for my first playthrough of Warioware Twisted!, i played the game via emulating it on PSVita, and it worked surprisingly well. then, a couple months later, i ended up getting a physical (japanese) copy, and it gave me a new appreciation for the game. also, should note, this review was written for my Backloggd about a year ago, and i'm putting it up here for archival reasons.

WarioWare Twisted is the second WarioWare game, and the first to be developed with the help of Intelligent Systems, most well known for their work on Fire Emblem and Paper Mario. i remember for a long time i always thought Touched was the second WarioWare, but no, its this one. and a lot of things that would become mainstays of the series actually started here, such as the souvenirs, 18-Volt, and the "Don't Move" microgame. (that last one is debatable as a mainstay but like. idk i think its pretty iconic, it made it into smash bros)

one thing i didnt realize about this game when emulating it on vita is that it actually has rumble baked into the cartridge, and i think it adds a surprising amount to the game. every movement you make has this little click to it that's really satisfying. and hey, speaking of the movement, let's talk about that main feature of the game.

Twisted's gimmick is that the whole game is focused around you tilting and twisting your Gameboy to complete microgames, navigate menus, etc etc. it only detects left and right movement, so you arent gonna be rolling your GBA around in your hands, but i think that's for the better. a concept like warioware needs simplicity in its control scheme, that's why all the microgames in the first game just use the dpad and the A button. with Twisted, you've only got three options. tilt left, tilt right, and press A. this makes the microgames easily understandable in an instant, which is vital. and the tilt feels really good, it works a lot better than you'd expect from motion control in 2004. it's super smooth and responsive, and while it can get decalibrated pretty easily, it recalibrates at the beginning of every microgame so you never really notice it. leave it to Nintendo to get motion controls right on the GBA, huh?

Twisted has 9 main stages and 6 extra stages. every character from WarioWare Inc. returns here, and we have a couple of newcomers, though they aren't given their own unique stage. Jimmy's folks, Mama and Papa T., make their first appearance here, though they really only appear in menus and cutscenes. same goes for 18-Volt, as he's just lumped in with 9-Volt. he is one of my favorite characters though, so it's cool to see him here.

the first stage is a bit of a weird one, not just for this game, but just WarioWare in general. It's the Smorgasbord Sampler, and there's exactly 6 microgames in this one. they always play out in the same order, there's no time limit, and you can't go for high scores here. it's really just meant as a tutorial that's meant to get you used to the unique controls of Twisted, which is cool. plus, a lot of the concepts here get explored a lot more in depth later on, so i'll talk more about this in the WarioWatch segment.

Mona's stage, Mini Spin, is the first real stage, and it's a ton of fun. the theme here is small movements, and there's a lot of good microgames in this set. a specific favorite is Doggy Door, you tilt the system to move a dog to avoid holes in a spinning wall. it's probably the most iconic microgame from Twisted, if i had to choose one. a couple others that i like are Welcome Wagon, Sew Easy, and Barrel Roll. the boss microgame for Mini Spin is Skyway Highway, and... im not that big of a fan of this one. you tilt the system left and right to make a car with a propeller on top of it fly upwards, and you have to avoid spiky stars as you move from left to right. it's slow and kinda taxing to get through, i've never really liked this one. in terms of presentation, however, Mini Spin kills it. similar to Dribble and Spitz from WarioWare Inc., a single song plays throughout all of this stage, and it's pretty banger. i like how the song lines up with all of the intermission prompts, like "Faster!", "Boss Stage" and "Game Over", it never interrupts the song which is appreciated. Mini Spin is a good stage to come back to whenever you just wanna pick up and play Twisted, i like this one.

Jimmy T.'s stage, Big Tipper, is the opposite of Mini Spin. instead of small movements, this one's all about the big spins. this makes it a little harder than Mona's stage, but it's still fun all the same. some personal favorite microgames are Ice Queen, Fashion Plate, Bacon Patrol, and Daredevil. The boss microgame is a lot better and more interesting than Mona's too, One Step At A Time has you controlling a little guy climbing a set of stairs, and you have to rotate the system to move forward. some stairs will break or fall out from under you, so you have to be a little careful when moving, but other than that the rate at which this one is completed is all up to the player, which is cool. the presentation of Big Tipper is a little weird though, it's portrayed on this weird 3D phone, and the intermissions feel a little empty because of that. but don't get it twisted (lol) Big Tipper is still a great time, and one of the best stages in the game.

Kat and Ana's stage is a weird one. Tap Out breaks the mold by not using a single movement input for any of its microgames, instead opting for only A button presses. which is. weird. my guess is that they wanted to introduce games that used the A button, but didn't wanna throw the player to the wolves immediately. even still, they come up with some neat ideas. some personal favorites are Crazy Crush, The Wave, Big Drip, and Weird Science. the boss microgame here, Nose Dive, is also pretty sweet. every warioware has to have the nosepicking game, it's a constant of life, and Twisted goes all out. it's a full on vertical shooter, and you have to tilt your Gameboy on its side so the screen is taller for this segment, which is a really cool idea. the boss game itself is also just straight up fun, and has a weirdly large amount of nuance to how you play it. you shoot hands at noses, and if you catch the nose in one of its nostrils it'll veer off to the side and hit any other noses in its path. if you hit it dead on and get it in both the nostrils, it'll go straight ahead and hit anything else behind it. it's pretty cool. the presentation here is pretty barren for the intermissions, though. still, a good stage all the same.

