Twisted Is Nintendo At Its Best

Last weekend was my birthday. Hooray for me. I don’t want to tell you exactly how old I am, but let’s just say that the news would no longer say “loved ones shocked after young man dies”. It would just be “man dead as expected”. But, since this birthday lined up perfectly with the latest Steam sale, I ended up dropping over a hundred dollars on games I’ve been wanting for a while and random ones that looked like they could either be a hidden gem or definitive proof I’m bad with money.

Over a hundred dollars worth of new games on Steam, and yet somehow I spent my entire birthday weekend – and the last week – replaying WarioWare: Twisted on the Game Boy Advance. And, let me tell you, it’s still Nintendo at its most pure. It’s everything I hope Nintendo brings to the Switch 2.

WarioWare: Twisted Is More Toy Than Game

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I didn’t even mean to play WarioWare: Twisted. I was just moving some gaming hardware around in my apartment and happened across my old Game Boy Advance bag. Since I’ve got an Analogue Pocket hooked up to a dock, I thought I’d see if there was anything interesting I could throw in there for the birthday weekend. Probably Pinball of the Dead or Pokemon Pinball or, let’s get wild, Mario Pinball Land. But then I came across WarioWare: Twisted.

And, you know what? Because it’s not exactly the easiest game to emulate well – due to all the motion controls and whatnot and so forth – I played it for the first time in over ten years. Fortunately, the game still worked perfectly. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way it had erased my entire save and I had to start the game from scratch and unlock everything all over again.

And, baby, it was so worth it. I know, I know, it’s not a controversial opinion to say that WarioWare: Twisted is the best game in the series. But playing it again, I was reminded of why it’s so good. It’s not just the minigames. Every WarioWare is a celebration of video games – especially Nintendo’s, which are treated like a special dessert when you finally get to play 9-Volt’s levels.

Every WarioWare game features fun instant games that require you to think fast and react quicker. Or not at all, because some of the mini games mess with you like that. Great. But if you’ve only played other entries in the series or its many indie imitations, you don’t understand the most important element of WarioWare: Twisted: It’s a toy at heart. It might even be more toy than game once you unlock everything.

Nintendo Understands The Power Of Motion Control

Twisted might not be the only entry that uses motion controls, but it is the one that feels the most like you’re playing with an object and not reacting to a screen. This is obviously because the screen itself is in the middle of the actual Game Boy Advance (unless you’re playing it on a TV through the GameCube adapter, in which case, God help you). Not every mini game uses the motion sensor, but those that do feel so experimental and strange.

Playing a truncated version of the first few levels of Super Mario Bros. using a twisting, circular landscape is wild. The slightest snippets of gameplay, like keeping a soccer ball in the air by rocking your legs back and forth, still feel surprising decades later. They aren’t just snippets and parodies of games, they’re fresh ways to look at them.

And then there are the ‘souvenirs’. These unlocks go beyond a few minigames. One, there’s actually a lot of unlockable mini-games. Two, there are also an entire Christmas of toys that define Nintendo’s pre-gaming history. Is playing the Love Tester stupid on a Game Boy Advance? Yeah! Is it fun? Yes. Yes, it is. Each individual toy and musical instrument you can unlock are simply extensions of the motion controls – extra toys built on top of the big one that controls the game.

It’s all so joyful and pure and Nintendo. The secrets aren’t there to make you superpowered, they’re there because it’s fun to have stupid secrets. The closest I can think of in recent memory are the unlockable dioramas in Astro Bot. But in that game, you simply get to see rescued robots recreate funny little scenes. Here you can play a piano or a violin or twist and turn your Game Boy Advance to use a kaleidoscope based on the different seasons.

Bring Back WarioWare: Twisted

I could chalk my weekend lost to this game to nostalgia but, I’ll be honest, this is probably the WarioWare I’ve played the least over the years (outside of maybe DIY). It’s not a game you can just throw into a pocket emulator and run. The extra hardware inside means that you’d need to do more work to make it run properly and, I’ll be even more honest, I’m lazy.

When I’m booting up an emulator it’s usually to play the world’s longest RPG or the world’s shortest session of a classic game. Unlike many of Nintendo’s weird experiments, Twisted just isn’t a game that’s been in my rotation for a while. And while it’s a cliche, it feels just as good to play now as it did when it first came out in whatever long ago year that would make me feel bad.

Perhaps we’ll get lucky and WarioWare: Twisted will make it to Nintendo Switch Online before or after we get Switch 2. Hell, if we got Kirby’s Tilt ‘n’ Tumble, we can get this. This game should be available for the public. I’m not saying it would heal the world if more people got the chance to play it in an easy, accessible way, but it does have the potential to heal the world if more people had the chance to play it in an easy, accessible way. It’s a reminder that Nintendo started a toy company and one of the best ways Nintendo has ever created a little miniature museum honoring it.

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