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WarioWare: Get it Together!'s best microgame is literally Super Mario World

Turns out, Super Mario World is good with or without Mario

Wario stands up to a Bullet Bill in the Super Mario World microgame in WarioWare: Get It Together! Image: Nintendo EPD, Intelligent Systems/Nintendo
Ryan Gilliam (he/him) has worked at Polygon for nearly seven years. He primarily spends his time writing guides for massively popular games like Diablo 4 & Destiny 2.

WarioWare: Get It Together! has a wide range of microgame genres. There’s Tech, Fantasy, and even Sports. But my favorite? Nintendo Classics. These special microgames take players into the world of Nintendo’s biggest games and make them micro. There are tons of Nintendo tentpoles represented in Get It Together!, but the best finally lets me bring Wario into one of the best games ever made: Super Mario World.

The Nintendo Classics microgames feature Animal Crossing, Super Metroid, Captain Toad, Breath of the Wild, and more. Every genre in WarioWare: Get It Together! also comes with a boss microgame that pops up after you beat 15 or more normal ones. These boss missions are usually overly long and kill a lot of the game’s momentum, but every time I come across the Super Mario World boss challenge, I can’t help but enjoy myself.

To be clear: This isn’t a riff on Super Mario World. It’s not just “it looks like Super Mario World” or “it plays like Super Mario World.” It’s a rotating level pulled straight from Super Mario World, complete with Bullet Bills, Yoshi Coins, and jumping Piranha Plants. But instead of flying around using your golden cape, you’re flying around with Wario’s jetpack — or as one of the other WarioWare Inc. cast members.

Characters that fly largely trivialize the experience — much like the actual cape in Super Mario World. And some of Get It Together’s unique characters add new tools and obstacles to the level. It’s a bizarre challenge in a familiar environment.

9-Volt braves Bowser’s Castle in WarioWare: Get It Together!
9-Volt can’t jump or stop moving, so he has to use these special grappling hooks to navigate levels
Image: Nintendo EPD, Intelligent Systems/Nintendo

Get It Together! is largely overcomplicated, an issue stemming from the game’s new playable characters. But there’s something about rolling over those green hills or punching out a question mark block that works no matter what character I’m playing. If I’m flying around as Ashley, I can blast Piranha Plants out of the air and dive under massive Bullet Bills. It’s easy, but I can occupy myself by collecting coins along the way. Grounded characters like Cricket operate more like Mario — I spend my time jumping on platforms and haphazardly collecting coins. And characters like 18-Volt that literally can’t move offer a unique experience. The Super Mario World boss level actually takes some of my primary complaints around Get It Together! and uses them to its advantage.

Get It Together! always hands me a random character from my roster selection, and it can make or break my chances on certain boss levels. But the Super Mario World boss level is fun no matter who you get. Some of the game’s other boss levels make players battle against a statue of Poseidon himself, keeping a little green man safe from tentacles. Another has you squish little grapes into jars. They’re relatively fun — just like most of the microgames in Get It Together! — but they’re also repetitive, and at least four times the length of a normal microgame.

But the Super Mario World level is snappy, and feels at home as a boss microgame. Sometimes I get to sprint through 1-1; other times it’s the woods filled with Fuzzies, or Bowser’s Castle. No matter which classic level I get, each run is either engaging or quick, two things that most of the other boss microgames aren’t.

Some of the most fun I had with WarioWare: Get It Together! was leading Samus to a door in a Super Metroid-themed game or getting to the top of an Ice Climbers level. But there’s nothing quite like loading into a classic Super Mario World level as Wario, floating in the sky and grinning my way toward a Bullet Bill. It’s silly, and it’s over before you can get sick of it. It’s a reminder of why people have loved WarioWare for so long.

The next level of puzzles.

Take a break from your day by playing a puzzle or two! We’ve got SpellTower, Typeshift, crosswords, and more.

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