Video Game / WarioWare

Bite sized action and frantic fun!

"Hey! You! Dig the wax out of your ears, and listen up!
WarioWare, Inc. is the most prestigious company there is.
We make the world's funnest video games—so that I can get filthy stinking rich! Sound cool? That's 'cause it IS cool!
Wahaha!

— Wario, WarioWare website

(INTRODUCE!)

A Creator-Driven Successor to the "Sound Bomber" mode from the little-known Mario Artist: Polygon Studio, WarioWare is a Minigame Game series developed by Nintendo that has a rather unique take on the concept.

(DESCRIBE!)

1. There are hundreds of minigames in each installment.
2. They aren't called "minigames": these are "microgames", and they are called that for a very good reason. Each microgame only gives you around five seconds to beat it. Normal-length games run eight beats; the BPM starts from 120 (140 in the GBA games) and rises from there.
3. That insanely short time includes the instructions for how to beat it... if you can call someone screaming a brief command like POUR, GRIND, or KNOCK OUT as instructions.
4. These microgames are presented in story chapters or levels, where you have to complete seven to twenty-five of them in a row, with four chances for failure before game over, and without stopping (and much more if you're going for a high score). The microgames are also shuffled at random, so you'll have to react fast!

The plot of the games usually follow a similar through-line: Wario is strapped for cash in some manner, and happens to see a simple video game or console become successful — think of how Flappy Bird became a hit, only years before Flappy Bird. Wanting a piece of that pie, he grabs his phone and contacts every friend he has to make video games on the cheap for him.

(LIST GAMES!)

Games in the WarioWare series

• WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ ^note Made in Wario in Japanese, WarioWare, Inc.: Minigame Mania in British English (Game Boy Advance, 2003): Wario is watching television when he sees a news report about a popular game making a lot of money, prompting him to create his own game company and convince his friends to develop the games that he's too lazy to make himself. Introduces Jimmy T., Mona, Dribble and Spitz, Dr. Crygor, 9-Volt, Orbulon, and Kat and Ana as microgame hosts alongside Wario. Features 213 microgames that use the directional pad and A-button (retroactively known as "Mash"-style gameplay as of Gold).
  • WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Game$! ^note Atsumare!! Made in Wario (Gather!! Made in Wario) in Japanese (Nintendo GameCube, 2003): A multiplayer-focused remake of the above game containing 12 multiplayer modes.
• WarioWare: Twisted! ^note Mawaru Made in Wario (Turning Made in Wario) in Japanese (GBA, 2004): After breaking his Game Boy Advance, Wario goes to Dr. Crygor to get it fixed, only for the scientist to turn it into a handheld without any buttons. After seeing the others happily playing with the new device, he hatches a scheme to market it. Utilizes a cartridge equipped with a gyroscope and rumble^note the only GBA game other than Drill Dozer with such a feature and features 223 microgames. Introduces 18-Volt, who shares a microgame set with 9-Volt. While this was officially the second installment in the series, it wasn't released in Europe, and was released in North America and Australia after Touched!.
• WarioWare: Touched! ^note Sawaru Made in Waiario (Touching Made in Wario) in Japanese (Nintendo DS, 2004): After a run-in with an elderly angel, Wario finds himself with a handheld device with two screens, but no buttons. Upon realizing the second screen is touch-sensitive, he determines he can make twice as much money with dual-screen games as he could with single-screen ones. Features 190 microgames based around the DS's touchscreen and microphone, with microgames no longer having standardized lengths like previous entries. Introduces Ashley (alongside Red) and Mike as new microgame hosts.
