You will never be able to put the remote down! WarioWare: Smooth Moves is the best game in it's series.......
Since then, WarioWare has had fans frantically tilting the GBA left and right in WW: Twisted (sadly never released in UK), and scribbling like mad on the DS in WW: Touched. But by far the craziest and most fun of them all is Smooth Moves on Wii, because it uses the Wii Remote's motion sensitivity to cleverly get you waving, flapping and jumping around the place like a complete nutter. And it's brilliant fun.
If you don't know the deal with WarioWare by now, you need to get with it. The game throws you into a series of three-second micro games, each varying in theme, setting and gameplay, one after the other. And we're not talking about normal challenges like shooting some spaceships or driving a racing car - we're talking about screwy stuff like inserting false teeth into a granny's mouth, picking a giant nose, high-fiving a dog or balancing a broomstick in the palm of your hand.
The more games you successfully complete, the faster the game gets, until you're given barely a second to complete your nonsensical task. The clever thing with Smooth Moves, however, is that each game requires you to hold and use the controller in a completely different way.
Before each mini game appears, you're shown a simple diagram of how to hold the controller, and you have to adjust quickly before your challenge starts. Put it this way: you're not going to impress any girls playing Smooth Moves.
You might make waving a samurai sword around in Red Steel look cool, or proudly show off your swift serving prowess in Wii Sports Tennis, but there's no way you're looking ninja while flapping your arms in the Balloon Fight mini game, or spinning your hips in the hula hoops game.
You'll be holding the Remote over your head as you perform leg squats to lift and on-screen weight, holding it in your open hand to balance that broomstick, or flicking it back like a fishing rod in the Animal Crossing game. You'll look like a buffoon, but it's not about looking good, it's about having a laugh and that you will do with Smooth Moves.
The structure of the single-player game is similar to that of previous games - each of the crazy characters have their own selection of games, and a boss battle. So, one character's games might be based on rhythm-action, while another's are based on scenes from past Nintendo games, from as far back as Super Mario Bros, right up to Wind Waker. Obviously, those are our favourite ones.
But everyone who's played WarioWare will know its all about the multiplayer, and it's the laughs you'll have playing with others that will make Smooth Moves a game you'll get out every time you have a game-playing gathering. Finally, you can give your tired Wii Sports disc a much-needed break.
The varying multiplayer modes let you compete in different ways, the most obvious being to take it in turns to complete mini games, with players that fail being eliminated. The balloon-popping game is back, where one player plays a mini game while the other three pump the Remote like a plunger to inflate a balloon. Players take turns to complete mini games in rotation until the balloon bursts, at which point the player currently playing a mini game loses.
But no matter what mode you're playing, you'll have never played a game as crazy as Smooth Moves. It bonkers mini games and manic, control-changing antics will have four of you flapping about in front of the TV like a bunch of brain-damaged chickens, and it's definitely one of the best party games ever made.
The only major flaw is that you can unlock and successfully pass every mini game in the package within two or three hours. After that, there's very little to do outside of the multiplayer mode.
A few sweet mini games have been thrown in to extend its life span, like a fiendishly addictive block-catching game that sees you tilting the Remote to control a platform as you catch falling bricks without dropping them, or a bat and ball game in which you keep a ball in the air for as long as you can as you work your way up an obstruction-filled corridor. But even those won't last more than a couple of days at the most.
But WarioWare has never been about lasting dozens of hours in single-player - not unless you're the type of gamer to play mini games over and over again to beat your own high scores. Yet that doesn't detract from the fact that this game, while it lasts, is crazy genius and, as we've already said, will be the one you come back to when you've got a full house.