Reviews from

in the past


A big improvement over Wario Land 1, mostly cuz it isnt trying to be a Mario game, this was a surprisingly fun time.
The level design was well done, Wario controlled nicely, and the music was odd but charming.
I do feel the exploration got a bit annoying at particular points, especially with finding the secret exits.

A pretty ambitious platformer being held back by the limitations of the Game Boy. Unavoidably kind of a comedown from VIRTUAL BOY WARIO LAND because of how good that felt to play - now we're back to chunky, clunky GB movement and simplistic animation.

Within their limitations, though, they went all out. Loads of moves, mechanics, minigames, secrets, and so many coins to get, it feels borderline predatory. Someone looking to really dig into this would be richly rewarded (branching storyline! new levels and endings on every path!), but I found myself not really wanting to invest. I was compelled to engage with the Virtual Boy game to its absolute fullest because it felt so good to play. Here, the moment-to-moment action was kind of dull to me by comparison. The Kirby-lite transformation stuff didn't do much for me, and some of the challenges are designed to be annoying because Wario can't die now and they need to punish you somehow for goofing up. (Not sure if I love that particular tradeoff.) At some point it started to feel like going through the motions.

Crazy that the Game Boy's life was so long that they were making bigtime franchise games for it next to, like, the release of the Dreamcast. This is still some admirable stuff! Pushing it a bit, though.

Pretty good natural evolution to the first WarioLand, with some really interesting design choices regarding power-ups, different level pathways and levels in general. It feels a bit odd that these new levels aren't as acessible as they should be, they are pretty cool and are essentially half of the game, and since the main reward is playing them instead of completing the "true ending", it's weird how unintuitive if felt.

Have only played a bit of this one but seems promising. A good 2D platformer with all that Wario Charm. A game that I need to get my hands on again. Maybe add it to Switch VC?

Favorite of the series so far! Love the multiple paths like a pseudo metroidvania!


The guess what number it is minigame feels awful when 6 and 9 only have 1 different from 8 and bosses have a way to restart the fight. Like why have no death in the game and then do a fake death thing during boss fights?

Super fun take on platformers that leans into wario as a "playable boss" character and gives him so much personality. Branching paths make it even better!

In Wario Land II, Wario has to defeat a cartoon rabbit in a high-stakes game of basketball

I couldn't beat the final boss, but what I did play I enjoyed. It's not as refined as Wario Land 4, but it's limited by the hardware it's on so I can't be to hard on it.

A really fun game, this is a Wario game, through and through. Building off the first entry in the now series, Wario's unique character and quirk evolves into it's own ecstatic gameplay style that's a ton of fun and carries a lot of re=playability to get through all of it's treasures and all of it's unique endings.

i used to think the most ambitious, hardware pushing series of the gameboy era was pokemon. wrong. its wario. also u get to play basketball with a bunny

Wario Land II is a massive improvement over the first game in terms of cementing the series' identity. It's now leaning heavily into being a puzzle platformer, where getting hit by an enemy just means you lose some coins, get knocked back, and potentially get a status effect. This leads to a lot of really creative and exploratory level design that really impressed me out of the gate, I could not believe how much more unique this felt compared to the first game. As the game goes on I think there's a lot of frustration that comes up though, the controls are pretty stiff and there are a lot of segments that require precision platforming/timing that just don't feel great to fail at. Somehow I find it more frustrating to get knocked back by an enemy and have to redo a small portion of the level than if I died and had to start from a checkpoint like in the previous game. It leads to a lot of situations where I feel like I'm just beating my head against a puzzle that I know the solution to until I can execute it, which just doesn't work for me.

An alright sequel to a decent game, Wario Land 2 is a fun game to play, but it does get slow and odd at times. Still an alright time nothingless

Also wario refusing to die because he doesn't feel like it, that's badass

I intended on completing all of the side stages, but man, I just couldn't. This game has a lot of clever ideas, especially in the way enemies are recontextualized as tools in many places, but the controls can't keep up. There's a constant sense of lag every time you start or stop moving, which removes that ever-important sense of satisfaction in movement that the main Mario series nails so well. Also, the final boss (of the main story) was extremely unintuitive. After slamming my head against it for a while, I had to look up how to do it, and I know the only way I would have ever figured it out on my own is dumb luck. I do appreciate the sheer amount of content they packed into this little cartridge, and the presentation is excellent, but the fundamental issue of movement made the whole experience pretty mediocre for me.

became too long for my taste, but it's a really good improvement of the first game. the little puzzles at the end of every stage are just plain boring though.

