Despite going by Wario the Legend online I am not actually that big of a Wario fan. I get a lot of “You’re Wario the Legend but you post about Poochy joining Smash Bros. and tell everyone you want to ***** Gruntilda the Witch on Jackbox?” One time on some “I will guess your Smash main” Twitter post I replied for them to guess my main and the person guessed Wario despite the fact my actual main (King K. Rool) was literally in my Twitter bio at the time. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Wario and he’s one of my favorite fictional characters, but the username’s a remnant of 2018 when I was an even bigger Wario fan and decided to name myself after him, and I’ve never had any better name ideas since. I did grow up on WarioWare, with Touched! actually being the first Nintendo game I owned, but I didn’t bother with the side of the franchise held in even higher regard, Wario Land. It’s consistently one of the most requested dead franchise revivals for Nintendo and has a vocal fanbase claiming they are some of the greatest Nintendo games. Wario Land has always been one of the weirder “I haven’t played this yet?” franchises on the backlog, especially considering I liked Wario enough to name my online presence after him. I played the first one about four years ago but genuinely remember nothing about it. It didn’t stick out at all compared to other games I played that year. I originally wanted to play more Wario Land besides the first one back then, but it never happened and the rest of the franchise eventually fell into “maybe someday” territory as I started to care about Wario less. With the advent of Wario Land inspired indie games and Wario Land 3 coming to Nintendo Switch Online, I decided it was a good time to finally catch up on my Wario Land backlog.
In Wario Land 3, Wario accidentally gets his ass sucked into a world contained inside of a music box. Wario meets a mysterious figure, the god of the music box world and is told that he must find the music boxes to restore the figure’s power which was sealed away by an evil being. Wario agrees to help out when promised he gets to keep all the treasure he finds during his adventure. The figure gives you helpful directions on where to go if you revisit the temple because this game is far more nonlinear than I expected it to be. Wario Land 3 is more of a Metroidvania than you’d think. Each stage in Wario Land 3 has four chests effectively acting as four separate goal points in each level, gray chests are available from the get go but you can revisit the level later on with new abilities in order to reach the remaining three. Items you get from these chests often influence the world map, unlocking new stages or opening up more paths in previous stages. These may also grant Wario power ups. His moveset starts off lacking, but it’s satisfying upgrading Wario’s powers and being able to access new parts of levels. Y’know, like a Metroidvania.
Wario does have one power in his possession from the very start though, immortality. It’s a funny idea, Wario will not die because he does not feel like dying. Specific enemies may “transform” Wario if they hit him. You get hit by the fire enemy, and Wario’s ass is on fire and he’s running around out of control, but you can use this to your advantage if there’s anything like torches that need to be lit or fire blocks that need to be broken. It’s like Kirby’s signature copy ability but done against your will. This does result in this game being challenging by being aggravating instead of actually challenging you. It’s easy to lose a lot of platforming progress by moments like getting turned into a sliding ice statue and falling off like 3 stories of a building, or the fact that most bosses in this game defeat you by ejecting you out of the arena, and you have to climb back in there to retry the fight, but it’s an interesting game mechanic regardless. There’s also a Golf minigame, responsible for the creation of the Golf level in Pizza Tower. You’re occasionally required to win at it in order to progress through stages. Later in the game, the coin total to play Golf increases, but I never found myself running low on coins while playing. It’s a bit annoying to get the hang of the minigame at first, but not impossible. I like to think I got pretty good with it.
Overall, it’s a nice game. I probably would’ve liked it even more if I played it years ago like I should have, but I still enjoyed it. I love Wario, he is a funny guy. The highlight of this game for me was when I would blast Battle on the Big Bridge from Final Fantasy whenever I had to visit the Big Bridge stage.
In Wario Land 3, Wario accidentally gets his ass sucked into a world contained inside of a music box. Wario meets a mysterious figure, the god of the music box world and is told that he must find the music boxes to restore the figure’s power which was sealed away by an evil being. Wario agrees to help out when promised he gets to keep all the treasure he finds during his adventure. The figure gives you helpful directions on where to go if you revisit the temple because this game is far more nonlinear than I expected it to be. Wario Land 3 is more of a Metroidvania than you’d think. Each stage in Wario Land 3 has four chests effectively acting as four separate goal points in each level, gray chests are available from the get go but you can revisit the level later on with new abilities in order to reach the remaining three. Items you get from these chests often influence the world map, unlocking new stages or opening up more paths in previous stages. These may also grant Wario power ups. His moveset starts off lacking, but it’s satisfying upgrading Wario’s powers and being able to access new parts of levels. Y’know, like a Metroidvania.
Wario does have one power in his possession from the very start though, immortality. It’s a funny idea, Wario will not die because he does not feel like dying. Specific enemies may “transform” Wario if they hit him. You get hit by the fire enemy, and Wario’s ass is on fire and he’s running around out of control, but you can use this to your advantage if there’s anything like torches that need to be lit or fire blocks that need to be broken. It’s like Kirby’s signature copy ability but done against your will. This does result in this game being challenging by being aggravating instead of actually challenging you. It’s easy to lose a lot of platforming progress by moments like getting turned into a sliding ice statue and falling off like 3 stories of a building, or the fact that most bosses in this game defeat you by ejecting you out of the arena, and you have to climb back in there to retry the fight, but it’s an interesting game mechanic regardless. There’s also a Golf minigame, responsible for the creation of the Golf level in Pizza Tower. You’re occasionally required to win at it in order to progress through stages. Later in the game, the coin total to play Golf increases, but I never found myself running low on coins while playing. It’s a bit annoying to get the hang of the minigame at first, but not impossible. I like to think I got pretty good with it.
Overall, it’s a nice game. I probably would’ve liked it even more if I played it years ago like I should have, but I still enjoyed it. I love Wario, he is a funny guy. The highlight of this game for me was when I would blast Battle on the Big Bridge from Final Fantasy whenever I had to visit the Big Bridge stage.