• WarioWare: Smooth Moves ^note Odoru Made in Wario (Dancing Made in Wario) in Japanese (Wii, 2006): Features 205 microgames and is themed around holding and moving the Wii Remote ^note referred to in-game as the Form Baton in a variety of different ways. Unlike other entries, it lacks a Framing Device prologue, though Wario's scenario features him discovering the Form Baton, an ancient Wii Remote that can be held and positioned in various "forms". Introduces Penny Crygor, Young Cricket, and Master Mantis (the latter two sharing a set) as new microgame hosts.
• WarioWare: Snapped! ^note Utsusu Made in Wario (Projection Made in Wario) in Japanese (DSiWare, 2008): Wario opens up his own amusement park, using some of his friends as employees. Utilizes the Nintendo DSi camera to take pictures and features 20 microgames.
• WarioWare: D.I.Y. ^note Made in Ore (Made in Me) in Japanese (DS, 2009): Due to never getting paid, the others have quit working for Wario to instead work at rival game company Diamond Software, forcing Wario to hire the player themselves as a developer. This entry allows you to create your own microgames, with 90 pre-made microgames being available from the start. It also includes functions to create music and four-panel comic strips.
  • WarioWare: D.I.Y. Showcase ^note Asobu Made in Ore (Play Made by Me) in Japanese (WiiWare, 2010): A companion game for the above, featuring 72 unique microgames.
• Game & Wario (Wii U, 2013): Wario learns about a new game console that features a controller with a screen and sees it as another money-making opportunity, while the others also show interest in the new device. A Gaiden Game that departs from the franchise's signature microgame style, having individual game modes that function more like the boss stages from previous entries (although microgames do appear in one of the game modes). Features 16 minigames, and properly introduces 5-Volt.
• WarioWare Gold ^note Made in Wario Gorgeous in Japanese (Nintendo 3DS, 2018): After stealing a golden vase from a small village, Wario starts up another money-making scheme, risking his own fortune by hosting a gaming tournament and seeking to win it himself, with his friends agreeing to help make the games for it. Features an astounding total of 300 microgames both old and new, all built around three base styles of "Mash", "Twist", and "Touch".^note "Blow" games are also included, but have no dedicated stages and only appear in levels that use all of the other styles It is the first game in the series to feature fully-voiced cutscenes. It also introduces Lulu.
• WarioWare: Get It Together! ^note Osusowakeru Made in Wario (Sharing Made in Wario) in Japanese (Nintendo Switch, 2021): When Wario and his friends get sent into a world of microgames as a result of another one of the former's harebrain schemes, they must play through 222 Microgames in order to escape. In contrast to previous entries, the cast is fully playable this time (as opposed to just being hosts) as you play as them to complete microgames, each with their own unique abilities. It also features a co-op mode, allowing you and a second player to play through them together.
• WarioWare: Move It! ^note Chō Odoru Made in Wario (Super Dancing Made in Wario) in Japanese (Switch, 2023): Direct sequel to Smooth Moves, as shown by its Japanese and Korean names. Its microgames are themed around holding and moving the Switch’s Joy-Cons in several different ways, differing from Smooth Moves by using both Joy-Cons at once instead of only one, similar to Orbulon's stage from said game. It also features a co-op mode, similar to Get It Together!.