A great step up from the original game. I played a full 25 hours of this game, and 100%ed it completely.
Captain Syrup returns and you defeat her, whether it's in a factory, or a mansion, or at the bottom of the sea. I like him much differing routes there are, and doing all of them and getting every treasure and completing the treasure map unlocks the final stage.
The gameplay is similar to the original, but this time Wario is invinccibleee!!! and has different "power-ups" depending on what the enemies do to them. It's fairly fun, and there's tons of secret leading to coins, treasures, and even secret exits.
The credits theme is now ingrained in my brain.
Overall alright, an enjoyable time.

On replay, only aiming at the main objectives, this feels much shorter in hindsight, as about 40% of the levels are made towards completion purposes (unlike the first one), and the level design isn't as tight as the third one.

Technically this is Wario Land 3!
This game feels like both a step up and a step down from the first game. It gets rid of most of the Mario mechanics in favor of new ones which im a fan of. The transformations shake up the gameplay in a way that definitely sets itself apart from Mario. Where this game feels like a step down however is that those transformations are mostly all thats new to the game. No interesting ideas to flesh out in the levels unlike Mario or heck, even the first 2 Wario land games.
Because of this I think that's why this game has more of a focus on puzzle platforming which in my opinion, has been done better in installments after this one. It can make levels feel longer than they should and what's worse is the entire game contains 50 levels. So the game ends up feeling like its stretching itself VERY thin. The general flow is that you'll have a couple levels that all feel insubstantial and exit your mind the moment you reach that goal. With only 1 or 2 good actually levels here and there.

Speaking of goals, depending on which goal you entire in some levels, you'll end up on a completely different path in the story and get a completely different outcome. Big fan of this branching story paths idea, I can only think of a couple other games that do this and i feel there's potential in a concept such as that.

Im a guy who likes to 100% platformers purely for pleasure, the level you unlock after getting every collectible is a decent challenge stage with a disappointing boss.
But I don't care all that much, I'm more of a fan of the journey rather than the destination, and the way this game handles getting treasures was simply annoying. Inside every level you'll have to find a secret room and play the same minigame every single time to unlock a treasure, I appreciate being able to set the difficulty but I would have handled something like this a little better, a rebalance on selecting the difficulty options to maybe entice the player to do higher difficulties is what im trying to get at here. But ultimately I'd just get rid of it. I think the act of finding the treasure room should be a challenge in of itself instead of both that AND an annoying minigame. There's also a goal game collectible. It also gets repetitive but the worse thing about this is if you fuck up you have to reach the goal again to retry it.

This game was one I kept constantly thinking about how it could be improved in a remake or something with how clumsy all of its issues are. Its NOT a bad game, its more of a game that's at least solid in small doses. But after playing it for an hour or so, the issues it has will sink in and the game will start feeling like a slog. No shame in skipping this if you're playing these games for the first time (I personally think the real WL3 is 10 times better) Which, after a certain Indie platformer that came out this year, wouldn't be surprised seeing an increase of people playing these titles for the first time.

Como si te enseñan un bebe y dices esta bonito pero en tu mente no piensas eso es que no esta siendo sincero
Pero si dices que esta bien culero se oye feo
-Wario 1998

This review contains spoilers

I have to say, this was genuinely a huge improvement over the first Wario Land in my opinion. It fixed pretty much all my major issues with it and it feels like a much more distinct game worthy of being a side series. As per usual with my reviews, here's some small disclaimers for my playthrough: for some reason I can't mark my playthrough as being on the 3DS, but that was the platform I used to play it on. I limited my use of Restore Points to make my playthrough as fair as possible, more so just utilizing it as a way to reduce tedium a little (mainly preventing constant backtracking to the boss whenever you get hit) rather than cheating the game. Took me 9 hours to beat this one, just an hour short of my time with the first game.

