WarioWare Move It Review: Did they like to move it (move it)?

Yes, and no.

I spend the weekend showing my parents-in-law how to use a Nintendo Switch with WarioWare Move It, and the results were mixed.

I’m a huge fan of WarioWare in general — as I am the Switch; while I wasn’t a fan of it not being bundled with the console, 1-2-Switch is my usual go-to when showing new players how ingenious Nintendo was in releasing its Joy-Cons so long ago. Sitting down in Mornington, I thought I’d shake things up and go through Move It‘s story mode as a group of four, with my husband and I trading off each chapter with his parents.

I don’t think they enjoyed it as much as my husband and I did; part of our fun was honestly watching them flail about.

In true Nintendo fashion, story mode does a tremendous job explaining what to expect from Move It… and then keeps on explaining. And explaining some more. Despite never having a Joy-Con in their hands before that time, my parents-in-law understood what they were doing and eventually started to complain that they wanted to actually play. While the mini-games themselves are lightning fast, story mode itself is not.

While our newbies were largely comfortable playing through story chapters — and with our mum-in-law occasionally saving dad-in-law when he messed up — bosses proved to be quite the challenge. In fact, the difficulty gap between mini-games and the bosses was called out by the newbies themselves. If that wasn’t bad enough, the Joy-Cons would sometimes lose track of what their possessors were doing, and that just proved to cause more confusion and frustration with those playing.

Over in true multiplayer, players move from two Joy-Cons in either hand to one controller per person, and things generally go a bit faster. Mario Party-style mechanics are in play in one mode, with players battling it out through mini-games and then moving forward — or backward — on the heavily rubber-banded game board. In another mode, you can crank up the speed of games to near-impossible levels; as in my preview, we didn’t opt to go too fast.

All up, there are more than 200 mini-games that use a creative amount of unique poses. You’ll be doing deep squats in one instance, waving your hands around in the air like you just don’t care the next, and practically anything you can think of in-between. It’s fun, frenzied, and of course full of Nintendo-themed nostalgia including Pikmin, Super Mario Bros, and more.

Ironically, through they found story mode to be slow, the speed of the mini-games coupled with the zany nature of WarioWare itself didn’t win my parents-in-law over in the end; they opted for the calmer, relatively more simple 1-2-Switch instead. Being seasoned players ourselves, my husband and I enjoyed Move It quite a bit, and some of that could be chalked up to the lessened learning curve.

If you’re looking for more mini-games on your Nintendo Switch, or have fond memories of Smooth Moves over on the Wii, this one’s for you. Just make sure to stretch afterward, especially if you’re saddled with a bunch of squat poses.

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

WarioWare Move It was reviewed using a promotional code on Switch, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.

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