(WRAP IT UP!)

Other releases include multiple WarioWare, Inc. trial versions and selected microgames, downloadable to a Game Boy Advance from Wario World and in one case from the Nintendo GameCube Preview Disc, as well as the DSiWare games Bird & Beans and Paper Airplane Chase (respectively Pyoro and Paper Plane in the British English version), standalone versions of minigames from Mega Microgame$! Wario also appears in the Super Smash Bros. series with his default appearance having him wear his clothes from WarioWare (his Wario Land appearance is available as well), along with two WarioWare-inspired stages and Kat & Ana and Ashley as Assist Trophies. Diamond City also appears as a course in the two Mario Kart arcade games Arcade GP and Arcade GP 2, though it bears little resemblance to its appearance in these games. Ashley has appeared as an unlockable costume in Super Mario Maker and downloadable content for Band Brothers P.

Rhythm Heaven was made by the same team that made this series, and it shows. The fourth installment of the franchise, Rhythm Heaven Megamix, features a WarioWare-themed unlockable challenge, and they cross-reference each other frequently.

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LIST TROPES!

#-B

• 20% More Awesome: As Wario himself says in the description of his intro stage in Touched!:
  Wario here! No offense, but you stink! My Touch Training stage is guaranteed to make you 138 percent less pathetic!
• Aborted Arc:
  • The Excuse Plot of D.I.Y. establishes that, due to his refusal to pay salaries, half of Wario's employees left him to work for a competitor named Diamond Software, which also drives a rift between 9-Volt (who left) and 18-Volt (who stayed). Game & Wario completely ignores this, as everyone is back to working with Wario, and 9-Volt and 18-Volt are friends again.
  • Within Get it Together!, while the story mode stages have introductory cutscenes setting up the premise of each stage, these premises don't actually get resolved with an end cutscene. Winning the boss game just results in the characters defeating the bug that plagued the level. Particularly jarring with Kat and Ana's stage, which outright had them fighting a villain.
• Aerith and Bob: Most of the characters actually have standard names (Mona, Ashley, Jimmy, Kat, Ana, Mike), and some oddities like Dribble, Spitz and Orbulon can be explained by them being Funny Animals or Amusing Aliens who follow a different naming culture. But then you come to the people named after voltages and, suddenly, naming rules mean nothing anymore.
• Affectionate Parody: The Friendless Battle mode in Get It Together! is one for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's World of Light. You have to fight a Multi-Mook Melee of all the game's playable characters, much like the Puppet Fighters, while a Musical Pastiche of "Lifelight" plays. The title screen in particular echoes the mode's opening cutscene: the possessed characters are seen in a barren wasteland, with Pyoro taking the role of Kirby as the last survivor.
• All Guys Want Cheerleaders: The football player in Smooth Moves has a crush on Mona, who (in this game anyway) is one of his school's cheerleaders.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: Any game without a Final-Exam Boss will usually have this as the final stage, mixing up themes from all of the previous microgame sets.
• All There in the Manual: The Japanese websites for the original game and Smooth Moves feature lengthy in-universe blogs, which gives a lot of information about the series' original character's backstory and personalities.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The title theme in the Japanese version of Smooth Moves was originally an upbeat version of the Temple of Form theme. When the game arrived internationally, it was replaced with a rearrangement of Mega Microgame$!'s title theme instead.
• Always Close: Mona has a habit of arriving at her job mere seconds before opening time. It's even listed as a personality trait on her Game & Wario character card.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Dribble, an orange dog, and Spitz, a yellow cat.
• Animal Motifs: A different animal appears on the door when you play the challenge towers:
  • Mega Microgame$!: Pigs.
  • Twisted!: Monkeys.
  • Touched!: Bears.
  • Smooth Moves: Elephants.
  • Gold: Various (lion for All Mixed Up, alligator for Thrill Ride, and eagle for Super Hard).
  • Get It Together!: Gorillas.
  • Move It!: Various (hippo for Mixed, tiger for Super Hard, snake for Thrilling, flamingos for Double Act).
• Animation Bump: While the animation in the prerendered cutscenes in Get It Together! is of a similar quality to previous games, the animations of the playable characters are noticeably higher quality.
• Animesque:
  • The character designs as a whole evoke anime design sensibilities, somewhere along the lines of children's anime like Doraemon or Anpanman. The more human characters lean into a standard anime look, though it's inverted in Gold, which has a more cartoony and exaggerated style.
  • Several of the minigame title screens in Game & Wario, along with the title screen for Frenemy Frenzy in Get It Together!, utilize a "realistic" anime aesthetic—which makes the human characters prettier and the non-human characters more anthropomorphic.
• Annoying Pop-Up Ad: The "Pop-Up Patrol" microgame from Get it Together! involves removing ad windows so a nebulous user can use a social media website.
• Antepiece: The character stage intros in Twisted! and Touched! have a short section that introduces you to the gimmick of the stage that you're free to pass or fail without consequence.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • In Smooth Moves, if you've just played a microgame involving spinning the remote around (specifically, BYOM (from Kat & Ana's stage) or All Wound Up (from Young Cricket's stage), and thus twisted up the wrist strap, the next game will be one in which you have to drop the Wii Remote and leave it dangling by the strap, untwisting it.
