Nintendo has released one additional game for the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack’s Nintendo GameCube – Nintendo Classics app. Let’s have a look!

Here’s what I thought of this game:

Nintendo GameCube – Nintendo Classics

As Wario’s first starring role in a 3D game, Wario World is far from the triumphant entry into 3D that Mario, Link, or Samus received. Heck, it’s not even the “pretty good” first 3D game that Kirby received.

At the time, I note that critics complained about the game’s “short” 8-hour length. I think that views on game length have evolved somewhat since this game’s 2003 release, and now it’s generally seen as better to judge the quality of the time spent with a game, and “quality” isn’t really a word that Wario World projects. At first it seems amusing enough, punching enemies is satisfying, but like Treasure’s Mischief Makers before it, you’ll soon find that all but the simplest enemies require you to grab them, pick them up, and swing them around, throw them, and do other stuff with them, and here’s where the game starts to fall apart, because while punching is fun, grabbing is tedious, takes too long, and isn’t nearly as satisfying.

Before long, you find pits that instead of damaging you or killing you they drop you into a room that forces you to punch boxes until you find the correct one while being hounded by enemies you can’t fight. And it was around this time, just a short ways into the game’s fist level, that I felt like I didn’t need eight hours with this game to see how mediocre it is.

Not bad, mind you – it has plenty of charm and originality to keep it from being outright terrible. But it’s mediocre for all the little things it does to make the experience less fun. Like making coins disappear almost instantly after enemies drop them. Like making enemies respawn when you move a screen or two away from where they were defeated. Like making collect-a-thon pickups mandatory to complete each of the relatively linear levels. Like making one of those collect-a-thon pickups make annoying noises until you find them, and then they force you into a screen of text, and this happens multiple times in each level.

This is turning into a full review when it’s meant to be more of an overview of the game. Let’s just suffice it to say that Wario World is interesting and unique enough to be a worthwhile addition to the GameCube app, but it’s frustrating and tedious enough that it was never going to be a highlight. Okay? Okay.

tl;dr – The Nintendo GameCube app on Nintendo Switch 2 gets Wario World, a 3D Platformer and Action-Platformer that’s fairly unique and creative while also being frustrating and tedious. It’s different enough to be a worthwhile addition to the GameCube app, but it’s not what I would call a great game.

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