WarioWare Move It Preview: Hands-on. Literally.

Hope you're up for a workout.

I’ve just finished some hands-on time with WarioWare Move It, and boy is my butt tired.

Now to my credit, the combination of late night hockey last night plus what my physio has called “a weak ass” is to blame alongside this latest iteration of WarioWare. I’m specially blaming the new Squat pose, which from name alone should be helping you draw a fairly accurate mental picture of how I looked playing.

In true Nintendo fashion, the list of things I can’t talk about in the forty-five minute hands-on preview is about a long as the list of things I can, but Squat is certainly on the good list. With a Joy-Con strapped around each wrist and held in each hand, you place a controller on each knee and squat. Think a sumo wrestler preparing for a match and you’re entirely there.

Squat pose was used in three of Move It‘s mini-games — and presumably, many more — and thankfully two of those affairs were enjoyable. In “Buttograph”, you start in that sumo-like pose and then proceed to draw the shapes that your instructor demands. I had an upside down V in my first, a backwards N to follow, and a simple M (for Mario?) in another, requiring me to squat up and down, shifting from left to right, to fulfill my objective. No harm, no foul.

It was “Sumo Says” that proved my downfall. Here, I was paired with a fantastically fit, perfectly prepared Nintendo PR minder, and together we were required to mimic the movements of a digitised sumo wrestler. If one of our pair failed, we both failed.

I failed my partner.

We both committed to the game, moving into deep squats and lifting whichever leg our instructor commanded. A left leg lift was fine, but a right leg lift demonstrated exactly why I’ve been diagnosed with a weak buttock; I tried to hold the pose but couldn’t, damning us in that particular round.

In another, our digital overload feined to the right and then went with a leg lift, and the accelerometres in my Joy-Cons betrayed me, telling the Switch that I had indeed fallen for the gambit. I hung my head in shame and continued on, exploring the mini-games accessible within Move It‘s Museum mode.

There’s certainly room to game the system, of course — placing your hands in positions that mimic what you’re supposed to do, but not — and I’m ashamed to say I did so for the last of the Squat modes: “Thigh Fishing”. After a night of fast-paced ice hockey (or at least what I like to think passes as that) and twenty-five minutes of WarioWare immediately before it, I wasn’t in a position to jump into a squat and rapidly bring my legs together to attempt to catch a virtual fish that was trying to jump between them.

Rather than sticking to the brief, I instead resorted to hold my hands out in the air and simply bring them together when prompted, and despite winning the mode (again, with my partner), I felt like my victory was hollow. You go all in, or you don’t bother.

By the way, we played each of these mini-games set at the slowest possible speed; we bumped some games up to the mid-point and I’m not even going to bother telling you how I did; I’m sure you can come to the correct conclusion yourself. At ultra-fast? Yeah, no thanks.

In forty-five minutes with WarioWare Move It, I had a complete body workout, mimicing sword fights, playing air traffic controller (but not; I’ll leave this as cryptic as possible to not dip into that bad list) and so much more. I had immeasurable amounts of fun at the same time. This all was accomplished in what essentially is a mini-game picker; there’s a full-blown story mode and a Mario Party-like set of game boards at your disposal upon release.

This, in short, is a no-brainer — classic Nintendo fun that’ll be enjoyed solo or in a group. Poses are stupid, yet easy to pick up, and Nintendo’s need to tutorialise essentially everything comes in handy as you’ll need to contort your body in a number of ways as you play (or cheat, but boo). Bring it on.

Oh! As you can see above, it also has a Super Mario Bros 3 mini-game which is as delightful as it is nostalgic. It’s the Star Trek Picard Season 3 of this collection, for sure.

WarioWare Move It! heads to Nintendo Switch on 3 November.

WarioWare Move It 3 November 2023 Switch   Buy on the Nintendo eShop