WarioWare: Move It! review – A dizzying dose of fun

Nintendo surely wouldn’t like the comparison but WarioWare Move It! has a micro-dose vibe. It’s the latest in a long series of mini-game compilations featuring the mischievous anti-Mario character Wario, designed to test your reactions and brain simultaneously in boisterous events that bring a smile to the face.

But Wario is not just a naughty rascal with a penchant for earthy humour, he’s also got a short attention span. The main distinction from any other multiplayer-friendly collection of such bite-sized challenges is that WarioWare’s tasks would be more accurately described as micro-games, with each lasting no more than a few moments. That makes them sound less tricky than the reality, in which you must quickly identify what’s being asked of you and then execute the required actions – all within about five to 10 seconds.

Move It! is the second WarioWare collection for Switch, after 2021’s Get It Together demonstrated Nintendo’s mastery of the micro-game form. This time around, the inspiration comes from Wario’s 2006 outing Smooth Moves, which puts the focus on motion controls and poses. Both elements complicate the inputs required – and the results are not always reliable.

Yet even if a few challenges prove frustrating, the greater whole follows in Wario’s grand tradition of energetic entertainment, with a guarantee of laughter and even a little exercise.

The game requires the JoyCon controllers to be detached from the console and held one in each hand. Even the little-used strap attachments come into play periodically when you’ll be asked to drop one as part of a game. Each event starts with a command to adopt a certain pose – hands over your head, for instance, or to your nose and bum – before a quickfire request to perform an action.

Until you become familiar with all the micro-games – and there are about 200 as usual – part of the mental hurdle is figuring the motion to achieve the goal – and Wario won’t help with any instruction . You might be told to break out of a prison cell, for example – it’s simple enough to work out you must grab the bars in front of you and wrench them apart. But what to do when instructed to play a version of Squid Game’s Red Light, Yellow Light? Or scan a barcode at checkout?

Move It! is forgiving at your failure but it will take much trial and error in some cases to make the motion controls implement your intention. On a few limited occasions, it felt for me as the controllers were refusing to cooperate at all – and there no button-press options to fall back on.

These infrequent exasperations aside, you’ll probably be too busy chuckling to yourself or at others to care too much. WarioWare has always excelled as a party game and by obliging players to stand up and perform outwardly ludicrous motion-based actions, Move It! amplifies the potential for comedy. If you don’t crack up laughing at a dose of miming nose-picking, laying an egg or pecking like a chicken, then even real drugs probably won’t help you.