’ motion controls, though some “forms” also make use of the right Joy-Con’s IR camera (and some microgames also make use of the Joy-Con’s straps, so you may want to dig them up for this). Ah yes, forms… for those who didn’t play Smooth Moves, each minigame is preceded by a brief preparation screen where players must hold the Joy-Cons in a specific starting position to prepare for the upcoming microgame. Before using these forms, the game prepares you by having a soft voice describe the form and where your hands should be while showing a diagram. These descriptions are often delightfully silly, and one of the highlights of both games.

Speaking of voicework, much as he did for Mario and Luigi in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Kevin Afghani takes over the role of voicing Wario from Charles Martinet here, and does an excellent job of it too – if you weren’t watching for it, you might not notice any difference. The rest of the game follows the WarioWare series’ usual eclectic presentation, usually with sparse voicework, and a wide and disparate array of musical styles and graphical styles, from detailed to simple, 2D and 3D, with perhaps the most impressive thing here being this game doing a pretty job keeping a mostly brisk pacing without the need for long load times, despite all the variety going on here.

As for the meat of this game, Move It! features 223 Microgames, making it tied for second place for the most in the series (for the record, it’s tied with the Game Boy Advance’s motion-controlled WarioWare: Twisted!, and the series’ record goes to Nintendo 3DS’s WarioWare Gold). This is pretty good, but I feel it could have easily been higher – since the game reuses the same core gimmick as WarioWare: Smooth Moves, surely this could have been an opportunity to reuse some of the microgames from that title to round out the selection here.

Of course, that leads to one of the major questions regarding WarioWare: Move It!, which is how well the motion controls work here. After all, the Joy-Cons have frequently been shown to lack the sort of precision when it comes to motion controls as the Wii remote had. In this regard, the game mostly fares pretty well, no doubt thanks to two helpful elements likely working in this game’s favor. First, having a “pose” before each microgame likely gives the game a chance to re-calibrate motion controls before each microgame you play. And second, the way this game uses both Joy-Cons to play instead of just one gives the Nintendo Switch potentially twice the inputs to read. That said, it’s not foolproof – if I had to guess, I’d say maybe 5%-10% of the time I still had some control issues with the game not properly detecting my inputs.

Okay, but controls aside, just how good are the microgames here? In a word, brilliant. In two words, brilliant and hilarious. I was repeatedly delighted by the way the game found new and imaginative ways to recontextualize the motion controls to have players doing different things. There’s a microgame where you must make one girl greet another by lifting the hem of her dress, a minigame where you must imitate a man using his muscles to break out of chains, a microgame where you must aim your outstretched hands to go into two incoming nose nostrils, a microgame where you must move your hands in a motion to unclog a toilet. Repeatedly while playing the game, I found myself laughing at just how creative and frequently silly these microgames were.

Of course, players who don’t care for the WarioWare series will likely find many of their complaints about the series still apply here. The microgames themselves usually aren’t especially deep, and even with over two hundred of them included here, players will likely encounter repeats before long. And as I mentioned before, this is overall a pretty standard WarioWare game and as such isn’t quite as unique as WarioWare: Get It Together!.

Having said that, depending on who you are, that last complaint may not be a complaint at all, especially if you’re looking for a fun family-friendly game to play in multiplayer with non-gamers, who will probably be much better-able to wrap their heads around silly poses and movements than using traditional gamepad controls to move their different-controlling characters around the screen in various ways. And clearly, that’s where you’re likely to find most of WarioWare: Move It!’s longevity – in the delightful multiplayer mode.

Is WarioWare: Move It! good enough to convert the non-”Wah!”ed players to the franchise? Probably not. Is it better than Smooth Moves, the game that was clearly its direct inspiration? I’m gonna’ say no – the sometimes lacking motion controls and the lack of Smooth Moves’ freshness both make this game inferior in my eyes. Is it better than WarioWare: Get It Together!? I think this game edges out Keep It Together!, yes – not only is it more accessible and appealing to more casual players, but that accessibility gives this game longer legs due to the strength of its multiplayer.

Okay, but all of that said, is WarioWare: Move It! A great game, and a great WarioWare game? Yes and yes – it may not be breaking any molds for the series, and as such it may be continuing some of the series’ usual issues, but overall this is still a delightful, wildly creative, and uproariously funny game that is sure to delight any players looking for something silly that uses the Joy-Cons in odd and creative ways.

tl;dr – WarioWare: Move It! Is the second game in Nintendo’s silly family-friendly WarioWare Arcade / Party Game franchise to hit the Nintendo Switch, and this is a much more traditional entry in the series than the first game was. In fact, it was clearly directly inspired by the Wii entry in the franchise, Smooth Moves. While I don’t think it quite measures up to that game, WarioWare: Move It! is still an incredibly creative, enjoyable, uproariously funny, and extremely accessible entry in the franchise, with some solid multiplayer potential. This game doesn’t do anything truly groundbreaking for this series, but fans of the franchise will find it to be an excellent game well worth picking up.

Grade: B+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2023 Game Awards:

Winner:

Best Arcade/Party Game – After trying something a bit different in WarioWare: Get It Together!, the franchise returns to its usual formula, and specifically back to the formula of one of the greatest games in the series, WarioWare: Smooth Moves on the Wii. This game succeeds at being a worthy successor to that one, and an absolutely wonderful multiplayer game too.

Funniest Game – I think people take it for granted how funny the WarioWare games are because that’s just what we’ve come to expect from the series. Yet here we are in 2023 with a game that has players making a curtsy to greet a lady, unclogging toilets, searching a grocery store object for a bar code, wiggling like a piece of seaweed to hide from a shark, leaning around to get a princess to poop out a poison apple… and just for old times’ sakes, using your tiny fists to clog up a giant nose. WarioWare is just as ridiculous as ever, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Runner-Up: Best Game for Kids and Casual Players, Best Multiplayer, Most Underrated (75)

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