They weren’t kidding! This is the power fantasy side of the coin to Wario Land 4’s masochistic reverie. Big bucko zooms around like it’s no one’s business, beating the ever-loving shit out of anything that moves. We’ve got PILE-DRIVERS, SPIN-THROWS, SUCKINGGG coins…
Get lost in his face:
I love the way this game looks. Heavy use of squash n stretch, lots of low-res photographic background textures and dramatic lighting choices give it a particularly strange atmosphere.
I worry it may get a bit repetitive over time, as became the case for Wario Land 4 despite lots of level design gimmicks throughout.
The bonus puzzle rooms seem less cerebral here and more about seeing how well you can suffer precise platforming with some less than precise movement controls… An odd choice.
Plot seems largely incoherent although I did skip the intro text crawl so perhaps that’s on me. Guess I was just too eager to start clambering around on some balls:
Length at least seems mercifully short like a few other gamecube games (Pikmin and Luigi’s Mansion come to mind). This is also why I enjoy a lot of early game boy games, some of those you can beat in an afternoon if you get lucky! Love a game that respects my time, thank you.
I have to admit I’m feeling a bit nostalgic for the gamecube. What a funny lil console. Love that it had a handle and was such an unassuming shade of purple…
Also love how dedicated its first party offering of games were to not-so-subtly teaching children the quiet horror of the adult world: “Sorry, Mario can’t come out to play in the sun… He’s too busy being tried in a court of law!”
“Sure, it might sound fun owning a mansion but did you know Luigi can no longer sleep at night due to being haunted by the souls of the dead? You know what they say: No rest for the wicked!”
“Living in a town full of talking animals does sound nice, doesn’t it? Just wait til you meet your new landlord…”
“Hey, the guy who made Mario and Zelda has a brand new game for you to play! It’s a sobering meditation on the continued exploitation of our natural world and a thinly veiled cry for help about the perils of being promoted to a senior managerial position within a company!!”
If Donkey Kong Bananza came out on the gamecube, Pauline would probably be some sort of Cruella de Vil type who’d kidnap your entire ape family in order to mangle them into a highly profitable line of fur coats: “Hey DK, this KONG no longer has a FACE 
”
…
What was I talking about? Oh yeah… Wario World, that’s right. Uh, it’s pretty normal I guess… The pause menu’s music is a bit of a nightmare though: