WarioWare: Move it! review – a Wii bit familiar

Introduction

Somehow it’s been 20 whole years since the WarioWare series debuted on the Game Boy Advance. Some fans would argue Nintendo struck gold on its first attempt with WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$! (surely the most double-checked video game title in history), with every subsequent entry not quite able to recapture the simple thrills of the gimmick-free original. 

That’s a debate for another day, but what we’ve come to learn is that WarioWare is usually at its best when it keeps things simple. While we had plenty of fun with the first Nintendo Switch entry, 2021’s WarioWare: Get It Together!, introducing playable characters arguably made what’s meant to be a pick-up-and-play party game a bit too complicated for its own good. 

The other widespread criticism of Get It Together! was that it totally ignored the Switch’s touch screen and motion controls, both features that entire previous games had been built around. That has very much been addressed in WarioWare: Move It!, which goes all in on the clever tech hiding inside the Joy-Con controllers. It’s effectively the spiritual successor to WarioWare: Smooth Moves on the Wii. 

At the end of what is looking likely to be the final full year of the console, the Switch finally has the WarioWare game it deserves. As long as you’re ready to look very silly in front of your friends and family.

Find your form

WarioWare: Move It!‘s story mode (for one or two players) sees Wario and the eccentric company he likes to keep heading off to an exotic island on holiday. Exactly what’s going on will likely fly right over your head, but the important thing to know is that Wario stumbles upon the ancient Form Stones, which become each of the Switch’s Joy-Cons in the 200 microgames to follow. 

We should say right now, this latest WarioWare game can only be played with the Joy-cons detached from the console and the console either docked to the TV or in tabletop mode (though we’d strongly advise against the latter if you want to have any idea what you’re supposed to be doing). This makes Move It! of the few Switch games that you can’t play handheld, so Switch Lite owners are unfortunately excluded from all the fun. 

With Joy-Cons in hand, the game will tell you to slide on the wrist straps that you likely almost never use in other games. One accidentally-launched-across-the-room-controller later, we would strongly advise not ignoring this instruction. As you play through levels, you’ll be taught different ways in which to hold the controllers by a mildly amusing narrator, with some levels requiring you to quickly switch between up to three different Forms. (Again, wrist straps.) You’ll also want to have a fair bit of space around you, and ideally not have (as we did) a light fixture directly above your head. 

WarioWare games are always extremely daft, but Move It! also wants you to look extremely daft while playing. At first the game takes it relatively easy on you; the first Form you learn is called Choo Choo, which is simply a case of holding a Joy-Con in each hand with your arms facing straight down. Lifter is another basic one, requiring you to hold the controls up against your chest as if they were weights. For Squat, you just squat, holding a controller against each thigh. 

But slowly things get a bit more complicated. Crocodile has you holding one Joy-Con on top of the other facing forward (sort of like the jaws of a crocodile), while Archer requires you to hold them like a bow and arrow. One Form even involves putting the Joy-Cons down in front of you, and sometimes you’ll have to press buttons too. But the best one is the excellently-named Ba-KAW, where you’re told to hold one Joy-Con in front of your face and the other at your backside, as you do your best impression of a chicken. 

Let the games begin

If you’ve played a WarioWare game before, you’ll know what to expect from the campaign. At the start of each stage you’ll watch a brief, moderately unhinged animated cutscene that introduces one of the game’s returning characters, before trying to complete as many lightning-quick microgames (few more than a few seconds long) as you can until you reach a slightly more involved end-of-level boss stage. 

As usual, the microgames range from the just a bit weird to the downright bonkers. They’re all instantly more chaotic when you’re hurriedly assuming the right Form before a new one enters the fold. In less than a minute you might see the Joy-Cons become a bucket of water that you must fill and throw to extinguish a fire, then a shield you use to deflect the attacks of enemy spaceships, then a plunger to unclog a toilet, then an arm used to rudely yank a stocking from a woman’s head. Like in previous games, Move It! does a good job of celebrating Nintendo’s history, too. With the Joy-Cons’ various sensors doing their best to keep up, you’ll dance, wiggle, punch and curtsy your way through the hundreds of games on offer. 

The boss stages are a varied bunch too. One has you whacking the tentacles of a giant sea monster, while in another you assume the role of kit man for an onslaught of half-dressed footballer players, using each Joy-Con to pass them the correct item of clothing. One of our favourites had us tilting the controller to guide a poisoned apple safely though a princess’s intestines. We can’t talk about the boss stage in the final level, but rest assured that it’s worth the wait. 

In WarioWare games of old, failing a game would lose you a life. Lose enough and it’s game over, forcing you to start again. The first part is still the case in Move It!, but now you’re given a second chance if you can correctly mimic the (often very stupid) onscreen pose within a time limit. This removes a lot of the stress of failure and makes the game a bit easy, as your lives reset from the game you played last, but it definitely makes it a better party game. Once you’ve finished the story, replaying levels shifts the focus to score-chasing and the initial get-out-of-jail option disappears, so if there’s such a thing as a serious WarioWare player, they shouldn’t be put off.

Friends are a benefit

WarioWare: Move It! is a lot more immediate than its predecessor, and the first game since Nintendo Switch Sports (another Wii callback) to take full advantage of the surprisingly tech-loaded Joy-Cons. If you have people over during the imminent festive season we can’t think of a game better suited to some semi-tipsy post-dinner entertainment. That said, the fast-paced nature of the game can occasionally become a bit problematic where motion controls are concerned.

On more than one occasion we had no idea what the game wanted us to do, or whether the lack of any onscreen movement was to do with us or the controllers struggling to register our movements. Some games require you to drop the controllers and quickly pick them up again, or make sudden movements, and it’s very annoying when you fail a game because of spotty motion detection. On the whole we were really impressed with how accurately our wild flailing was tracked, and this being a WarioWare game, no microgame needs you to do more than one or two actions at a time. We had a lot more fun revisiting the story mode when we’d finished it, when we better understood the different Forms, and would fail fewer games simply out of confusion. But prepare for some head-scratching along the way. Pro tip: if you’re stuck, randomly swinging your arms can sometimes do the trick. 

The story mode is also very short, which is often the case with these games. You can polish it off in a few hours, but it’s unlikely that you’ll have seen every minigame on offer the first time round, and they change slightly over time too, so there’s reason to go through again, especially if you enjoy chasing high scores. Eventually you’ll unlock a workout mode of sorts which throws games at you even more quickly than in the story. It’s a lot of fun, even if we genuinely feared straining something. 

The main source of replayability lives in the 2-4 player party mode, something we weren’t able to test much during the review period. But if you’re going to be using your Switch controllers to pretend you’re a cow using its tail to swat away a fly, you really want someone else there to laugh at you.

WarioWare: Move It! verdict

If you’re prepared to endure some motion control-based frustration and just lean into the silliness of it all, then WarioWare: Move It! is another solid entry in Nintendo’s weirdest series. Those with fond memories of the Wii game should not hesitate in picking this one up, because while there are inevitably duds in the mix, some of the more creative microgames had us howling. 

This will no doubt excel as a party game, but solo fun is short-lasting. There isn’t much reason to keep coming back once you’ve done a few runs of the story, but if you wish the Switch made use of its motion controls more often and know you’ll have people to play it with, WarioWare: Move It! is an offbeat treat at the end of an excellent year for Nintendo’s seemingly soon-to-be succeeded console.