Thanks to Wolfman for helping with edits.
Friday marks the thirty-year anniversary of Wario’s debut, a special occasion I’m celebrating tomorrow by covering him in my “Character Chronicle” series. Altogether, I consider him one of Nintendo’s richest and most reliable characters. Seeing a Wario Land or WarioWare game on a store shelf is like seeing a Super Mario game: you can be reasonably confident it’s of a high quality. Still, the greedy glutton’s name has graced a few duds over the years, the worst of which never actually hit store shelves.
Everything WarioWare: Snapped! has to offer is available from the get-go, and experiencing all of it can be done within fifteen minutes. (Image: Nintendo)
WarioWare: Snapped! is the sixth WarioWare title and the only one exclusive to the Nintendo DSi, a Nintendo DS that comes with a few modest enhancements. One of the handheld’s bigger extras is a camera, something a handful of its exclusives used. One of its other innovations was DSiWare, a platform of small, downloadable games à la the Wii’s WiiWare service. Snapped!, which is built around the DSi’s camera, is one of those budget offerings. Though the DSi’s online store has since been shut down, the Nintendo 3DS family of handhelds can still access those titles—but since the 3DS’s ability to download software will soon cease, I begrudgingly bought Snapped!
Snapped! follows the WarioWare protocol to a tee. It deals with Wario’s latest get-rich-quick scheme, and the friends he ropes into it. All of them are hosting attractions at the newly opened Wario Park, where they present players with short, cheap “Microgames.” Unfortunately, only his closest pals—Mona, Jimmy, and Kat and Ana (who share a stage)—are present. And if that wasn’t disappointing enough, each stage only contains five Microgames, totaling twenty—far beneath your average WarioWare, which usually hit two hundred. As for the carnival backdrop itself, it’s mostly for cosmetics: all five Ware veterans dress for the occasion, and transitions between Microgames show a roller coaster making a loop.
Grinding through Snapped! reminded me of Spirit Camera, another underwhelming, camera-centric Nintendo game. But at least that was a technical showcase of sorts, displaying some neat visuals. (Image: Nintendo)
Now, that paltry amount of content might be forgivable if it was, y’know, fun. Unfortunately, these Microgames aren’t even reliably functional; the camera barely works. Before starting an attraction, the game sticks you in a “photo booth” where you must align your head and a hand with the corresponding icons on the system’s top screen. The bottom screen tells you if the camera detects your silhouette and if your lighting is adequate. If both remain sufficient for three seconds, Snapped! takes a snapshot of you and begins your ride… after another face check. Then, between every Microgame, you have to realign yourself with the camera, killing the frantic energy WarioWare prides itself on. And if it takes the game too long to recognize you, the session ends and you’re kicked back to the title screen.
Nothing is particularly engaging about Snapped!’s Microgames either. Shake your head and cause a dog to dry itself, grab things with your hands, wave goodbye to a friend; nothing complicated or memorable. This is also the first Ware to lack the series’ more elaborate boss Microgames. Earlier entries also keep track of your high scores and include unlockable content, qualities Snapped! lacks. Oh, and ninja twins Kat and Ana require two players for their attraction—if you can’t coerce someone to endure Snapped! with you, one-fourth of its Microgames are inaccessible. Snapped!‘s only extra goodie is its stylistically nifty credits minigame, where you move your face to guide your roller coaster through space.
You can partially see your face’s silhouette in the background during gameplay, helping orient you. (Image: Nintendo)
On the plus side, Snapped! does have one vaguely amusing novelty: it takes photos of you as you play. After finishing one of the four rides, the game shares some with you and then decorates its title screen with them. Unfortunately, Snapped! follows the example of the similarly small scale (though significantly more satisfying) Doc Louis’s Punch-Out!! in that it deletes your data after you shut it off. Even putting your system in sleep mode causes your pictures to vanish.
With a long history of Wario under my belt, I’m more than confident making the claim that WarioWare: Snapped! is the weakest game Nintendo’s antihero has ever plastered his name on. Rightfully, it inspires little fanfare among devotees, and its sequels make no meaningful references to it—not even Gold, which culls Microgames from across the series. In a weird way, however, that feels… appropriate. Within the series’ fiction, Wario’s games are crude and cheaply made; he’s just looking for stuff he can sell to the masses for quick cash. No Wario title invokes that slapdash, uncaring feeling like this glorified tech demo. Spend your five dollars elsewhere.
I was in high school when Snapped! hit. A friend let me try it, and after three minutes, I recoiled away in disgust. Unfortunately, sitting with the game properly did not unearth a hidden gem—Snapped! is bad. (Image: Nintendo)
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