This one is a great improvement on the first and you can really see the progression that's made towards the Warioland games.

But here Wario is the adversary and that's a little sad as he doesn't get much screen time.

There's some inventive levels here. Each area is themed to a different concept and can be tackled in any order (I can't think of another Mario platformer that allows this). Each final level in each area provides one of the six golden coins you'll need to open the door and take on Wario (who stomps at the top of the castle).

And different levels contain thematically appropriate enemies that rarely show up in other areas. Some of the theming falls down though. There's Macro world where you'll become very tiny which contains ants the same size as you... though the ants reappear in non-macro levels which is odd.

And the difficulty can be fairly easy throughout the game. There's a fair number of power ups and 1Ups that the game throws at you.I feel like the rabbit hat lets you pass over a lot of some levels too easily and there's not a great deal of incentive to try and collect coins. The timer is very generous as well, which might be for exploration, but it never caused me to panic about running out of time.

All in all a good game, but still prefer the Wariolands.