Nintendo was expected to deliver some sort of next generation console – likely a Nintendo Switch redesign – sometime next year. As I played the new game WarioWare: Move It with my kids while waving the Joy-Con controllers, I hoped that the next version of Joy-Cons would remain as inventive as the one on the Switch. I also want them to improve.
Move It is a game full of mini-games, which should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the WarioWare series. These are random and downright weird challenges that you must solve and succeed before an all-too-quick timer runs out. Some WarioWare games use buttons or touch screens. The latest WarioWare game on Switch focused on platform type game using the Joy-Con buttons. This time, all the fun is getting up and waving the Joy-Con controllers. The motion control action resembles that of Nintendo Wii games. I found the challenges sometimes brilliant and sometimes frustrating. Joy-Con motion sensors aren’t always great.
My reference point for motion games has shifted to VR action games on the Quests 2 and 3 Or PlayStationVR2, where motion controls are more precise. Controls on WarioWare: Move It seemed more primitive. Sometimes this strange awkwardness of movement can create fun challenges, like figuring out how to pick a giant vegetable or slicing something quickly with a giant sword. Other times, I found myself flapping my arms and realizing that nothing was happening.
A recent wacky VR motion game, What the Bat, has clear bat-like controls, but what you can do with the motions changes. In WarioWare: Move It, your interface keeps changing too. Different poses with controllers held in different directions (you’re directed to your form before playing each game), and sometimes even using the Joy-Con’s dormant infrared camera to do things like see your fingers and hand ( why don’t more Switch games use this IR camera?).
You are asked to take different positions before matches. The results become far-fetched.
Results vary, as I said, and it just made me wish for even more precise and improved movement-wise Joy-Cons. It would be great if the next Switch had controllers with improved gyroscopes and accelerometers, and maybe even other sensors added to allow future Joy-Cons to do even more (besides lagging analog triggers and more robust analog sticks).
WarioWare’s motion-only controls also mean, much like Change sport, that this is not a game you can play in a car or a plane. You also need to attach the wrist straps, as some games involve letting the Joy-Cons dangle from your wrist strap.
Of course, there is a nose pick!
What WarioWare: Move It shows, however, is how innovative the Switch’s hardware still is compared to other consoles. Having controllers that split apart and can handle motion tracking or transform into other “shapes” based on position still seems like an underutilized Switch superpower, even six years after its release.
I appreciate that WarioWare: Move It exists and that its multiple mini-games made my kids happy. A second party mode adds Mario Party-like board game style gameplay, which changes the WarioWare equation a bit. How much replay value this gives you depends on how much you enjoy playing these little challenges over and over again. I always think WarioWare games that mash buttons and use controllers and don’t require moving seem a little more classic and timeless.
Create more WarioWare, Nintendo! But also continue to evolve the hardware possibilities of the Switch with the next Switch.
Gn tech
