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chuckroWario crashes his plane in some remote woods, happens upon a mysterious music box, and is sucked into it. There, a hidden figure offers to let him keep whatever treasure he finds if he can retrieve the five music boxes that seal the figure’s powers. (It had Wario at “treasures.”)
This game retains the puzzle platformer nature of Wario Land 2; Wario is still invulnerable and this time his won’t even lose coins if he gets hit. There are still status effects that double as power-ups (some returning, some new) and there’s a world map that you can traverse from the start. Coins are only important for the Golf minigame that unlocks certain areas of some stages, but there are also 8 music coins in each stage that represent an endgame challenge once you’ve found all the treasures.
This is annoyingly linear and non-linear at the same time: Each of the 25 stages has four keys and chests, and most of the treasures either unlock new stages (or parts thereof), or grant a new ability to Wario. Coming off of Wario Land 2, the power unlocks are particularly annoying, because they’re all abilities Wario starts with in that game. But anyway, it’s a sort of stage-based metroidvania game. Because there are so many stages, it can be easy to lose track of where you can go next. Early on, each treasure only unlocks 2-3 potential areas to go, so you’ve got a linear track. Later, you can miss something that got unlocked, hit a bunch of dead ends, and then have to go around guessing which chest might have become available that you forgot about. Once you’ve beaten the game (only around three-quarters of the treasures are necessary to unlock the five music boxes) and the final boss, the game highlights which stages you still have missing treasures in, but it ignores dependencies—you might still need to retrieve two different treasures to unlock a chest in the stage you’re futzing around in, and the game won’t tell you.
Getting every treasure unlocks a Time Attack mode; getting every music coin in every stage unlocks a special stage of the Golf minigame. Neither endgame bonus really felt worth the time to me.
Overall: Definitely solid, definitely holds up; in some ways better than its predecessor but in some ways a little weaker. (The power unlocks are irritating and not knowing where to go can drive you batty.) There were only a handful of Game Boy Color games worth anybody’s time, they were pretty much all first-party Nintendo titles, and this was one of them.
This game retains the puzzle platformer nature of Wario Land 2; Wario is still invulnerable and this time his won’t even lose coins if he gets hit. There are still status effects that double as power-ups (some returning, some new) and there’s a world map that you can traverse from the start. Coins are only important for the Golf minigame that unlocks certain areas of some stages, but there are also 8 music coins in each stage that represent an endgame challenge once you’ve found all the treasures.
This is annoyingly linear and non-linear at the same time: Each of the 25 stages has four keys and chests, and most of the treasures either unlock new stages (or parts thereof), or grant a new ability to Wario. Coming off of Wario Land 2, the power unlocks are particularly annoying, because they’re all abilities Wario starts with in that game. But anyway, it’s a sort of stage-based metroidvania game. Because there are so many stages, it can be easy to lose track of where you can go next. Early on, each treasure only unlocks 2-3 potential areas to go, so you’ve got a linear track. Later, you can miss something that got unlocked, hit a bunch of dead ends, and then have to go around guessing which chest might have become available that you forgot about. Once you’ve beaten the game (only around three-quarters of the treasures are necessary to unlock the five music boxes) and the final boss, the game highlights which stages you still have missing treasures in, but it ignores dependencies—you might still need to retrieve two different treasures to unlock a chest in the stage you’re futzing around in, and the game won’t tell you.
Getting every treasure unlocks a Time Attack mode; getting every music coin in every stage unlocks a special stage of the Golf minigame. Neither endgame bonus really felt worth the time to me.
Overall: Definitely solid, definitely holds up; in some ways better than its predecessor but in some ways a little weaker. (The power unlocks are irritating and not knowing where to go can drive you batty.) There were only a handful of Game Boy Color games worth anybody’s time, they were pretty much all first-party Nintendo titles, and this was one of them.
