Was Bishi Bashi an inspiration for WarioWare?

Glowsquid

Mental midget
Diamond City Leader
The original WarioWare is "widely considered to be one of the most innovative games of its generation, Mega Microgame$! created a new genre of games" as the Super Mario Wiki puts it in charmingly wooden prose, but there's actually a bunch of more obscure titles that used a similar formula of playing rapid-fire minigames. The Point Blank series is arguably the most proeminent example, but the game I want to talk about is Bishi Bashi.

bishibashicover.jpg


It's a series of (mostly) arcade games released by Konami between 1996 and 2014 whose gameplay centers around playing a rapid succession of minigames featuring wacky scenarios, art style shifts and an healthy dose of irreverant Japanese humour. Sounds familiar?

Bishi Bashi's setup isn't a 100% match as it's focused on multiplayer: all the games are played up to 4 players and whoever gets the most point wins. The games can also be played in single-player against a bot but the whole preceding still feels very similar to WW. Judge for yourself:



Obviously I don't think anyone at Nintendo is going to come out and say one of their franchise was inspired by an obscure arcade game series, but do you think Bishi Bashi was a possible influence in the creation of the original WarioWare or Mario Artist's Polygon Studio "sound bomber" mode? speak your mind Wario forums
 
I can see the inspiration, though I suspect it's more of a mix of WarioWare and Mario Party in its setup, especially with the longer introductions for every game and mentioned multiplayer focus.
 
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