anti-gaming

I regret to report that I will be boycotting video games for the forseeable future. I recently learned of the Foxconn suicides and that Nintendo products were of the many electronics produced at the company’s factories. I can’t in good conscience be a believer in free market economics and support business like this at the same time. I will be writing to Nintendo soon to learn whether or not they still do business with Foxconn.

This game is really good. One of the GBA’s very best. The production is awesome. The sprites are all drawn and animated with the weird and hilarious charm that Wario has become synonymous with. That’s a good word for this game—weird. Wario platforming is like a bizarre Twilight Zone version of classic Mario platforming. More pages are taken from Super Mario Bros. 2 and, believe it or not, Sonic the Hedgehog, than the ancient tomes of Mario. Jumping on enemies doesn’t defeat them, though they can be picked up and thrown. Enemies are most easily struck down when plowed through. You guessed it: Wario has a killer dash attack that hearkens back to Sonic’s spin.

Levels are designed to be explored. Secrets abound. In a stroke of genius, the game forces you to retread back to the entrance at high speed once a timer, located at the end of levels, is set. This turns the game from a thoughtful quest for loot into an intense test of how well you know the layout. The R button, which in this game assuredly stands for “Run,” unleashes Wario’s devil dash and allows him to plow through anything and everything. When madly barreling backwards through the level, using Wario’s considerable girth to bulldoze through unsuspecting enemies and secret passages all in the name of high score, the game achieves a level of platforming nirvana that not even Sonic himself attained. There is surprising synergy between between the two extremes: curious, pronounced exploration and intense rushes of platforming action.