Watch the Wario butt… watch the Wario butt…

I grabbed Warioland: Shake It during Amazon.com’s recent Wii game sale and so far I’m really digging it. If my First Thirty is anything to go on, it is a pure 2D platformer, full of the grumpy, greedy charm that makes Wario such a fun character.

The game begins with a nice animated intro. And I mean an actual pen-and-ink cartoon. No CG. I’d guess Nintendo’s fledgling animation studio knocked this one out. The story begins in the Shake Dimension, with the populace being overrun by the minions of the evil Shake King (Can you blame him? It is bleedin’ named after him.) The Shake King happens to own a magical sack of money that never runs out of coins, and that’s how the Shake Dimension resistance movement cajoles Wario into helping them. He’s in it for the moolah, baby. The only weird thing about the opening is that none of the characters talk, but there’s English subtitles anyway.

Wario has plenty of moves from the outset, including his famous shoulder charge attack. A couple attacks leverage the Wii Remote… slamming the Remote downward in mid-air, or using the Remote to choose the angle when you throw something. The entire game is played with a horizontal Remote, NES-style. No pointing at all.

My initial feeling is that if you like old-school flat platformers, you need to get into this. Especially if you’re aching for something new and found Mega Man 9 just too absurdly difficult. There seems to be plenty of collectibles, secret levels, and mission sub-goals. And the constant use of beautiful smooth hand-drawn animation is a joy to watch (not to mention Wario’s silly Popeye-esque grumbling).