WarioWare: Get It Together is peak weird multiplayer Nintendo

The Nintendo Switch is weird. Remember that? The detachable controllers, the way it can dock with a TV or be on its own. The byzantine rules about accounts and game saves. It’s easy to normalize the Switch’s unique qualities. Games like Nintendo’s new WarioWare: Get It Together bring that wonderful weirdness right back to the forefront. Welcome back, Wario.

I have been a huge WarioWare fan since its first game on the Game Boy Advance. The super-fast and completely random minigames captured the spirit of Nintendo’s original Game & Watch games. WarioWare also turned up on the Nintendo DS, Wii U and most recently the 3DS. The newest WarioWare game is a little different than those: It’s made to be two-player co-op experience. That’s the best way to play, but you can do it solo, too. Playing the new Nintendo Switch version has been the most my kids and I have laughed while gaming since Untitled Goose Game.

WarioWare works like this: There are 200 minigames to try, most lasting about 5 seconds or so. To beat the minigames, you need to play as one of a handful of characters you unlock (familiar to WarioWare players). There’s Wario, of course, as well as a bunch of others. Each one has unique moves and attacks. Each minigame is laid out like a platformer level: Move your character, figure out how to win the challenge, move on. In the game’s main Story mode, there are chapters divided by themes, each one with a boss battle level that’s longer than the other minigames. Win the chapter, unlock a new character.

After getting through the story mode, there’s more: There are party games for up to four players, which feel more like arcade/sports games. They’re quick and fun and weird, mostly involving different ways of competing while playing those minigames competitively, side-by-side or sometimes split-screen. 

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A couple of longer, level-based platformer games feel like whole self-contained mini-adventures. The unlocked extras feel a bit like the extra stuff that pops up in Kirby: Star Allies. It’s great to have the bonus material and so far it feels like there’s a lot that will keep my kids and I coming back. It doesn’t take too long to play the story chapters and unlock those bonus party games, but it’s a little annoying they weren’t available immediately. 

Minigames can be replayed to try to get a high score over time, either repeating the same one faster and harder each time, or having the game throw you random minigames at increasing speeds to see how long you last. 

The spirit of old WarioWare games is remarkably intact here: The art is bizarre and deliberately junky at times, the comic timing perfect, the game concepts still clever and strange. I miss the anything-goes feel of previous games, where literally I had no idea at times what to do next. Controlling a little character in platform-style challenges seems like it’s almost too restrictive an idea at first, but the minigames demand lots of new ways to bend your brain to play.

At some point, will I get bored? Will my kids? Sure. And some of the minigames remind me of the spirit of Super Mario Party for the Switch, a game we haven’t gone back to in a while. But the co-op craziness reminds me even more of the Nintendo indie game Snipperclips, and of Untitled Goose Game’s co-op… or, even, of the infamous 1-2 Switch launch game. 

Weird and fun party games are exactly what I dream of when I think of what the Nintendo Switch does best, besides being a Kindle for games on the go. WarioWare: Get It Together gets better the more I play it. If you’re looking for a quick and silly game this fall on the Switch that’s good with a friend, look no further.

Now do Rhythm Heaven next.