E3 2002Wario World hands-on impressions

We had the chance to play through the demo levels of Nintendo's upcoming platform adventure, Wario World, starring Mario's greedy nemesis. While Wario spent much of his early career in Nintendo games as Mario's evil doppelganger, Wario World focuses more on exploration and Wario's incurable desire to accumulate treasure. As Wario ventures from area to area, he will take out enemies, find warp zones, and collect a copious number of gold coins.

Once we had the chance to see the game in action, we were surprised with how far the game had come along and how sharp it is visually. The Wario character is nicely modeled and well detailed, with real-time facial expressions and a wide assortment of smooth animations. Each of the enemy creatures we encountered was also well animated and jauntily walked along with a comical, exaggerated strut. Monsters spawned in groups of four to six in the levels we played, and if you didn't eliminate any enemies, it was possible to have an entourage of about a dozen enemies onscreen at once, although the game's otherwise modest frame rate took a steep dive when this happened.

Wario possesses a number of interesting abilities in this fully realized 3D adventure. He can perform sizable leaps and come down with a powerful butt-stomp to injure foes, or he can smash through an otherwise impenetrable trapdoor. Wario can punch enemies repeatedly, in a neat three-hit combination, or you can hold down the attack button to make him perform a streaking bull-rush maneuver. Often, Wario can pause his attacks to take advantage of a stunned enemy. Stunned enemies lie paralyzed on the floor and can then be lifted overhead and used as a weapon. Once an enemy or object is firmly in hand, he can then rotate vigorously in a damaging roundhouse swing. If necessary, Wario can also jump high into the air with object or weapon in hand and perform a fantastic-looking spinning piledriver in true Zangief style.

The sizable worlds we've seen in Wario World are easily explored, thanks to Wario's great mobility. Wario can latch onto circular objects overhead, such as fruit or statue fixtures, then smoothly crawl around the object, even hanging upside down if necessary. Wario often has to leap from object to object and occasionally from unconventional angles to reach hidden areas. And much like in his recent handheld adventures, Wario travels through surreal warp portals screaming at the top of his lungs.

The levels available in the E3 demo of the game were the mansion, circus, and pyramids. The mansion stage started off in a graveyard, where skeletal enemies burst out of the ground and formed a mob to overwhelm the intrepid explorer. Other enemies included skeletal pterodactyls, bipedal triceratops, and other fossilized foes. To travel from floor to floor, Wario can climb the occasional ladder, but less obvious areas are only accessible by latching onto a rising ghost's glowing circular center.

The circus level was fairly bizarre but had enough of the big top atmosphere to seem legitimate. The spawning monsters in this case were hordes of clowns, whose animation fell somewhere between a zombified shuffle and a typical clown's bouncy step. As Wario explored around the colorful striped dome in the center of the circus, a spotlight shone and followed him, illuminating the action in an otherwise dark setting. Some of the tough midlevel or boss enemies we encountered also featured unconventional methods of attack, which implies that Wario World will have an abundance of interesting boss encounters. In one area, a group of chunky pigeons sporting aviator goggles swooped around a ring, and Wario had to butt-stomp them at the right time in the hopes of downing one. If his timing was off, the pigeon could grasp Wario, lifting him high into the air and dealing damage in the ensuing fall. Another boss encounter featured large dinosaurs in baby clown outfits wielding large clubs. These dinosaurs could be pounded a few times, which would knock their weapons away and put them on all fours, with further attacks eliminating them entirely. The pyramid stage featured mummies of various shapes and sizes as enemies, as well as robotic scarab-crabs, who shot oversized, exploding bombshells. The new terrain had an adverse effect on Wario's abilities as well--his butt-stomp and piledriver maneuvers buried him deep in the sand, requiring a few seconds of struggle to leap out.

The demonstration levels we played of Wario World were entertaining, considering how early in development the game is. The three levels we explored were missing a few key features, such as explorable ministages and warp shortcuts (in this build they all led to the same room). We'll have more on Wario World as the game approaches its release later this year.