This game, which puts the concept of user-generated content on center stage, allows players to design their own micro-games from scratch. Every element, such as the characters, the environment, the actions and even the purpose of the micro-game itself, is controlled entirely by the player. Players will then be able to share their completed micro-games with other WarioWare D.I.Y. owners.
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J'aime beaucoup l'idée, mais j'suis pas assez créatif pour ce jeu, j'trouve
Mario maker but for warioware!
Gonna be straight up with you: I'm leaving a rating, but this isn't so much a review as it is a fuzzy-brained retrospective from somebody who hasn't touched this game since high school. There's a fire in my heart that demands to be unleashed, so I will now talk about WarioWare D.I.Y. for a few paragraphs.
WarioWare and the Nintendo DS are two things that I personally consider to be "peak Nintendo". Both are the company and its developers at their absolute best: A conglomeration of a bunch of weird, out-there ideas that somehow manage to blend into a unique and delicious smoothie. I'll hold off on gushing about the Nintendo DS for today - perhaps on another game's page (or the system proper if they ever add pages for hardware), but the original WarioWare effortlessly won my heart when I first played it on my GBA way back when. The concept of "microgames" - effectively minigames but mini-er, generally with a runtime of mere seconds - being the focus of an entire game might have seemed strange at first blush. And it is. But Nintendo knew what they were doing, and the full collection of over-in-a-flash trials melded together into a chaotic mess of increasing speed and anxiety that was accessible to anybody. Complemented by brain-bending narratives and visuals, sweet tunes, and a handful of proper minigames for good measure, the OG was and still is one of the most iconic titles for the Game Boy Advance. For a short while there, the WarioWare series would be used as a sort of benchmark for Nintendo’s new hardware, demonstrating every possible gimmick through their new catalog of microgames. And not only was it a (mostly) successful experiment in its own right, but it also managed to breathe new life into the Wario franchise, giving Mario’s yellow-clad rival a brand new world of his own complete with a full new cast of characters. Since adding “money-grubbing game dev” to his resume, Wario has gained more infamy than ever, and he’s been cemented as the primary face of the “weird” side of Nintendo (a title Waluigi might claim for himself if they ever threw the poor purple bastard a bone).
But at one point Nintendo decided that simply letting people play the games wasn't good enough. In 2009, they released WarioWare D.I.Y., a game where Wario introduced players to the world of unpaid internships firsthand. While still containing its own curated selection of microgames for you to play, here they existed mostly to fill an obligation and to demonstrate what you’d be capable of once the reins were handed over to you. For included with D.I.Y. was a full suite of creation tools – not only for programming the games, but for creating the art and music as well. And you know it works, because all of the microgames included by default were created by the developers themselves, using the same tools. Along with a full interactive tutorial to help you understand the fundamentals, a great job was done on the staff’s end to demonstrate exactly what they wanted you to get out of D.I.Y. But just as they wanted you to get inspired by their own creations, there isn’t much sense in making games that only you will ever play. Thus, there was also included an online catalog hosted by Nintendo themselves, where you could upload your creations and share them with the rest of the world. They even incentivized it by holding themed contests, challenging players to fit the proposed prompt with the promise that any stand-outs would be spotlighted for all to see. Thus you have your task, and your inspiration – so get to creating!
The D.I.Y. experience is a straightforward and streamlined one, both with regards to the way you create microgames and the ways in which you can play them. The game follows a very simple object-oriented programming style that lets you set behaviors, variables and triggers for the entities you create. At the same time, you’d draw out the graphics with your stylus and create music in a composer not unlike the all-time classic featured in Mario Paint. In this way, D.I.Y. condensed the game development process much in the same way as the broader series has the very act of playing games. Making a game isn't so daunting when it's only going to be played for eight seconds at the most! However, you can't reach the level of complexity of games featured in the likes of Touched! purely because of the limitations of the engine provided and the fact that your inputs are limited to just taps. This low ceiling definitely trims back the possibilities of what you can pull off in your games... But it speaks volumes to the ingenuity behind D.I.Y. and the people that played it that plenty of impressive little projects were made regardless. Ones that manage to make an impression through their art, music or even mastery of the simple tools provided (and some that have gained infamy for other reasons, but let’s not talk about that here). Plenty of people have documented their favorites, either self-made or from others, in places like Youtube. And of course, you can still pick up a used copy today to experience it all for yourself, and there might even be a few creations left behind from the previous owner if you’re really lucky. D.I.Y. did a fantastic job of translating multiple aspects of the game dev experience to something that was understandable and accessible to just about anybody, and did so while maintaining all of the goofy charm you would anticipate with the WarioWare brand.
Oh, and it has Body Rock.