Steer Clear is Dribble and Spitz's stage, and it combines tilting and pressing A. i don't really have much to say about this one though, it's just a little boring. there's still a couple good microgames, some standouts are Tooth Trouble, Spintecticide, Heavy Lifting, and Home Haircut. the boss here is probably my least favorite in the game though, and that's Basic Training. you have to tilt the system left and right to accelerate a push car on a train track, and you press A to jump. but when you're constantly moving the system left and right, it's hard to see when and where you need to jump. i guess that's where the challenge is supposed to come from? but i dunno, i just don't like it all that much. and again, like with Tap Out, the presentation of the intermissions is pretty barren. just Dribble and Spitz with their taxi on a white background. and while i do like the idea of the music for this stage just being whatever their radio is tuned into at that time, it's undeniably not as good or iconic as Drifting Away from WarioWare Inc. overall, pretty disappointing showing from Dribble and Spitz, which is sad since theyre two of my favorite characters in the series.

moving on from the disappointment of the last stage, we've arrived at one of the coolest ones in the game. Dr. Crygor's stage, the Gravitator, is unique in the sense that instead of theming all of its microgames around a gameplay style, instead they're all themed around a common concept, and that's shifting gravity. if you tilt the system, you're changing the direction of gravity in that microgame, and it's pretty damn cool. some of my favorites are Skid Road, Tiltillation, Power Outage, Spout Off, and Balloonatic. and damn, the boss stage here is definitely one of the coolest in the game, Stumblebot has you tilting the system to make it so that a robot is always level with the ground, and it has you tilting the system in all sorts of funky ways, even having you turn it all the way upside down for certain parts. Gravitron is also one of, if not THE hardest stage in the game, since a lot of the microgames require very specific movements, but it's still super fun and has a lot of really creative ideas. again though, the presentation in the intermissions is very barebones, and im starting to notice a pattern here. similar to Big Tipper, the intermissions for Gravitron have a weird, 3D object on a mostly blank background. and these barebones intermission screens aren't bad per se, it's just interesting going from WarioWare Inc, which had a lot of specific locations with its stages. i've always felt that Twisted felt kinda empty in comparison. small tangent aside, Gravitron is an awesome stage with tons of really creative ideas.

Orbulon is one of my favorite characters in WarioWare, and his stage, Time Warp, does not disappoint. similar to WarioWare Inc., his gimmick is that every microgame has double the time to complete, and they all make you think a little harder than the rest. Orbulon's stage in the first game was actually my favorite, and i think that carries over to this game. tons of banger microgames like Air Passage, Green Thumb, Guitar Solo, Fine Tune, and Pipe Puzzle, and the boss microgame is pretty sweet too. if you've ever played the Game & Watch game Manhole, Crossing Guard is like that, except with tilt controls and only two manholes to worry about instead of four. it gets pretty frantic on the later difficulties where they start throwing in faster guys, i like it a lot. and hey! finally, we have a stage where the presentation is about on par with the first game! Orbulon is sitting in his pilot's seat and you can see the whole ship in the background. it's some pretty good stuff. overall, Orbulon's stage rocks, as per usual.

alright, we all know that 9-Volt's stage is always the coolest one. and if i had to choose a stage that wasn't Orbulon's as my favorite, it'd be 9-Volt's. this is probably the best set of games 9-Volt has ever gotten, and that's because of the motion controls. a lot of games that would be pretty basic in other WarioWare games are way more interesting because they've been given new control schemes. some cool ones are Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros. 3 - Lift, Metroid - Samus, Donkey Kong Jr. and Golf. and of course, the boss microgame is probably second best behind Stumblebot. Super Mario Bros. has you playing the first Super Mario Bros. game... except you move by tilting. tilting further makes you go faster, and you can press A to jump. it's played on a circular Mario 1 level, and it's super fun. again, i'd like to play a full game version of this, it's really damn cool. and presentation wise... we've actually come up on something i've yet to address yet. WarioWare Twisted has a TON of localization differences between the North American and Japanese versions, and that includes 9-Volt's stage. in the Japanese version, the stage takes place inside of a Famicom with these little forest gnome lookin guys operating the system. in the North American version, however, it takes place inside an NES, and it's run by these worker dudes. and... i think we can all agree that the Japanese version just looks so much better. i'm not that big on the look of the NES guys having double the pixel size, i just think it looks kinda ugly. so im gonna give the presentation award to the Japanese version, and in that sense, this stage also looks great, just like Orbulon's stage. good job 9-Volt!

