Has the series gone out like a light?

BooDestroyer

Treasure Collector Extraordinaire
It seems like the WarioWare series has gone off the deep end in recent years. It's just...stopped having fans at some point. It then devolved into something of a "throwaway series" and the fact that these games have been selling worse over time is icing on the cake.

It just fell into obscurity, even in Nintendo's eyes.



And then there's the fact that hardly anyone played Game & Wario.

Here's the issue I don't understand. Does anyone actually care about the characters un this series? If these people are playing the series JUST for the microgames (while forgetting that they have other things to do), why claim to be fans of the characters at all?

People don't see it, but one thing Game & Wario did was make worldbuilding efforts towards the series. To anyone who wants them to "do more with these characters", go play this game! If you came in just for microgames, then why pretend to be a fan of iys characters? (it's called Game & Wario and not WarioWare for just that reason!)

(As someone who thought it was okay, Game & Wario was a poor man's Nintendo Land at its core.)
 
Most definitely.

Part of the reasons for this were as follows:

1. Nintendo just stopped marketing it (even worse than usual, it's the one series that is marketed as poorly in America and Japan as other Nintendo games are in Britain)

2. The treatment as a throwaway series, as you said. As a way to experiment with technical gimmicks rather than anything ambitious.
 
Here's the issue I don't understand. Does anyone actually care about the characters un this series? If these people are playing the series JUST for the microgames (while forgetting that they have other things to do), why claim to be fans of the characters at all?

People don't see it, but one thing Game & Wario did was make worldbuilding efforts towards the series. To anyone who wants them to "do more with these characters", go play this game! If you came in just for microgames, then why pretend to be a fan of iys characters? (it's called Game & Wario and not WarioWare for just that reason!)

I swear you've made that post (and have been duly rebiffed for it) like 3 or 4 times on Gamefaqs and DKVine. It's uncanny.

Anyway,

There was a time where I was convinced G&W would kill the franchise, but now I'm not so sure. It sold like dogshit, but then so did most series that made the transition to the Wii U (and it actually outsold Wind Waker HD in Japan, though it was still a bomb regardless - it still has yet to sell its initial shipment). That, and a guy in the Iwata Asks said something among the lines of "We gave it another name because we didn't want people to mistake it for a regular WarioWare title" so evidently, they don't consider it representative of the main series.

More importantly though, there's the very real possibility Nintendo R&D1/SPD1/wherever the hell they are now/ doesn't know what to do with the franchise. My browser is acting so I can't be arsed to throw around links, but in interviews with the WarioWare devs, it's very common to hear from there that while they *could* make a WarioWare 2 that's just WarioWare with different minigames, they *don't* want to. It's never been how R&D1 rolls, and if they can't/don't care to make the series fresh, so be it. This article on Wario Land II most eloquently sums it up:

Wario Land would spawn a few sequels [...] but none would demonstrate the same brilliant creativity that made Wario Land II so remarkable in its time. Fair enough; the fevered dementia that led to this portable masterpiece was channeled instead into the likes of WarioWare and Rhythm Heaven. Like most geniuses, R&D1 never seems content to tread the same territory for long. That means we may never see a satisfying sequel to Wario Land II or Super Metroid... but if that allows R&D1 to continue subverting the safe predictability of Nintendo in new and unexpected ways, it's a compromise I'm happy to accept.
 
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I'm still not sure if I should get G&W.
The minigames themselves don't interest me much...

Do the souvenirs hold up? Are they as neat as in Twisted?
 
I swear you've made that post (and have been duly rebiffed for it) like 3 or 4 times on Gamefaqs and DKVine. It's uncanny.
If you agree on the matter (being the Ashley fan you are), then what's the point of--...

Glowsquid
Reasonably hateful


Nice. Almost got me there.


But still, instead of pretending like the characters are important, how hard is it for someone to come out and say, "They suck and nobody cares about them"? This is like the Kremlings debate with DKC all over again.

At least 9-Volt and 18-Volt have a certain something going for them.

Anyway,

There was a time where I was convinced G&W would kill the franchise, but now I'm not so sure. It sold like dogshit, but then so did most series that made the transition to the Wii U (and it actually outsold Wind Waker HD in Japan, though it was still a bomb regardless - it still has yet to sell its initial shipment). That, and a guy in the Iwata Asks said something among the lines of "We gave it another name because we didn't want people to mistake it for a regular WarioWare title" so evidently, they don't consider it representative of the main series.

More importantly though, there's the very real possibility Nintendo R&D1/SPD1/wherever the hell they are now/ doesn't know what to do with the franchise. My browser is acting so I can't be arsed to throw around links, but in interviews with the WarioWare devs, it's very common to hear from there that while they *could* make a WarioWare 2 that's just WarioWare with different minigames, they *don't* want to. It's never been how R&D1 rolls, and if they can't/don't care to make the series fresh, so be it. This article on Wario Land II most eloquently sums it up:
WarioWare titles haven't done anything particularly new over time, at least nothing more than making microgames around the system's control gimmick for that game.

Have we found out more about how SPD works? I'm getting tired of hearing more about EAD all the time.
 
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