Wario Land 3 is one of my favorite games from my childhood, and to this day, between its mechanics, stage structure and world structure, I find it to be an incredibly inventive platformer worth revisiting.
With Wario Land being a platformer branching off of the Super Mario Land series, you'd think you'd know what to expect. A character runs right, jumping from place to place, trying to avoid the gaps and enemies found along the way. But Wario Land 3 has a very important twist that completely changes how the game is played: you cannot die.
No matter how much punishment Wario takes, he'll always get back up, and there are no game over screens. Right off the bat, this takes away the bottomless pits, spikes and autoscroll stages that Mario games use so extensively. After all, if you can't die, none of that has any purpose.
Stages are now designed around exploring, puzzles, and platforming gauntlets where you can fall to the bottom or otherwise get reset to the beginning. As for enemies within the stage, who also cannot kill Wario, they produce different effects on him when they hit him. These effects are cartoonish in nature, and impact Wario's movement, physics and interactions with the scenery.
The most common is a goofy knockback, but he can also be set on fire, made into a ball, made drowsy, made flat, made bouncy... The list goes on. Sometimes, these effects will be used to hamper your progress: while on fire, for instance, Wario will run nonstop, which will easily knock him off platforms if not carefully handled. While flattened, he'll be unable to enter doors or control his jump trajectory, as he behaves like a sheet of paper while in the air.
On the flipside, though, he can set other things alight while he's burning, and the distinct airborne physics combined with the height difference can allow him to access places he wouldn't be able to reach otherwise. This means enemies are not always there as a hindrance, and you need to learn each of their attack patterns and the effect they have on Wario to then judge how you can use them to your advantage and what is the best time to get hit. It's a really cool twist on typical platformers.
Plus, unlike the usual Mario stage, where you walk right to the goal, WL3's stages are open and branching: each stage has four different paths that can be taken to complete it, at the end of which is a treasure chest. To open that treasure, you need to get a key from elsewhere in the stage. Very often, you'll be able to access a key, but not the chest, or vice versa.
That's because not all paths are open on your first visit to the stage. For one, stages change depending on whether it's night or day on the world map, so you might need to pay attention to how certain rooms might look in the absence or presence of sunlight. But most often, paths are blocked by an obstacle that needs to be overcome either by finding a power-up to enhance Wario's abilities, or by finding a treasure somewhere else that alters that stage.
The fact that Wario doesn't have all of his abilities is often cited as a step down by fans of the prequel, but to me, it makes the game so much better, allowing the player to get used to the character, one step at a time, instead of having to open a tutorial screen and memorizing all the skills within. WL3 has a much softer learning curve even though it's a more complex game.
In addition to that, it contributes to the game's non-linearity. sure, there is a minimal stage route to the final boss, and you can rush straight to him if you want to, ignoring other paths. But the way you can move in and between stages gives the game a completely different feel, that’s not only a lot freer, but also a lot more unpredictable, as you never know where you’re headed next.
Which isn't to say the prequel is bad, it's a great game, and they could have gotten away with making that again with new stages, but the fact that WL3 turned out to be such an inventive game is even better. Wario Land 3 is one of the best games on the Game Boy Color, one I recommend to everyone.
With Wario Land being a platformer branching off of the Super Mario Land series, you'd think you'd know what to expect. A character runs right, jumping from place to place, trying to avoid the gaps and enemies found along the way. But Wario Land 3 has a very important twist that completely changes how the game is played: you cannot die.
No matter how much punishment Wario takes, he'll always get back up, and there are no game over screens. Right off the bat, this takes away the bottomless pits, spikes and autoscroll stages that Mario games use so extensively. After all, if you can't die, none of that has any purpose.
Stages are now designed around exploring, puzzles, and platforming gauntlets where you can fall to the bottom or otherwise get reset to the beginning. As for enemies within the stage, who also cannot kill Wario, they produce different effects on him when they hit him. These effects are cartoonish in nature, and impact Wario's movement, physics and interactions with the scenery.
The most common is a goofy knockback, but he can also be set on fire, made into a ball, made drowsy, made flat, made bouncy... The list goes on. Sometimes, these effects will be used to hamper your progress: while on fire, for instance, Wario will run nonstop, which will easily knock him off platforms if not carefully handled. While flattened, he'll be unable to enter doors or control his jump trajectory, as he behaves like a sheet of paper while in the air.
On the flipside, though, he can set other things alight while he's burning, and the distinct airborne physics combined with the height difference can allow him to access places he wouldn't be able to reach otherwise. This means enemies are not always there as a hindrance, and you need to learn each of their attack patterns and the effect they have on Wario to then judge how you can use them to your advantage and what is the best time to get hit. It's a really cool twist on typical platformers.
Plus, unlike the usual Mario stage, where you walk right to the goal, WL3's stages are open and branching: each stage has four different paths that can be taken to complete it, at the end of which is a treasure chest. To open that treasure, you need to get a key from elsewhere in the stage. Very often, you'll be able to access a key, but not the chest, or vice versa.
That's because not all paths are open on your first visit to the stage. For one, stages change depending on whether it's night or day on the world map, so you might need to pay attention to how certain rooms might look in the absence or presence of sunlight. But most often, paths are blocked by an obstacle that needs to be overcome either by finding a power-up to enhance Wario's abilities, or by finding a treasure somewhere else that alters that stage.
The fact that Wario doesn't have all of his abilities is often cited as a step down by fans of the prequel, but to me, it makes the game so much better, allowing the player to get used to the character, one step at a time, instead of having to open a tutorial screen and memorizing all the skills within. WL3 has a much softer learning curve even though it's a more complex game.
In addition to that, it contributes to the game's non-linearity. sure, there is a minimal stage route to the final boss, and you can rush straight to him if you want to, ignoring other paths. But the way you can move in and between stages gives the game a completely different feel, that’s not only a lot freer, but also a lot more unpredictable, as you never know where you’re headed next.
Which isn't to say the prequel is bad, it's a great game, and they could have gotten away with making that again with new stages, but the fact that WL3 turned out to be such an inventive game is even better. Wario Land 3 is one of the best games on the Game Boy Color, one I recommend to everyone.