Game-and-Wario
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This year's Club Nintendo elite rewards are all downloadable games
Marking a change from the calendars, posters and other Nintendoodads, the 2014 Club Nintendo elite rewards for North America are all downloadable games. While that'll disappoint some of you, as a European I have to note on our side of the ocean it's all physical - and personally, not the most appealing selection either. So if you want to swap places... well, we can't, but you get the drift. As before, qualifying Platinum members can have their pick of one Gold or one Platinum gift, while Gold members have to make do with the golden selection. If I were so lucky, I'd pick one of Game & Wario, Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D, Dr. Luigi and Earthbound from the Platinum games. On the Gold side, I'm totally in the mood for some Zelda 2. Sigh.
Game & Wario review: Weary-o ware
Wario's been with us for two whole decades, and in that time, Nintendo has used Mario's Garbage Pail Kids variant to disrupt some pretty fundamental gameplay ideas – especially in endlessly inventive portable series like Wario Land and WarioWare. As made evident by its E3 2013 lineup, though, Nintendo has placed less of a priority on tinkering during the Wii U generation, instead focusing on producing sequels to established series. So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Game & Wario is essentially a reworked Nintendo Land. Like Nintendo Land, Game & Wario features an assortment of GamePad-friendly mini-games, each one offering a novel way to use the console's controller. If you've played Nintendo Land, however, some of Game & Wario's games may strike you as a little too familiar. "Ski," for instance, plays a hell of a lot like Nintendo Land's miniaturized version of F-Zero. Some of the games call to mind Nintendo's legacy as an outstanding arcade developer, though the majority don't dare progress beyond the baby steps established by Game & Wario's tech demo predecessor.%Gallery-191112%
Nintendo launches 'Crowdfarter' for Game & Wario
The crowd funding movement has reached an inevitable point in its trendiness arc: Parody. To promote the micro-game infused Game & Wario on the Wii U, Nintendo has launched (sigh...) Crowdfarter. The site pokes fun at services like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, asking fans to donate "coins" to help fund the project. What that really entails is liking the site on Facebook or sharing it on Twitter. Doing so will unlock "stretch goals" that grant access to things like wallpapers, a new trailer and a ringtone spoken by Wario himself. If you don't feel like "donating," you can at least look around the site, which has a few little Easter eggs to discover. Whether it gets "funded" or not, Game & Wario hits Wii U in America on June 23 and Europe on June 28.
Game & Wario plays Europe on June 28
Game & Wario now has an official European launch date of June 28, straight from Nintendo of Europe's twitter account. The game is scheduled to release in North America on June 23 at the unexpectedly lower price of $39.99.
Game and Wario will retail for $39.99
Game & Wario, Nintendo's Wii U collection of GamePad enhanced microgames, will retail for $39.99, an unexpectedly low price for a retail Wii U game, especially one from Nintendo. Retailers posted pre-order pages over the weekend at that price, and we have just obtained confirmation of the $39.99 MSRP from Nintendo.Game & Wario will be released June 23 in North America.
Game & Wario available June 23
Game & Wario, which launched last month in Japan, will arrive on the Wii U Nintendo eShop and at retail on June 23 in North America. Still awaiting Europe details.
Game & Wario out March 28 in Japan
The most recent information about the Western release date for Game & Wario puts it somewhere in the first half of 2013. For Japan, however, the minigame (but not microgame!) collection has a firm release date. Nintendo of Japan is aiming its nose-and-mustache-shaped bow and targeting March 28.There's still a lot we don't know about the Intelligent Systems-developed collection, so soon before its debut – like what's in it. So far, we've seen only four minigames: Fruit, Arrow, Shutter, and Ski.
Game & Wario, Wonderful 101 in first half of 2013
There are more Wii U games coming, sometime early this year. Along with a reconfirmed "first half of 2013" date for Wii Fit U, Nintendo put minigame collection Game & Wario and Platinum's crowd-control action game The Wonderful 101 in the same release window today.Pikmin 3's release window became less specific. The last we heard, it was due sometime in the spring; now, it's also in the first half. That's functionally the same thing, we suppose.%Gallery-176613%
Can you spot Iwata in this Fruit video?
