Genre: Light exploratory platformer

Released: March 9th, 1998

Platform: Game Boy (original), Game Boy Color, 3DS

Developer: Nintendo R&D1

Publisher: Nintendo

Original Language: Japanese

Length: 5-7 hours, easy breezy pacing. I rolled credits at 5 hours and spent another 3 looking for secrets.

Difficulty: Easy, nearly zero punishment for making mistakes.

Do I Need To Play Anything First: No, it’s stand-alone (despite the “2”). Up until now each game in the series is VERY different.

Accessibility Options: None.

Monetization: None.

Microtransaction: None.

Gambling Elements: You can wager coins to play mini-games, which are required to get treasure pieces. Spending coins make the games easier, however there is an endpoint and exploitation is minimal.

Content Warning: extremely mild cartoon violence.

Parenting Guide: Rated E for Everyone, and I agree.

How Did You Play It: I played the official English localization Game Boy version on an Analogue Pocket

Did you need a guide: Yes, twice for secrets endings. If you are willing to pixel hunt, you most likely won’t need one.

Is It Good: Yeah, it’s fun. 1 and 3 are better, IMO

Wario Land 2 is a teenager.

And adolescents is hard.

It is a period of transition, where we question who we are. What do we want? How can we distinguish ourselves from the shadow of others? During this time we experiment, try new things, and new identities. We want to be different. But often we don’t know how.

We can’t be too angry at Wario Land 2, they’re still young, you see. And trying to find themselves given their family background is going to be a struggle. They are both the 2nd game in the Wario Land series (officially), the 4th game in the Super Mario Land series (unofficially), and still learning who they want to be. I mean, look at their father Mr. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3. Of course Wario Land 2 will struggle to find themselves.

Full disclosure, Mr. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 and I are great friends. In fact, I count him as one of my closest friends and keep the handwritten copy of the speech he both made and gave at my wedding proudly displayed. I love that guy, and my appraisal of his son is strictly between you and I. He would be devasted to know I found WL2 to be pretty mid.

Now, I know Wario Land 2 will grow into the well-respected family man Wario Land 3, and that his child Wario Land 4 is well known as the greatest Prime Minister this country will ever see. But that is the future, and for now Wario Land 2 is 15 years old and acts 13.

The shadow of their father lingers, and as such there are several inconsistencies within the game design that irk. For example, Wario Land 2 is experimenting with how to make itself different from Mario (their close cousin). There is an interesting power-up mechanism in Wario Land 2, where instead of wearing hats or finding mushrooms, Wario’s physical body changes from some enemy attacks.

This is a really cool idea, and these abilities don’t make Wario faster or more powerful but instead give him different mobility options. Getting struck by a hammer turns Wario into a spring, allowing him to bounce to higher platforms. Getting squashed turns him into a paper-thin floating sheet, allowing him to haphazardly squeeze into crevices and float into new zones. My personal favorite is an enemy that turns Wario into a zombie.

This immediately turns the game into more of a Metroidvania than a strict platformer, further assisted by the games branching paths and slightly (very slightly) nonlinear design. But there are niggling issues I had that detracted from my enjoyment.

For one, sometimes it is unclear which enemies provide unique transformations, and which enemies simply do damage. The only way to tell is to let them hit you. These powers help in solving puzzles, and there are a few times when I struggled to figure out what do to as I had defeated an enemy that I was unaware would provide me with a new Wario form. Enemies come back if you leave an area so I never locked myself out of anything, so I got into the habit of letting every new enemy hit me to see what would happen. This felt less like interesting experimentation and more like a mild punishment.

Given that allowing enemies to hit Wario is a large part of the gameplay, Wario Land 2 has an interesting take on death. For the first time in the series, Wario can not die. Instead he losses coins on contact, and if he has no coins to give he simple bounces back a few feet.

This is a great idea and gives Wario Land 2 an exploratory feeling, as it encourages you to be unafraid to try things as the punishment is very minimal should you guess wrong.

The downside is that the new consequence of making a mistake is wasting time. Instead of restarting, you often have to wait for Wario to change back into his regular form, or trudge a winding path back to where you began. For example, in one level you are trying to get Wario down a series of platforms. If Wario is hit by an enemy he turns into a spring and bounces all the way back to the top of the challenge. This in itself is fine (no different from dying and restarting), but the difference is once you reach the top you then have to WAIT for the spring effect to wear off. It’s only a few seconds granted, but I still found the effects tiresome after a while of waiting impatiently for Wario to turn back to normal.

This is a very easy game in terms of mechanics. There are no deaths, no difficult platforms, and the hardest part boss encounters is walking back after they throw you off a stage (and watching their unskippable into cutscene).

The real point of the Wario Land 2 is collecting treasure, a mechanic toyed with in Mr. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3. Beelining straight to the end of the level is not particularly fun and is very easy. The true challenge is trying to find the hidden treasure in each level, which will later allow you to unlock the game’s true ending. I highly recommend playing in this manner, as nearly all the fun and interesting parts of the game are the challenges in finding secrets.

