WarioWare: Move It! is a blast from front to back. Though the occasional game can be a bit obtuse, the vast majority of microgames are incredibly fun, while the frantic pace and various crazy poses add a suitably goofy feel to everything. If you’re down to stand up and look dumb, then Move It! is perfect for you.
WarioWare: Move It!
Developer: Intelligent Systems
Price: $50
Platform: Nintendo Switch
MonsterVine was supplied with a Switch code for review.
There’s really nothing quite like WarioWare. No other Nintendo franchise is so wonderfully filled with fart jokes, bizarre characters, and fast-paced and meticulously designed minigames. The newest entry in the series, WarioWare: Move It!, is another excellent entry in the series, though it might have you sweating a bit more than any previous ones.
The big gimmick with Move It! is that the minigames don’t just require simple button presses this time around. There are several different poses players perform with the Joy-Con controllers, with each minigame using one pose that suits its theming as the control scheme. You might hold your controllers like a chicken’s beak and tail for a game that has you pluck a worm out of the ground, or together like a sword to chop through an object. It’s a neat idea that makes each character’s respective games feel more unique, in addition to adding some extra challenge to things as you swap between poses between games.
Set against a silly narrative involving Wario and his “friends” taking part in an island getaway that he won as part of a contest, Move It! has a wide variety of diverse microgames. The unique and surreal humor of WarioWare is on full display once more, as the games have you do everything from clasping a jumping fish between your legs to timing a Shinespark in a Metroid Dread segment. Though a couple of the games are a bit tough to grasp for the first time on the fly, most of them are quick and easy to understand and satisfying to pull off.
“There’s so much charm to the story and all the acting that even if the voice isn’t the same as before, the delightfully crass and crude character at the center of it is just as appealing.“
Even once you’ve played through each character’s short story, there are ways to play a mixture of everyone’s microgames and more challenging versions of them whenever you wish, allowing you to see each and every variation of all of the games. Since most of the games require you to stand up and move around, this is a more active title than most Switch games, but it’s so enjoyable that I didn’t mind at all. Some of the brief tutorial explanations for the poses go on a bit long when you’re champing at the bit to get to the new activities, but you only have to go through them once.
I was surprised to find Move It! used pretty much every feature of the Switch, including the infrared sensor I had pretty much forgotten was part of the system since 2017. Though there’s no follow-up console or anything confirmed at this time, this newest WarioWare game feels like something of a swan song to the console, showing off all of its abilities in a way few games have throughout its lifetime.
One word of warning is that you’ll actually need the Joy-Con wrist straps to fully enjoy Move It. Some of the microgames actually ask you to make the controller dangle from your wrist or have you swing it, which is significantly harder to do without the strap. It’s still possible, but less fun.
Also worth noting is that Charles Martinet doesn’t voice Wario this time around. There’s a surprising amount of voiced dialogue in this one, which makes it a bit more noticeable that this is the first time Wario is talking since Martinet stepped away, but it’s a solid effort for the new actor’s first go at the character. There’s so much charm to the story and all the acting that even if the voice isn’t the same as before, the delightfully crass and crude character at the center of it is just as appealing.
The Final Word
WarioWare: Move It! is another excellent entry to Nintendo’s strangest (and one of its most consistent) series. A couple of the games take a bit to get used to, but the variety of fast-paced and goofy microgames and modes provide everything you could want from a WarioWare game.
MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