So, part of the reason this one feels like such a big improvement to me is the way the gameplay got shifted around. Wario's base move set is pretty much the same aside from a situational rolling move he now has, but WOW he controls so much more smoothly here that it isn't even funny. It does still feel a little off sometimes, particularly with how little freedom you have with aiming your throws which can lead to awkward situations when you need to throw an enemy to break certain blocks, but the physics and controls are pretty good overall and I can't stress enough how much better they are here. The base goal of the game is also the same as the first Wario Land, but they changed a lot here that just makes it feel like a different game. You're still getting to the end of each level and hunting for any coins you can find, but the level design encourages exploration much more and its just overall more interesting to me rather than just feeling like a Diet Coke Mario Land like the first game did. There are some cool new tools to play around with, like how they decided to make Wario immortal here. I'm really not sure if I prefer that over being able to die. In some ways, its really nice, since you can just focus on exploring the levels at your leisure (especially helps that there's no time limit anymore) and you won't need to worry about having your whole coin count slashed for getting a game over. The most enemies can do is make you lose a few coins, so they're more so a nuisance than anything else. I think the immortality was partly done to focus entirely on the coin collecting and exploration side of the game, as well as the new feature where certain enemy attacks affect Wario in different ways that can either benefit or hinder him. For example, when you get stung by a bee, Wario's head gets huge and he starts floating like a balloon, which is great for reaching new places but is also an absolute annoyance whenever you can't go anywhere worth going with it. I think these are sort of like a replacement for powerups from the first game. Unfortunately they're a bit of a missed opportunity in my opinion since there aren't really a lot of creative things you can do with them and some are purely there to annoy you, like when the penguins throw orbs at Wario that make him dizzy or when the snowmen freeze him with their breath. I like the idea behind it though and I hope Wario Land 3 expands on it when I get to it.

So this game tries a little more to have a story than the first Wario Land, but there's still not much to it. Basically, Wario's castle (I guess the castle ending from the first game was the canon ending) gets ransacked by Captain Syrup's goons and they toss an alarm clock in there to wake up Wario. That's about it. From there, he's just going all around the land to hunt treasure and find those guys that took his riches. I just figured I would at least mention it, since this game does have some cutscenes. The story is more so a backdrop for this game's wackiness, which feels like a natural evolution from the first game. Wario Land II has a lot of personality to it that I like, from the fact that a piece of paper with some kind of witty title pops up before each mission to the whole design of the game. It really leans into the zaniness that first game had and its just fun to see.

Going to make a dedicated complaint section here since, while I did mostly enjoy my time with Wario Land II, there are some pretty annoying things here that I didn't really understand. There's two minigames you need to play to get various goodies, whenever you're looking to get Treasures or fill out a map thing that I think unlocks more parts of the game, and both are not very good or fun. For the Treasures, you need to play a minigame that I swear would be impossible for me if there was no easy option and even then I don't always get it. Its one of those "pick the right card" games, where you have one card you're looking for in a deck of cards that only flip around to show what they are for like a millisecond if you're on Hard difficulty. I dunno, maybe my pattern recognition and short term memory are just bad (very likely); these were manageable in Easy difficulty but if I didn't have that option I would've just not been able to get any Treasures. They're an optional thing anyway, but I felt it was a big feature of the game. The other minigame is a panel board that you can spend money to reveal one of, with the goal being to guess what number it is. In my experience you pretty much have to spend the money for three or four panel reveals since a few of the numbers look real similar to each other. From what I can tell, you have to win it after every level to be able to finish the map, so I just said "Yea I'm not doing that" and skipped the option every time I beat a level. Last major complaint of mine has to do with bosses. I don't think they're as boring or annoying as the first game but I really don't understand why they made you have to backtrack any time you get hit by one of their main attacks. In some cases it wasn't too bad, sometimes you even need to lose to the boss once to find a bunch of coins. In other fights, though, it got on my nerves so much that I just used Restore Points at the very beginning of a boss fight so I wouldn't need to bother with walking all the way back every time.

Overall, Wario Land II is a game I have some gripes with, but was very enjoyable for me and a HUGE step up from the first Wario Land. Here's hoping Wario Land 3 is better once I get to that one. This game gets a pretty solid 3.5 stars from me, fun time.

This review contains spoilers

Finishing it only to be told that the game had alternate level paths was a massive surprise since it took me longer than the original and I liked it just as much. While I won't tackle the other 50% of the game right now, it is definitely something I can look forward to on a future replay.

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.

Kind of clunky and rough around the edges, but a mostly fun platformer with a surprising amount of content and multiple paths/endings. I just wish the boss fights weren't so tedious.

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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This game is very good and much better than the previous game. The game feels much more fluid and the controls feel tight. The level design is a massive improvement over the original and makes this game quite hard to put down at some times.

interestng gameplay is pretty consistant overall


Better than the first game, not by much

Wario Land II feels like an inbetween of Wario Land 1 & 3. It features the linear structure of Wario Land 1, so you progress through levels on a linear (but branching) path. But its themes and level designs are super weird and wacky, like in Wario Land 3. Absolutely servicable, but it doesn't really stand out to me, which is fine, I guess.

Played it as a kid and have fond memories of it. Not sure if still holds up to my rating tho

It gets so tiring hearing the same exact melody every level.