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WarioWare Touched! Review - DS

I don't know what Nintendo employees do when they come up with games like WarioWare Touched!. Maybe they sit on the toilet and think hard. Maybe they study the antics of 5-year old kids. Who knows? This has to be one of the craziest games I've ever played, and yet also one of the most fun.

For those who haven't encountered a game in the WarioWare series, it is game made up exclusively minigames. Well, not even minigames. Microgames: games that last for five seconds each. It's like Mario Party without the monotony of playing on a board. Each game leads seamlessly onto the next, with only a couple of seconds to catch your breath in between. At the beginning of each game you are told vaguely what to do - eg. 'Catch', 'Freeze', 'Connect. You then have just a few seconds to complete the objective. It's crazy.

You have four 'lives' each round. If you fail a microgame, which you will, you'll lose a life but move on to another. At the end of each stage you face a boss game, which thankfully has no time limit. Once you complete the stage, you can then go back and play through it past the boss and up to harder levels and more complex games and set records. Each stage, or character, has a different way of playing the games. On the DS version, you only use the stylus (and occasionally the microphone) - no buttons. For example, in Wario's stage, you simply have to tap the pen on the screen. You'll pop bubbles, crack statues and fix plumbing. In Kat and Ana's rounds, you'll be scribbling. Cover a hotdog in sauce, copy a Japanese symbol and more. The exception to this is Mike's round, which, unsurprisingly, uses the inbuilt microphone. You blow at the appropriate time, and the system picks up the noise. It's clever, but I felt distinctly light-headed after the round.

There are a good number of stages now - much more than in the original GBA or GCN version. Every now and again, you also get a 'recap' stage, where you can get any of the last three types of games clumped in one. Once successfully completed, another character will be taxied in, and you can continue. Each character, or stage, has a style as well. For example, some are nature based, whereas others are just random. One of my favourites was 9-Volt's stage - it's based on classic Nintendo games updated for the system. On the DS screen will be a picture of a GBA, and on the GBA screen a microgame will play out. You hit the A button the GBA to win. They're all cleverly adapted.

Every time you complete a stage or get a high score, you unlock a souvenir. These really, really baffling/humourous/pointless little items are a great addition, and yet serve no real purpose. You'll probably never use them as they were intended, yet it's so much ... (continued next page)