Handheld Wars #189 - Wario Land

Wario Land 2 is more of a puzzle platformer than a Mario clone like WL1 is. There is one thing that WL1 doesn't have over its sequels: colour.

I remember borrowing Wario Land II from a schoolground friend as a kid and giving it a try. I ended up hating it because I didn't understand the gameplay. I was expecting a beat-em-up or a platformer, but instead the game forced puzzles on me, and I sat there trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do before giving up after an hour or so out of boredom.

Thankfully, a couple years later I rented the Treasure-developed Wario World over a weekend, which I did enjoy



...but even that game, despite being creative and filled to the brim with mindless beat-em-up fun, felt like far too shallow of an experience gameplay-wise to warrant repeated playthroughs, at least that's how I remember it being. Wario World was a great rental back in the day, but it really needed more depth in the combat department. It could have been much better. I also don't remember it being a very challenging game, either, so there wasn't much reason to buy it over far superior GC beat-em-ups like Viewtiful Joe and Melee. But hey, at least it was fun while it lasted, if a bit gloomy and creepy at times.

I guess at the end of the day I'm just not a huge fan of the Wario games. I like the character of Wario, I like the idea of playing as a greedy, portly rogue, and the beat-em-up gameplay in some of his entries like Wario World clearly had a lot of potential, but overall, I have never been particularly taken by his sub-series of games. If Nintendo decided to make a Wario entry that was a dedicated beat-em-up, had great visual design, and made a real effort to put depth into the combat like Streets of Rage 3, Viewtiful Joe or Treasure's earlier beat-em-ups, I would probably be all over that shit like flies on a turd.

In regards to the Wario games I haven't played, the only one that looks fun and interesting to me is Wario III, so I'm gonna go out on a limb and vote for it. I hated the sketchy visual design and the forced motion controls in Wario Land: Shake it!, so I never bothered playing that one, and the screenshots of the GBA games just looked like 16-bit Wario Land II except more of the same, so I passed those up too. It seems like Wario Land (Mario Land III) might be the only must-play Wario title in my book. If and when Nintendo decides to bring it to their digital store, I might just give it a try.