Sadly, however, Nintendo shut down their Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service in 2014, ending any sort of online communication and hosting for their Wii and DS games. No more visits to friend's towns in Animal Crossing: City Folk, no more online battles in Pokémon Black/White, and no more submissions to WarioWare D.I.Y.'s online catalog. The march of time is inexorable, and all these things and more now belong to the past, living on only in our memories - no more to be enjoyed as they were once meant to be.
... Except I LIED
Naturally, because people are absolutely nuts and will preserve anything and everything, you can still browse and play games made in D.I.Y. via the Internet. Not only can you still share your games by various means, and of course play ones others have shared as well, you can even browse and play them right in your browser! When I first discovered the DoujinSoft site, I wasn't surprised so much as just thrilled that somebody cared enough to go to all this trouble for wee little D.I.Y. Hell, their efforts to preserve the microgames from yore were so thorough I even found a game I made and submitted to one of Nintendo's contests! If you want to talk about some heady nostalgia, very few things have hit me quite as hard as seeing - and playing - something I created that I thought I was lost to time. In short, WarioWare is cool, and people are cool too.
There's very few games out there like WarioWare D.I.Y., and as desperately as I crave some kind of follow up, the time for it is long past - it was already on the perfect handheld for creators, and the other perfect one has also long since been put out to pasture. Would I have preferred an overdue WarioWare D.I.Y. 2 over the likes of Game Builder Garage? Perhaps, but I know deep in my soul that it wouldn’t have hit the same. D.I.Y. was a perfect storm at the perfect time, a simple but charming jewel that inspired creativity in myself and many others. Perhaps it isn’t as prolific or well-remembered or ambitious as others of its kind, but it was one that clearly understood the innate joys of making, and for that it will always have my love and respect.
Oh, I guess I didn’t mention Warioware D.I.Y. Showcase. It exists.
WarioWare and the Nintendo DS are two things that I personally consider to be "peak Nintendo". Both are the company and its developers at their absolute best: A conglomeration of a bunch of weird, out-there ideas that somehow manage to blend into a unique and delicious smoothie. I'll hold off on gushing about the Nintendo DS for today - perhaps on another game's page (or the system proper if they ever add pages for hardware), but the original WarioWare effortlessly won my heart when I first played it on my GBA way back when. The concept of "microgames" - effectively minigames but mini-er, generally with a runtime of mere seconds - being the focus of an entire game might have seemed strange at first blush. And it is. But Nintendo knew what they were doing, and the full collection of over-in-a-flash trials melded together into a chaotic mess of increasing speed and anxiety that was accessible to anybody. Complemented by brain-bending narratives and visuals, sweet tunes, and a handful of proper minigames for good measure, the OG was and still is one of the most iconic titles for the Game Boy Advance. For a short while there, the WarioWare series would be used as a sort of benchmark for Nintendo’s new hardware, demonstrating every possible gimmick through their new catalog of microgames. And not only was it a (mostly) successful experiment in its own right, but it also managed to breathe new life into the Wario franchise, giving Mario’s yellow-clad rival a brand new world of his own complete with a full new cast of characters. Since adding “money-grubbing game dev” to his resume, Wario has gained more infamy than ever, and he’s been cemented as the primary face of the “weird” side of Nintendo (a title Waluigi might claim for himself if they ever threw the poor purple bastard a bone).
But at one point Nintendo decided that simply letting people play the games wasn't good enough. In 2009, they released WarioWare D.I.Y., a game where Wario introduced players to the world of unpaid internships firsthand. While still containing its own curated selection of microgames for you to play, here they existed mostly to fill an obligation and to demonstrate what you’d be capable of once the reins were handed over to you. For included with D.I.Y. was a full suite of creation tools – not only for programming the games, but for creating the art and music as well. And you know it works, because all of the microgames included by default were created by the developers themselves, using the same tools. Along with a full interactive tutorial to help you understand the fundamentals, a great job was done on the staff’s end to demonstrate exactly what they wanted you to get out of D.I.Y. But just as they wanted you to get inspired by their own creations, there isn’t much sense in making games that only you will ever play. Thus, there was also included an online catalog hosted by Nintendo themselves, where you could upload your creations and share them with the rest of the world. They even incentivized it by holding themed contests, challenging players to fit the proposed prompt with the promise that any stand-outs would be spotlighted for all to see. Thus you have your task, and your inspiration – so get to creating!
