New Wario Game: Nintendo should stop screwing around and make 'WarioWare' for mobile

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Listen, there's a reason I'm sitting here writing this right now instead of making business decisions for Nintendo. I'm just some guy with opinions, while Nintendo is full of people in suits who weigh the cost versus the potential profits of any project before signing off on it. Any idea I have, especially one as obvious as a WarioWare mobile game, has almost certainly been through that ringer.

It just so happens that I'm right about this and Nintendo is wrong, and here's why.

Why Nintendo should make WarioWare for mobile

In case you don't remember, WarioWare was a series of mostly handheld games that Nintendo made when they needed to give Wario something else to do. After a series of good platformers about collecting as much treasure as he could carry, it was time for him to move on. In 2003, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! changed the world forever.

The essence of WarioWare is the "microgame," which is different from a minigame. This isn't Mario Party. It's a single-player, rapid-fire series of goofy little challenges that last fewer than five seconds apiece. They often require no more than a single, well-timed button input, though later games in the series started taking advantage of Nintendo's unique hardware for touch- and motion-based microgames. 

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WarioWare fans tend to hold up WarioWare: Twisted! as the high point of the series. It packed a unique tilt sensor into the GameBoy Advance cartridge so you could control the microgames by tilting left and right, which would work perfectly on a smartphone. Check out this one, where you move through a circular version of the first level of Super Mario Bros. using tilt controls.

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The best mobile games can be opened, played and enjoyed in small bursts; you can feel like you made progress while you're waiting for a lunch order or commuting to work. Nintendo's mobile output so far has followed that rule (Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes), but for some reason, Nintendo hasn't felt the need to resurrect one of its best franchises in the one place where it makes the most sense. 

WarioWare was designed like a good mobile game years before smartphones existed. If Nintendo were to make a mobile-exclusive WarioWare game, it could accommodate every great feature that's appeared in the series so far. You could tilt, touch and rapidly tap to play any microgame the developers could imagine. You could record your scores to a leaderboard and challenge your friends to asynchronous score attack matches. It would be, with only a little bit of hyperbole, the perfect phone game.

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Again, I'm sure Nintendo has thought hard about this and came to the conclusion that it wouldn't make much money. Maybe they should've thought that hard about Game & Wario, the lackluster Wii U minigame collection that effectively killed the series. Business is business — but come on. I'm throwing a lob pass here; it's your job to finish the slam dunk, Nintendo. 

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