I was a fan of WarioWare, Inc. Mega Microgames when it first debuted on Gameboy Advance. With each title after it, they capitalized on what made each system unique. The Gamecube game, Mega Partygame$!, focused on multiplayer, WarioWare: Twisted! made use of the cartridge's built in Gyro-Sensor incredibly well, and WarioWare: Touched! showed off the DS touch screen. So the moment the Wii was announced, I knew a WarioWare title would be inevitable and I couldn't wait. It soon became scheduled for launch, but here we are with a two-month delay afterwards and it's finally out.

It's quite interesting to me how a simple Gameboy Advance game has now become a Nintendo franchise. Did Nintendo ever expect this to span the life of five games (thus far)? I only have one thing to say: Whatever you're doing, don't stop.

If you don't know already, WarioWare is an incredibly bizarre game. The developers go out of their way with every title to make it as weird and random as possible and Smooth Moves is no different. The concept itself is quite simple: minigames are continually thrown at you - only giving you about five seconds to complete each one. The longer you survive, the faster it goes and the harder it gets. You'll be asked - no, demanded - to complete these tasks by using the Wii Remote in unique ways. Since the Wii Remote can be held in all kinds of different ways, you gradually learn "forms" throughout the game. For example, The Samurai form below requires you to hold it at your hip, before slicing at the screen. The descriptions they give for these are hilarious, and you can find more here.

The original WarioWare, Inc. was full of artwork that would make any artist cry. No, those are not tears of joy, but instead tears of talent being shed for the lack of effort put into most of the minigame art. They would range from crude pixelated images, to just bizarre art in general. Somehow, by being completely random on the art - they created their own style for the game. Somehow it still works.

Thankfully, Smooth Moves was created specifically for the Wii (rather than how the Gamecube version used an emulated Gameboy Advance to play the same games) which means all of the art is done with very clean vectors, 3D models, and pretty much any other medium you can name. This isn't to say they all look pretty - but they're simply done in the correct resolution now. It all looks beautiful in WarioWare's own style, and really shows off how bizarre and strange they love to make their microgames.

The entire cast is back, with a couple of new ones added. Seriously though, do we really need anymore? This is starting to turn into a Sonic game... There's a story about each character which is told through cartoonish cut-scenes and they are all pretty funny. Some are nicely animated too, finally giving lots of life to the characters I love. Watching Kat and Ana fight enemies like a couple of PowerPuff girls was pretty entertaining. I have a special attachment to all of these cutscenes because they're done with a slick vector style that looks exactly like something I would love to make.

There's a total of 200 microgames this time around which is great - especially considering none of them are really repeated like in the original title. Don't forget though, each microgame has three levels of difficulty, so there's plenty of different things you'll be seeing each time you play. I'm also very appreciative of the fact that there isn't a requirement to play each microgame individually 10-20 times in a row as there has been with every past title. That was always unnecessary and usually only needed to unlock a pathetic bonus.

The real level everyone always looks forward to is 9-Volt's retro NES collection. This is where old Nintendo games are given the microgame treatment and altered to fit the fun new control method. It was nice to see that they didn't just go retro on this one - since there's a few games used that are pretty recent. Animal Crossing, Brain Age, Nintendogs, and Metroid Prime to name a few.

As for those unlockable bonuses - we aren't treated as well as we were in Touched! and Twisted! where we were given unhealthy amounts of little collectable toys to mess around with. This time around in Smooth Moves we're only treated to a few individual high-score games. These are fun, but not quite as addictive as previous high-score games in the past.