I played through practically the entirety of WarioWare Gold on 3DS, yesterday.
It wasn't as good as I'd hoped for.

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For the most part, the minigames work exactly as they used to, and that's a glorious thing!
But I've a number of issues, most of which boil down to the incredibly bland menu system.

As you know, I hate making menus, so I'm hardly one to speak of such a thing, but the menus in this game are just so very bland.

Character select - bland menu.
Minigame select - bland menu.
Toy/capsule select - bland menu.

When the original game was released on the GBA, it was made up of a desktop-icon style GUI, which was meant to simulate Wario's laptop.
Now, 25 years later, it's just a barebones looking menu. Nothing special happens in the menus.

The storyline, too, doesn't really ever go anywhere. There's an attempt at making things a bit more interesting, but it feels like the creators felt like simply replicating the original GBA version was surely more than enough.
But it isn't.
Especially when you only half-arse the rest of it.


If you look at the sheer breadth and scope of the Rhythm Heaven/Paradise Megamix game from a couple of years ago, it's a drastically different affair.
Sure, everything is accessed from a menu, but the menu is lively, has a certain feel to it, and just feels so much like a giant sprawling collection of things.

Here in the new WarioWare. Well, it's just a pile of static tiles, in a grid, in the middle of the screen.
It doesn't "do" anything. It doesn't "feel" like a vast collection. It's just a plain grid.

.. And then there's the number of microgames.
The original GBA version had (IIRC) 240 minigames.
If you take those, add the minigames from WarioWare Twisted, and add the minigames from WarioWare Touched, you get another 200 or so from Twisted and then another nearly 200 from Touched.

That's about 600, give or take.
The 300 included in WarioWare Gold is half of that.
And barely anything's new. True, it's a "Gold", but it's like they just grabbed whatever they had lying around and chucked it onto a cart with a bland menu.

There's no DIY, there's no Snapped, and you don't even get Tomorrow Hill playing during Spitz'n'Dribble's stage..

Somewhere the game's lost its heart and soul.

Maybe I was expecting too much from this game.
I guess Rhythm Paradise Megamix spoiled me..
But I feel ultimately let down by WarioWare Gold


* I'm still wondering if unlocking further Minigames might reveal some DIY/Snapped features.. ... But it's not looking good.