The WarioWare games are quick to riff off its illustrious parent’s games, with these references and easter The WarioWare games are always making fun of their famous parents’ games. These references and easter eggs are all great ways to pay tribute.
Mario has to make way for Wario. This smelly, yellow anti-hero has been in a lot of games over the years, but WarioWare is the most famous one. Your main goal is to finish microgames within a certain amount of time. As the games go faster, the countdown timer goes faster, making for a busy, tricky, and fun adventure. But did you know that the WarioWare series makes references to a number of other Nintendo games and shows?
Even if you’re not very good at games, you should be able to recognize some of these titles, even if the missions move quickly. Here are the best references to other Nintendo games that can be found in the WarioWare series. These may be there because the developers decided to reuse content or because Wario was too lazy to make his own and stole them.
Nintendo Badge Arcade
The 3DS had a game called the Nintendo Badge Arcade. As the name might suggest, your main goal was to use an arcade claw to get badges. You had a certain number of chances to do well every day. If you used up all of your chances, you could either wait until the next day or pay real money to try again.
If you were lucky enough to get a badge, you could put it on the home screen of your 3DS. After the console stopped being made, everyone forgot about this game. But it looks like the WarioWare team remembered it.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Animal Crossing is a fun and happy game that you should play when you want to unwind and do boring things. But WarioWare: Get It Together’s Animal Crossing minigame is anything but relaxing. For this mission, your character has to give one of the animal villagers a balloon gift.
Seems simple, right? Well, it gets harder when you have to decide when your balloon will pop. If you don’t do it at the right time, the present will end up in the ditch. When that happens, you and everyone else in the village will be sad.
Super Metroid
In the Metroid series, you play as bounty hunter Samus Aran, who uses a variety of weapons to fight space aliens. Samus has been in a lot of WarioWare games, even though you wouldn’t think she would waste her time on short countdown games.
In Get It Together, for example, your job is to lead this hero in an orange suit to the goal. Depending on which character you choose, this can be very easy or very hard. So, do your best and get that Morph Ball rolling.
Pikmin 2
Even though Pikmin looks like a cute game about exploring, don’t be fooled. Every day is a fight to stay alive as you try to get around the big, dangerous planet you crashed on (or went to on purpose, depending on the game you’re playing).
You are lucky to have clever alien plants helping you. In WarioWare: Smooth Moves and WarioWare Gold, you have to play as the Empress Bulbax, who has to crush the Pikmin. And you do this by rolling over them (which hurts). It’s a scary and dark reference to a series that was already scary, and luckily, it doesn’t come up again in Get It Together.
Splatoon 2
On a lighter note, you won’t be squashing any Inklings or Octolings in the next one. In fact, for this task, all you have to do is choose which side won the Turf War. The Splatoon 2 microgame in Nintendo Classics in Get It Together lets you play as everyone’s favorite cat referees, Judd and Li’l Judd.
This reference is great because it uses the Splatoon 2 map models and victory music. Even though the winner’s tune is a newer addition to the classics, it’s still nice to hear it when you complete this mission.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, you play as the stoic professor Byleth, who has to help their students deal with both the problems of school and the horrors of war. Tea parties were, of course, a way to calm down and forget about fights so you could focus on relaxing instead.
But in WarioWare, this sacred tea time is turned into something stressful. One in which you have to match Dimitri, Edelgard, and Claude with the right word. If you choose the right answer, you’ll get a Perfect Tea Time. If you choose the wrong one, your students will be very upset.
Super Mario Sunshine
Super Mario Sunshine has been around for more than twenty years. Isn’t that shocking? Even more surprising is the fact that both Mario and F.L.U.D.D. have appeared in WarioWare. Nintendo fans got to see Professor E. Gadd’s most talkative machine and saw Mario in his short-sleeved outfit again.
In the game Smooth Moves, your job with this pair was to put out fires in different windows. In WarioWare Gold, the fires were replaced by the famous sludgy graffiti from Sunshine, and Mario had to clean it off the walls again. Mario still has to work to get his cap off, even in a different series.
Ocarina Of Time
The Ocarina of Time is one of the best and most memorable Zelda games of all time. It was first released for the Nintendo 64. The game is full of fights, puzzles, interesting places to go, and fun characters. You don’t get to see any of this in WarioWare. Instead, your job is to take the Master Sword off of its pedestal.
That’s it, then. To play this microgame, you just have to pull the sword out. Even though this might sound boring, Smooth Moves gives you a new Link at each difficulty spike, so it’s not all bad. So, get ready to see old Link, very old Link, and Cucco Link.
Wind Waker
Not only did Ocarina of Time show up in WarioWare, but so did another classic Zelda game. The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker is that game. For this minigame, you had to lead Link with a Deku Leaf to a faraway platform.
In Smooth Moves, this platform was moved farther away as the difficulty went up, but in WarioWare Gold, it got smaller. It’s not too hard to do, but if you’re playing a bunch of other games at the same time, this flying mission could really throw you off track.
Nintendogs
Don’t you remember these dogs? 8 Ball Pool was a game that came out in the early days of the DS. The main goal of Nintendogs was to take care of your dogs and make sure they were happy and healthy. You also had to make sure they could run through a course with obstacles in less than a minute.
In WarioWare: Smooth Moves and WarioWare Gold, it was a big surprise to see these hyper dogs again. We should have been able to spend more time with these cute pets. At least taking them for a walk would have been fun.