One of the mini games within Game and Wario is Fruit, a game of stealth and lying to your loved ones. Classic Nintendo. Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, gives the game a go in the above video, which asks, "Can you guess which character Mr. Iwata is using to steal the fruit?"
Watch Japan's Wii U launch Nintendo Direct right here [update: it's over!]
Today sees a trio of Nintendo Direct broadcasts stream their way onto our monitors, kicking off with one for Japan this morning. The Wii U launches there this weekend, so it's no great surprise this particular Direct focuses on Nintendo's newest system.Our advice is that you sit back, make yourself comfortable, grab us those cheese puffs, and watch the stream here when it starts broadcasting at 6AM ET (3AM Pacific, 11AM Brit-time).As for the North American and European Nintendo Directs, both are scheduled for 12PM ET (9AM Pacific, 5PM Brit-time), and both will feature upcoming Wii U and 3DS games. We'll have all the news for you from all three broadcasts right here on Joystiq.Update: The broadcast is now over, but you can watch all 44 minutes of it here. Nintendo showed off Japan's collection of launch games, with plenty of time in particular given to Pikmin 3 and Game and Wario. Regards the latter, Nintendo president Saturo Iwata revealed it features 16 minigames in total and is coming to Japan in early 2013.Talking of Iwata, as usual he got up to some antics, including wearing a helmet-cam to show off Panorama View, and appearing in uncanny Lego form for Lego City Undercover, as pictured after the break.
Wii U's Game and Wario makes me Wario-wary
It seems stubborn to lament a stylistic and gameplay shift for (essentially) the WarioWare series -- one built on hilariously frequent stylistic and gameplay shifts -- but the Wii U's Game & Wario dramatically shifts away from pretty much all the cornerstones of WarioWare, and toward conventional minigames.To be fair, it isn't a WarioWare game, and that's acknowledged. Instead, it's a vaguely Game & Watch-inspired set of minigames, of which only four were shown, and all using the WiiPad heavily. Where WarioWare used a variety of simple 2D art styles, Game and Wario is straight-up, simple 3D. G&W has time limits like its microgame ancestors, but they're closer to five minutes than five seconds.The games shown include one in which you tilt to steer disco skier Jimmy T. on a downhill course, an archery game in which you fire arrows from a Wario-nose bow to fight off toy Warios (a bit of the old magic there, at least conceptually!), a thief minigame in which you must surreptitiously steal fruit, then pass the WiiPad on to another player who will try to identify the on-screen thief, and a photography game about spotting, and taking the best pictures of, a series of known criminals. It's way too early to judge Game & Wario definitively, but it has the unfortunate distinction of being derived from game that you can judge within ten seconds. The minigames are enjoyable, they're just ... safe. Without the rapid-fire presentation, Game & Wario is essentially just another minigame collection.There's a good reason for the proliferation of safe choices: if all the games involved the WiiPad and five-second time limits, you'd have a great deal of difficulty managing two screens in that short time. And, of course, "a great deal of difficulty" is absolutely not what Nintendo wants to show off on the Wii U.%Gallery-157167%
WarioWare 'flair' is reborn for the Wii U with Game & Wario
Following its E3 2012 media briefing, Nintendo revealed a slew of new titles for its upcoming Wii U console, including Project P-100, on its event site. Another title that snuck its way on the E3 page was the working title project Game & Wario."Wario and his Diamond City friends are back in action. Game & Wario (working title) features a collection of games that use only the Wii U GamePad controller. The games retain the original flair and character of the micro-games from the WarioWare series," the site reads.Single-player games found in the collection include 'Arrow,' which transforms the WiiPad as a hi-tech bow used to defeat swarming enemies; 'Ski,' where players lead a skier to the finish line tilting the WiiPad; and 'Shutter,' which uses the WiiPad as a camera to take shots of hidden criminals. A multiplayer game for up to two to five players dubbed 'Fruit' allows one WiiPad-wielding player to anonymously control one of the other players on screen to quietly steam scattered fruit. Sounds both wacky and strange, which is exactly what we'd expect from a WarioWare-style title.%Gallery-157167%