Thee game appears initially linear, however once you complete the first ‘ending’ you are heavily encouraged to go back and find alternate exits for several levels which lead to entirely new levels. I really enjoyed this aspect, and the world map easily sign posts which levels have missing treasure and which levels are worth returning to find a new path.

However, SOME of the alternative paths are hidden in annoying ‘secret’ blocks which look like everything else. I hated this and grew so frustrated I eventually used a guide for two sections. I’m really glad I did because I am an old person and I don’t have time to painstakingly try to break each block on the off chance it hides something.

However, most of the alternative endings are a great deal of fun to find. The first-level alternative ending is a personal favorite, and well worth the trial and error to find it.

It’s clear Wario Land 2 is taking great strides into becoming the modern Wario formula that 3 and 4 will later take on. Right now Wario Land 2 feels distinct, but its parts are not fully meshed together to make a cohesive mechanical package. Well put together, but some sharp corners are still present.

But while Wario Land 2’s mechanics have a few more iterations to go through, it’s presentation is fantastic. The warbling, grungy off kilter soundtrack is excellent, minus one song which every minute or so goes SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Visually and musically Wario Land 2 has a unique and strong identity, which truthfully will not change much over the next decades. Wario Land 2 is a great looking game, with great bits of animation and bursting with charm and spirit. It’s not ‘good for a gameboy’, it’s just plain excellent.

Despite the crushing technical limitations of the system, the designers manage to squeeze a performance out of the sprites, and take every opportunity to establish Wario as his own unique character. Wario has clear goals, likes and dislikes, and from a personality standpoint is now fully developed. There are small cinematics for plot points and a style that oozes polish and passion. This characterization is assisted by some truly fantastic sprite work, with the boss battles being a true standout for animation and design (although actually defeating them is dull and uninteresting most of the time).

There some performance issues (a great deal of slow down whenever multiple blocks are broken), but Wario Land 2 is a fun game and worth playing.

Wario Land 2 still lives at home with their parents, but there is no doubt they’ll grow up into something fantastic.

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Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, a game that wasn't about Mario but about marketing it in a similar fashion to Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island was succesful enough to spin into its own thing. Meet Wario Land II. Is it a worthy successor though? Well, kind of. The controls are definitely an improvement, refining Wario's movement, both physics and abilities. He can dash at will, and jump higher if you hold up on the D-Pad. There are also transformations that give Wario different traits to overcome the obstacles, like becoming fatter than usual, or getting thin by being squished into a pancake. Those are intersting ideas to spice the game up. The graphics and overall optimization are better, Wario stands out against any background and the game only lags when multiple blocks are destroyed at once or there are many sprite coins on-screen, for the most part it's a smooth experience. The music is good Wario Land fare.

That's where my praise pretty much ends. I'm not gonna lie, I think I actually like the first game a bit more. I like the more traditional platformer aspect of the first game. First, you can't die in this game. When you take damage you'll lose a few coins and get knocked back. Personally I find that more annoying than actually challenging. Given how much money you can find in every level, the punishment doesn't feel severe enough and you'll usually end with a net positive. I don't feel like the game promotes skillful play. The bosses in particular totally suck. I'm not saying the first game had stellar bosses, but these are just annoying. They don't even take your wealth away, only your time for getting back to them, and I feel they're a bit on a trial and error side. I'm also not fond of how the treasures are handled. In the first game, the treasure is a reward for exploration, but in this game your reward is... a repetitive memory mini-game that you have to spend money on. It's simply not as rewarding. In the first game, the mini-games where completely optional, to obtain more money or lives. What is rewarding in this second installment is finding secrets that contain massive amount of coins or big coins, and these can be found behind breakable walls and such. The amount of such secrets is staggering. There's also a picture mini-game at the end of each stage, which does seem to change slightly after you obtain a certain amount of pieces, but it's pretty much the same thing over and over. Guess the number picture to unlock the chest containing a piece.

Initially, the game doesn't have a map, flowing linearly. It would seem disappointing at first, until you actually beat the game once. Then the map opens fully with a few branches. The game is actually packed with content. Though one minor knock towards this game's map is it's not like the first game's world-by-world, instead it's a tree of branching paths. In Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, you could actually affect certain levels and the world map, like the flooded beach or Mt. Teapot. This sort of environment and level manipulation is lacking in the sequel. Now, I don't know if I just suck, but I couldn't find the alternative path in a few levels, such as "Escape the factory!". Not to say I didn't find a few, I managed to skip the snake boss on my first go by finding a simple exit, but for the most part these seem pretty obscure. For example, in the very first level, to get an alternative route, simply press nothing for a couple seconds. I only found this thanks to a YouTube video. To be honest, I don't feel very inclined to 100% complete this game and find all the treasure and alternate routes, unlike the first game.

Don't get me wrong though, overall, Wario Land II is still a good game, with nice presentation, smoother controls and a good amount of content. The game is decently enjoyable and holds up well. I think it's just a matter of preference, but I didn't find this game to be as fun as the first game. Again, I think I like the more traditional platforming of the first game, and treasure hunting that feels more rewarding.