I have a confession to make. A horrible, dark secret that stretches way back to my developmental years playing video games. A secret that I have tried to keep hidden until now, when I bear it for all the world to see. I … was a twitcher.
That's right, a twitcher. I would jerk the controller up into the air to try to give Mario that extra oomph to get over a pit. I'd lean hard into the corners in racing games. I'd jerk around while desperately trying to avoid incoming fire. It was embarrassing. It was hard to even talk about. Until now. WarioWare Twisted makes twitching not just acceptable, it makes it a requirement.
The WarioWare series of games have always been the short-attentioned-spanned-player's dream. They consist of dozens of simple minigames with various goals. Most of these minigames last about five seconds; and even though the goals are usually simple, that doesn't mean it's easy. Figuring out the goal is often half the challenge as the instructions usually consist of something like "Shake!" or "Spin!" The other half is getting it done in the remaining few seconds. WarioWare games are fun, fast, and frantic, and can suck away a surprising amount of your life.
The latest game in the series, WarioWare Twisted, adds a whole new dimension. The games are controlled by a gyroscope in the cartridge. You control the game by twisting your Gameboy around in circles. This results in much flailing of the arms and twisting and contorting of the body as you attempt to work your way through the various minigames.
The games themselves are usually pretty fun, and there is a surprising amount of variety to them. You would think that having to turn the Gameboy as your only control would be a substantial limiting factor, but it's really not. There are tons of different minigames that can be lumped into several different overall categories: games involving timed button presses, games involving precise movements, games that require speed, and so on. The difficulty settings are almost perfectly balanced. The longer you play, the higher the difficulty gets, but it was rare that I found a game to be too hard to beat the first time through. There was only one game that I had to play over and over before I could finally manage to beat it, and out of the large number of games that WarioWare Twisted has to offer, that's pretty good. It makes for something that's fast and challenging to play, and can keep you entertained nonstop all night.
The games can be played one at a time, where you play the same game over and over and the difficulty (basically the speed at which you have to accomplish the goal) gets higher and higher and higher, or it can be played in a simple story mode. There are a bunch of different characters, who each tell a short silly story. There is a set of kung fu twins, a pizza delivery store, a man and his family who are trapped in the disco daze, a mad scientist and more. Each one of them has a specific type of game that is played in their level. One character has all shaking, followed by another character with faster shaking, followed by a character with timed button presses, and each new character has a more complicated set of games than the one before.
The themes for the games are completely ridiculous. Grating a car with a cheese grater, attracting a cat with a toy, skewering a kabob, throwing a boomerang, eating sushi, protecting a piece of candy from bugs and so on and so on. All of the themes are cute and completely appropriate for players of all ages. The most violent they get is maybe the occasional person getting bonked on the head or something similar. They don't have anything that even remotely comes close to adult themes.
WarioWare Twisted is a great game for kids. Not only are the themes appropriate for children, but unlike most videogames it actually requires some physical movement. You can't just sit and play WarioWare Twisted, you have to get into it. It actually helps to develop hand-eye coordination as opposed to thumb-eye coordination, and it helps improve your reflexes and teaches you to think quickly.
WarioWareTwisted shows that simple gameplay and a quirky hook aren't necessarily a bad thing. That can be everything you need for a frantic, high speed, highly entertaining game that can keep you amused for a long time. It is filled with tons of different games, themes, characters, unlockable prizes and more.
So, fellow twitchers, I implore you! Stand up and take pride in your twitcher status! Recommend WarioWare Twisted to your friends, and turn them into twitchers too!
I’ve always loved video games. I don’t know why, but they’ve always fascinated me. When I was younger, if I visited someone who had an Atari, that was all I wanted to do. It was a glorious day when I finally got my very own Nintendo.
I like a wide variety of games. I’m great at action and rpg games. I tend to be too much of a perfectionist with first person shooters and stealth games. I’ll spend 20 minutes in a level, only to reset it the first time a guard sees me. Platformers aren’t really my thing, I think the technology has better things to offer than that now. And I don’t do sports games.
I love games with a good story. I’ll play for hours just trying to get to the next plot twist. In a perfect world, I’d be writing my own video games someday