The D.I.Y. experience is a straightforward and streamlined one, both with regards to the way you create microgames and the ways in which you can play them. The game follows a very simple object-oriented programming style that lets you set behaviors, variables and triggers for the entities you create. At the same time, you’d draw out the graphics with your stylus and create music in a composer not unlike the all-time classic featured in Mario Paint. In this way, D.I.Y. condensed the game development process much in the same way as the broader series has the very act of playing games. Making a game isn't so daunting when it's only going to be played for eight seconds at the most! However, you can't reach the level of complexity of games featured in the likes of Touched! purely because of the limitations of the engine provided and the fact that your inputs are limited to just taps. This low ceiling definitely trims back the possibilities of what you can pull off in your games... But it speaks volumes to the ingenuity behind D.I.Y. and the people that played it that plenty of impressive little projects were made regardless. Ones that manage to make an impression through their art, music or even mastery of the simple tools provided (and some that have gained infamy for other reasons, but let’s not talk about that here). Plenty of people have documented their favorites, either self-made or from others, in places like Youtube. And of course, you can still pick up a used copy today to experience it all for yourself, and there might even be a few creations left behind from the previous owner if you’re really lucky. D.I.Y. did a fantastic job of translating multiple aspects of the game dev experience to something that was understandable and accessible to just about anybody, and did so while maintaining all of the goofy charm you would anticipate with the WarioWare brand.
Oh, and it has Body Rock.
Sadly, however, Nintendo shut down their Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service in 2014, ending any sort of online communication and hosting for their Wii and DS games. No more visits to friend's towns in Animal Crossing: City Folk, no more online battles in Pokémon Black/White, and no more submissions to WarioWare D.I.Y.'s online catalog. The march of time is inexorable, and all these things and more now belong to the past, living on only in our memories - no more to be enjoyed as they were once meant to be.
... Except I LIED
Naturally, because people are absolutely nuts and will preserve anything and everything, you can still browse and play games made in D.I.Y. via the Internet. Not only can you still share your games by various means, and of course play ones others have shared as well, you can even browse and play them right in your browser! When I first discovered the DoujinSoft site, I wasn't surprised so much as just thrilled that somebody cared enough to go to all this trouble for wee little D.I.Y. Hell, their efforts to preserve the microgames from yore were so thorough I even found a game I made and submitted to one of Nintendo's contests! If you want to talk about some heady nostalgia, very few things have hit me quite as hard as seeing - and playing - something I created that I thought I was lost to time. In short, WarioWare is cool, and people are cool too.
There's very few games out there like WarioWare D.I.Y., and as desperately as I crave some kind of follow up, the time for it is long past - it was already on the perfect handheld for creators, and the other perfect one has also long since been put out to pasture. Would I have preferred an overdue WarioWare D.I.Y. 2 over the likes of Game Builder Garage? Perhaps, but I know deep in my soul that it wouldn’t have hit the same. D.I.Y. was a perfect storm at the perfect time, a simple but charming jewel that inspired creativity in myself and many others. Perhaps it isn’t as prolific or well-remembered or ambitious as others of its kind, but it was one that clearly understood the innate joys of making, and for that it will always have my love and respect.
Oh, I guess I didn’t mention Warioware D.I.Y. Showcase. It exists.
i was cooking up some crazy tracks in the music maker no lie
Goated ass game. Basically Mario Paint for zoomers. I specifically remember an in-game tutorial that tried to teach the concept of RNG, and I think that is rad as hell.
A title which continues Nintendo's trend of encouraging creativity from their playerbase that was also seen in titles like Mario Paint. Fittingly there is definitely a lot of Mario Paint's DNA in this title. The game provides the player with tools for creating not only their own microgames, but illustrations, comics, and music as well. These creation tools are simple to understand and explained well to the player. Plus if you're not afraid to tinker with your system a bit and look around online, you'll discover that the game still has an active community creating more content for the game long after the official servers were shut down.
The microgame creation tool is simplistic, but powerful enough to give the player almost infinite options and possibilities with creation Though with these games being limited to tapping the screen to perform inputs some fan created entries might seem a bit too simple, and others that try to work around this may seem a bit too tricky or unwieldy for the simplified input system mixed with the incredibly short nature of the games themselves.
As for the collection of Microgames already included with the title, though there are fewer than normal since the title was split between this and DIY Showcase on WiiWare, they do an excellent job showcasing what players can build with the tools provided, all while providing the same charm fans of the series have grown to love.
You might need to do a bit of tinkering to get the most out of this game now, but even on its own, this is an excellent experience that I still find myself constantly coming back to.
The microgame creation tool is simplistic, but powerful enough to give the player almost infinite options and possibilities with creation Though with these games being limited to tapping the screen to perform inputs some fan created entries might seem a bit too simple, and others that try to work around this may seem a bit too tricky or unwieldy for the simplified input system mixed with the incredibly short nature of the games themselves.
As for the collection of Microgames already included with the title, though there are fewer than normal since the title was split between this and DIY Showcase on WiiWare, they do an excellent job showcasing what players can build with the tools provided, all while providing the same charm fans of the series have grown to love.
You might need to do a bit of tinkering to get the most out of this game now, but even on its own, this is an excellent experience that I still find myself constantly coming back to.