and at last, we arrive at the final normal stage, and it's a really good one. Wario Man makes his first ever appearance in this game, and it's banger. Spandex Challenge has no real unified theme except for it's Wario damn it, and he's the center of attention here. a lot of the themes and concepts from the other stages are present in the microgames here, you have a bit of Gravitron in Super Wario and Swamp Swing, Big Tipper in Alignment and Going Steady, Mini Spin in Tiptoe Titan and Hot Rod, and Steer Clear in Robotomy. and i think the best boss microgame award goes to Wario de Mambo. the dev team that developed WarioWare also made all of the Rhythm Heaven games later on, and it shows here. Wario de Mambo is a really fun little rhythm game that works surprisingly well with the motion controls. and something i was pretty surprised to find out is that the rumble gives you a little click for each beat, making it easier to keep in time with the game. it's cool! and the song is banger! really great showing from Wario Man. and something interesting about the presentation to me is that, while it is barebones and is just Wario on a yellow background, ive always really enjoyed the music to the intermission screens. this is gonna sound weird and dumb but like, when i was a kid i would look up videos of people doing high score runs of Wario Man's Stage and listen to it like it was music. you can definitely tell this is the same team that'd go on to make Rhythm Heaven. Wario Man's stage is definitely one of my favorites, it's fantastic.

okay, i know this review is getting obscenely long so i'll blast through these last few sets super quick. first up is Family Scramble, which if you played WarioWare Inc, it's like Jimmy's remixes from that game. WarioWatch is a super unique stage though, i mentioned in the segment about Smorgasbord Sampler that i'd be talking about it more in depth later, and we're doing that now. WarioWatch is different from every other stage, since you don't have lives or even a normal time limit here. instead, you start out with around 20 seconds on the clock, and during every microgame you start to bleed time. the faster you complete the microgame, the less time you lose and the more time you gain back. your time also maxes out at 30 seconds, so you can't get a super big backlog of time or anything like that. you have to beat every microgame as fast as possible to avoid losing time, and it's a really fun and unique take on the WarioWare formula. i really like WarioWatch, and i'd say its my favorite unique gamemode they've ever done in the series. there's an alternate version of WarioWatch called Speedier Spin, where you start out with only two seconds and get back less time for winning microgames. this one's HARD. i never get very far in it at all. then, similar to other WarioWare games, we've got the big mixes. Skyscraper combines every microgame you've unlocked into one set (except for WarioWatch and boss microgames) and asks you to survive. you can't get any 1-ups, and slowly speeds up over time, but the difficulty never increases or anything. Tower is similar to Skyscraper, except things start off way faster and on a higher difficulty. Mansion is the last of these sets, and gives you one life and puts everything on the highest difficulty. the speed never increases though, so at least you have that. and finally, we have somewhat of a secret set. Fronk is a recurring character in the series, and while he did appear in WarioWare Inc, this is his first named appearance. (at least, where he's called Fronk. in the first game they called him "Shag" but realized that that wouldn't go over super well in Europe, so they changed it) Fronk's microgames only give you about half the time of a normal microgame, and can appear randomly in Big Tipper, Family Scramble, Gravitator, Time Warp, and Spandex Challenge. whenever they show up, they give you a little sound cue in the intro, and they go by real fast. i really like this idea though, it's pretty cool and keeps you on your toes. they actually brought back this mechanic for WarioWare Gold, and i didn't realize it was from this game originally until i played it. so that's pretty cool.

okay, we've only got a little more left to talk about, so stick with me here. new to the series is the Souvenirs, which are randomly unlocked after beating a boss microgame in a high score run of any stage. these were also kind of in the first game, but they were much less plentiful and there were only a handful of games to unlock this way. here, there's 139 souvenirs to collect, and they range in complexity from being a small little thing you look at for 5 seconds before getting bored, to being a fully fleshed out version of a microgame from the main game. i really like this mechanic. sure, most of them are pretty much worthless, but its interesting that they put them in the game at all. it feels like these were all just little things that the team programmed in their spare time, and the director was like "fuck it, put it in the game, it'll be fun!" it's something cool to go check out from time to time, and im glad that this feature became a mainstay in later games.

well, i certainly had a lot to say about this. if you can't tell, i really loved my time with WarioWare Twisted, it's one of the best games in the series and i think any fan of WarioWare has to play this at some point. which brings me to the unfortunate fact about this game. it's hard to emulate, and even harder to find a physical copy. funnily enough, the best way to emulate this game is actually on mobile phones. if you can find an emulator that supports the tilt controls (Pizza Boy A Basic is my personal recommendation) then you should absolutely give it a shot there. playing on original hardware is gonna be a chore though if you want the english version, which regularly goes for prices over a hundred bucks. honestly, i recommend getting the japanese version, it's way cheaper and is pretty much the same experience. so yeah, go play Twisted, it fuckin rocks dude.