WarioWare Inc. Mega Microgame$ impressions

Nintendo has been showing off an English build of the latest Wario game for the Game Boy Advance, WarioWare Inc. Mega Microgame$. The premise behind the game is that Wario forms a new video game company with his equally greedy friends from Diamond City, including Dr. Cygor, Dribble & Spitz, Mona, Kat and Ana, and others. This new company produces a series of incredibly odd minigames that test your reflexes and your ability to make precise movements within a span of five seconds until the next minigame appears on the screen. For example, one minigame has you trying to catch a little jumping character with a pair of tongs by successfully closing the tongs when this character jumps into the air. Some minigames can be really absurd, like the one that tasks you with pressing a button at a precise moment so that a finger will be launched up a nostril.

Other minigames are based on classic NES and Super NES games. In the Metroid minigame, you have five seconds to launch a barrage of missiles at Mother Brain and destroy her. In the F-Zero minigame, which takes place on the Mute City track from the SNES game, you simply have to avoid making contact with other cars on the track. There's even a Zelda minigame where you have five seconds to move from the side of the screen and into a cave while avoiding one of the classic Zelda enemies. There really are some crazy minigames, and the fact that the games switch from one to the next so rapidly makes them even more entertaining.

After clearing 25 minigames (you do have a limited number of lives, so if you fail a certain number of minigames, you have to start over), you'll encounter a boss minigame. The boss minigames aren't necessarily limited by time and are generally quite simple. WarioWare is scheduled for release in North America on May 26.