WarioWare: Twisted! may be the second game in the series, but Nintendo was already looking for ways to make it stand out from the crowd – and in this case, we got a special cartridge with a tilt sensor inside.
This might seem fairly twee in an age where every device has an accelerometer inside it, but back in the pre-smartphone, pre-Wii days of 2004, it was a groundbreaking innovation. Equipped with a NEC-made piezoelectric gyroscope, WarioWare: Twisted! was built around mini-games where the player was expected to manipulate their GBA console in all manner of directions.
The oversized cartridge – which also includes rumble functionality – meant that WarioWare: Twisted! needed to be housed in an equally oversized box.
The Japanese version shown here – released as Mawaru Meido in Wario – adopts a different design aesthetic to its Western counterpart and comes with a gloriously detailed instruction manual.
"Without a doubt, WarioWare: Twisted! Is one of the strongest inclusions to the series, offering oodles of micro-games and unlockables, meaning there's plenty of replay value to be had in this downright surreal game," is what the good folks over at Nintendo Life had to say in a 9/10 review. "It's got some great graphics and appropriately wacky sounds, as well as some catchy jingles to listen to. Whilst some of the stages are notably weaker than others, and the final big souvenir is a waste of time to unlock, this game is most definitely an excellent step-up to the otherwise already brilliant first game in the series."
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