Hi there. I really like the wackiness of the Warioware series. It’s got a really distinct sense of fun, and the way they’re presented make them feel like a labour of love. I only ever owned DIY, and I knew I was missing out a little because that was so heavily built around the creative aspect. Other games such as Touched and Smooth Moves are allowed to be more expressive: they’re not limited by graphics you would be able to draw in the game itself, or such simplistic control schemes, and microgames are allowed more variation. They also have more modes and so on.

I’m also glad to have this on hand as a party game. I played it with a friend last week and it was fun, albeit with a bit of a learning curve. I now appreciate more the simplicity of the original GBA/GCN one. Still, Smooth Moves is totally great. From the relaxed narrator of new forms, to the silly poses, to the absurd minigames, to the quite challenging gauntlet modes, it’s all fun to see. You want to keep playing just to see what it’s going to do next, what crazy action you’ll have to perform or what the characters are going to do.

It’s obviously an early Wii game, trying out everything you can do with the remote and showing off what it’s capable of. This does come up against its limitations at times unfortunately, where the gyroscope sticks or you point too far away from the screen and lose contact. And I just couldn’t figure out why the multiplayer modes have to be pass-and-play, why they can’t support multiple remotes.

As a Nintendo fanboy, I love that 9-volt’s stage here adapted many more modern games to microgame form, as until this point they were mostly stuck in a retro 8-bit (boring) mode. It’s great to see obscure stuff being trotted out, as well as seeing Link pull the Master Sword and turn into an old man.

While I was in the Warioware mood and having blitzed through Smooth Moves’s campaign, I got the WiiWare DIY Showcase, which links to the DIY on DS which I have. It’s completely compatible with DIY but on the big screen, with a few new stories and a multiplayer mode. A small thing but worth it just for the Donkey Kong Country microgame. ;)

Smooth Moves though is a very nice package, that variety of styles is always surprising and there’s so much to do. It’s always nice to play a game that is so disarming and genuine, and yeah just fun. Relax and don’t be afraid to get silly.