I've always been a big Wario fan, and I'm also quite the WarioWare fan, so this is a game I've had on my radar for a while. But once I saw online that this actually has a ton of Wario VA and little cutscenes in it, I knew I had to pick up the English version (as the Japanese version doesn't have Charles Martinet's Wario in it). It took me 14 hours to finish story mode and clear out the capsule machine (from where you get collectibles). I didn't unlock nearly everything (there are a lot of challenges way too hard for me to try XP), but I certainly got what I wanted out of it, at least for now~
WarioWare Gold IS a new WarioWare game, but it's also largely a compliation of all the previous handheld entries' best games. It's not all the games from the original GBA game, Twisted, and Touched, but it's a LOT of them (over 300, as the back of the box says). There's a story mode with 15 stages, five for each of the three games types (mash (just D-pad and buttons), twist, and touch), and then three final stages that are a mix of the three. These encompass the very silly story of WarioWare Gold.
After his most recent heist of a priceless ancient pot, Wario discovers he's totally tapped out for cash. What's his solution? Hold a giant video game tournament and stream it! And what better way to get games for people to play on it (people being you, the player) than to call up his friends and trick them into making games for free yet again? You need to battle your way through his tournament and win that cash/save the day! There are very silly cutscenes before and after each of the stages that feature Wario as well as his friends (9-Volt, Orbulon, Mona, Kat & Ana, and many more). They're silly and adorable in a way I found endlessly charming. Wario's instructional dialogue for how to play each type of game in particular is what caught my eye online and convinced me to buy the English version of this in the first place X3
Other than the main microgames that make up the meat of the game, there are challenge modes as WarioWare often has. Endless gauntlets of each type of game, a gauntlet with only one life, a gauntlet at the highest speed, even a split-screen mode where you're quickly going between the top and bottom screen to do games as fast as you can! There's also a collection of dedicated minigames you can play for score attacks, and a bunch of other weird and interesting features to unlock by using the coins you earn by playing the game on the little gachapon machine. You can get little trading cards that have details of each character in the game, you can unlock a museum of Nintendo toys and consoles with descriptions and pictures dating from their hanafuda cards all the way to the Switch, you can unlock music tracks of famous songs from WarioWare that even have the lyrics to sing along with (for those that have lyrics), and weirdly enough you can even unlock character-themed alarm clocks. You set the timer on it, leave your 3DS on overnight (presumably), and then it makes a big noise in that character's voice, and it won't STOP making that noise until you get up and WIN three of those character's mini-games!
Verdict: Highly Recommended. I'm not sure when the next new-new WarioWare game will be, but this is a fantastic love letter to the series and to Nintendo's history as a whole. If you like WarioWare, this is about as close to a "definitive" experience for it as you're gonna get. Easily worth the price of admission for any WarioWare fan~
WarioWare Gold IS a new WarioWare game, but it's also largely a compliation of all the previous handheld entries' best games. It's not all the games from the original GBA game, Twisted, and Touched, but it's a LOT of them (over 300, as the back of the box says). There's a story mode with 15 stages, five for each of the three games types (mash (just D-pad and buttons), twist, and touch), and then three final stages that are a mix of the three. These encompass the very silly story of WarioWare Gold.
After his most recent heist of a priceless ancient pot, Wario discovers he's totally tapped out for cash. What's his solution? Hold a giant video game tournament and stream it! And what better way to get games for people to play on it (people being you, the player) than to call up his friends and trick them into making games for free yet again? You need to battle your way through his tournament and win that cash/save the day! There are very silly cutscenes before and after each of the stages that feature Wario as well as his friends (9-Volt, Orbulon, Mona, Kat & Ana, and many more). They're silly and adorable in a way I found endlessly charming. Wario's instructional dialogue for how to play each type of game in particular is what caught my eye online and convinced me to buy the English version of this in the first place X3
Other than the main microgames that make up the meat of the game, there are challenge modes as WarioWare often has. Endless gauntlets of each type of game, a gauntlet with only one life, a gauntlet at the highest speed, even a split-screen mode where you're quickly going between the top and bottom screen to do games as fast as you can! There's also a collection of dedicated minigames you can play for score attacks, and a bunch of other weird and interesting features to unlock by using the coins you earn by playing the game on the little gachapon machine. You can get little trading cards that have details of each character in the game, you can unlock a museum of Nintendo toys and consoles with descriptions and pictures dating from their hanafuda cards all the way to the Switch, you can unlock music tracks of famous songs from WarioWare that even have the lyrics to sing along with (for those that have lyrics), and weirdly enough you can even unlock character-themed alarm clocks. You set the timer on it, leave your 3DS on overnight (presumably), and then it makes a big noise in that character's voice, and it won't STOP making that noise until you get up and WIN three of those character's mini-games!
Verdict: Highly Recommended. I'm not sure when the next new-new WarioWare game will be, but this is a fantastic love letter to the series and to Nintendo's history as a whole. If you like WarioWare, this is about as close to a "definitive" experience for it as you're gonna get. Easily worth the price of admission for any WarioWare fan~