Gamermall.com rating: 9.1

Features
* More than 200 challenges
* More than 15 unlockable challenges
* Multiplayer challenges on one system
* Cartridge save (one character slot)
* Only for Game Boy Advance

The story honestly doesn't make a lick of sense, but apparently Wario wants to get in on the massive moneymaker that is the videogame industry, and to do that, he's created a software company. Players work their way through the town, playing the challenges each of the characters throw at them; 9-Volt, for example, only dishes out challenges based upon classic Nintendo games; Dribble & Spitz offer up Sci-Fi-based mini-games. Kat hands over games based around nature. The game's ladder ends at the top with a competition against Wario, where he throws out a random assortment of games for the player to accomplish.

The design throws more than two hundred different five-second challenges at the gamer, and they'll not only have to figure out what to do and how to do it, they'll also need to accomplish the task before the clock runs out and the game moves on to the next task. The only real hints offered are in the form of single word clues at the start of the challenge. But since only the D-pad and A button are ever used in any of the games, it's not terribly difficult to figure out what's required...and its this simplicity in controls and requirements that makes Wario Ware so inviting to those that only play videogames on a casual level, but for gaming veterans the challenge is also there when the speed of the challenges continues to increase. If the player defeat the Boss mini-game at each character's group of challenges without losing all of the four "lives," they'll move onto the next character and his group of challenges.

Half of Wario Ware's charm and challenge is obviously in its discovery. Two hundred games, even as basic as they are in this game, is a whole lot to see and do, even in split-second shots. This is also one of the rare videogames that can , and will, make you chuckle since the designers were obviously given an awful lot of leeway to create quick-shot scenarios. Shake a collie's paw? Play Breakout with some random Japanese dude as the paddle? Force an anime chick to snort snot? Hell, you'll even activate a bidet to spray water at a spinning flower. The extreme creativity is obviously derived from the Japanese culture, but most of the humor carries over here...even though there are just as many "what the hell was that situations. But trust me, you'll find yourself laughing at the utter strangeness that is Wario Ware. And that's a good thing.

The other half comes from pure gaming endurance. You're not going to find any taxing tasks in any of the two hundred designs; it's completing these tasks in rapid-fire succession that makes Wario Ware challenging and fun, even after you've seen every single mini-game and what's required of them. Even if you've beaten the game's ladder and defeated Wario's final task, you haven't gotten to the real test. Enduring all the challenges also offers a whole lot of additional, unlockable rewards, many of which are extended versions of the micro-game that's in the normal game grid. But to get the ultimate unlockable mini-game, you'll have to really endure show your endurance: each of the 200 micro-games, once uncovered in the normal competition ladder, can be played by themselves in the game-grid...and you'll have to earn the quota score in each of these challenges to score the hidden mini-game.

Since the cartridge is chock full of mini challenges, it wouldn't be fair to expect a large assortment of lush graphics and an ear-pleasing soundtrack. But you know what? The game's imagery and soundtrack are actually a surprise; even though these challenges last only a couple of seconds each, some of them feature more hardware effects than some retail GBA games. There's a micro-game based around F-Zero, for example, that features the same 3D engine as the game it's based upon. And if you've ever played Wario Land 4 on the Game Boy Advance, you'll know just how strange and catchy the background music can be...and it's clear that the same individual(s) responsible for the platformer's tunes had a hand in Wario Ware's.

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