The WarioWare series has always been about chaos. Its self-described micro-games are so fast and strange that by the time you understand what’s going on, the game has already moved on to something new. Switch owners will be able to get a taste of that with the upcoming WarioWare: Get It Together — and from what I’ve seen, it might be the most chaotic take on the series yet. Nintendo recently took me through a brief hands-off demo of the game, running through a couple of different modes. The one unifying factor between them all seemed to be a desire to take the micro-game concept to absurd new levels of mayhem.
The main change is that there is now a cast of characters you can play as, all plucked from the WarioWare universe. And each has their own unique controls and specific abilities, which can make a big difference in the seconds-long micro-games you’ll play through.
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These characters impact the main story mode, which you can play cooperatively, but from what I saw it looks like the “variety pack” mode will be where most of the fun is. Nintendo describes it as a “hub of party games,” which basically means that you’ll play through playlists that feature a series of themed challenges. One pack, called “daily grind,” features a handful of side-scrolling levels that get progressively stranger and more challenging. You start out as Wario but can collect power-ups that randomly turn you into another character, each of which has a completely different style of movement. One is on a skateboard, for instance, and will roll forward automatically, while another is a flying witch that can shoot magic spells. When you grab a power-up, you’ll have no idea which one you’ll transform into.
Another pack, called “puck ‘er up,” starts out like a game of air hockey. But every time you score a goal you’ll be transported to a random micro-game. That game actually appears as a tiny window in the middle of the screen, and while the player who scores tries to finish it, everyone else can mess with them, knocking the window around or squashing it so small that the game becomes virtually unplayable. It was stressful just watching; I can only imagine how wild it would be to actually play. I foresee a lot of arguments in the future.
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As random as it is, Get It Together does give you the option to prepare, at least a little. There’s a “play-o-pedia” mode, which is exactly what it sounds like: a playable encyclopedia. Here you get a feel for how each character controls, as well as play through endless versions of each micro-game you’ve encountered so far. It should help somewhat once you jump into the pure chaos of each game mode, where you never know what’s coming at you on a moment-to-moment basis.
Get It Together, which will be the first new entry in the series in three years, is launching on the Switch on September 10th, and Nintendo just released a demo on the eShop that you can play right now.