  • In Gold onwards, if you get a Game Over on your first run through a stage in story mode, the game will allow you to spend some coins to continue from the last game you fell to. This also applies to the boss stages. Once you clear a stage and it turns into an endless version, this option is no longer available.
  • In the "Wario Interrupts" mode in Gold, if Wario Deluxe uses a distraction that can be cleared before the next set of three microgames (for instance, tilting the 3DS to pour the wine out the glass), microgames of that particular input scheme will not appear while the distraction is active.
  • Get it Together!'s Play-o-pedia has you pick the size and members of the crew you want to use when you select a microgame to play. If you play a microgame with one particular crew selection, then pick another microgame afterwards, the game will ask you if you want to use the same crew setup again.
  • Also in Get It Together!, there are microgames where a character can get damaged and be knocked out of the microgame. This isn’t automatically a failure state in some microgames though, in such games if you get hurt but still accomplish the objective (whichever comes first) it counts as you clearing the microgame.
  • If you lose all your lives during your first time playing a story stage in Move It!, the game will grant a Second Chance Stance. If you hold the Second Chance Stance for three seconds, you get to continue with four new lives.
• Anti Poop-Socking:
  • Smooth Moves has this, since actually getting up and moving around is the core part of the gameplay, especially in Dr. Crygor's stage, which is specifically themed around getting some frickin' exercise. It even measures your progress in "kelories," each of which is about 1/100 - 1/50 of a calorie.
  • D.I.Y. unlocks only one of five sets of microgames per calendar day and one of 18 sets of five comics (out of 18) per calendar day.
  • Gold has an energy system in Wario Kard consisting of three garlic cloves; you need to use a clove to play a match, and if you run out of cloves, you have to wait until the timer restores them to challenge another opponent. You can also restore cloves with coins, but that leaves you with less to use on the shuffler machines.
  • Get it Together!'s Prezzy emporium only sells five individual Prezzies at a time, which restock after two real-time hours. You can also get Prezzies from the Cluckade machines, but these are randomized.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: At the end of Crygor's scenario in Gold, Mike states that ghosts do not exist, despite occasionally hanging out with an alien, a witch and her imp companion (which actually happens later in the same game during the final league, when they all go camping in bigfoot-populated woods).
• Arrange Mode: The games usually have several challenge towers waiting for you after the main story of microgames, ranging from having random microgames at level 3 and only one life, to having level 1 microgames played at an extremely fast speed, and playing all of the boss microgames in a row.
  • Mega Party Game$! is a remake/port of Mega Microgame$! that features 12 total multiplayer modes. 3 of these are multiplayer versions of minigames, 1 is a multiplayer survival mode, and the following 8 make use of the microgames in multiplayer modes that support up to 4 players:
    • "Survival Fever" is a survival mode where the players take turns playing microgames, indicated by a spotlight shining on the players. The one who survives the most microgames wins.
    • "Outta My Way" features the players alternating between playing 15 microgames each, and acting as Interface Screws for the single player. The player with the most microgames cleared wins
    • "Card e-Cards" has the players taking turns drawing microgame E-Reader cards. When a player draws a GBA card, all of the drawn microgames are played in a row. If you win, you get all of the microgame cards on the pile. If you lose at any of the microgames, both your cards, and the drawn cards are put on the pile. While a player is playing the microgames, other players can steal cards by timing A-presses. When every card is drawn, a multiplayer minigame is played to determine who gets the remaining cards in the deck and pile. The player with the most cards wins.
    • "Balloon Bang" has a player playing the microgames, and the others inflating a balloon to make the single player lose. The players alternate when one wins a microgame and the loser is the one currently playing microgames when the balloon pops.
    • "Wobbly Bobbly" has the players balancing on turtle shells. After playing multiplayer minigames, the player who wins gets to play a microgame. Depending on if they win or lose the microgame, either everyone else gets a shell, or they get a smaller turtle that makes balancing harder. The last one standing wins.
    • "Milky Way Delirium" is a variation on Othello (the board game), where to claim an asteroid space, you need to play as many microgames as the number on the space. After every space is filled, the winning player has to play a microgame, but it's blocked by the spaces of the other players. If they lose, everyone else wins.
    • "Listen to the Doctor" has the players taking turns listening to a doctor, who tasks them with doing a microgame while doing something else outside of it. After the microgame, the other players clap if they did their task correctly whenever or not they cleared the microgame. The person who has the most claps wins.
    • "All for One" is a cooperative mode where one player plays the microgames, but the lights are out and the others need to use flashlights to light up the screen.
  • Gold also has a few unique modes:
    • In the "Wario Watch" mode, returning from Twisted!, there are no lives to lose. Instead, you're on a time limit to complete as many microgames as possible. Completing a microgame increases the time limit. There's also a "Close Shave" mode that has less time for the time limit.
    • "Wario Interrupts" gives you a random Interface Screw from Wario Deluxe every three microgames, but you can sic Lulu on him to interrupt him every ten microgames.
    • "Sneaky Gamer" returns from Game and Wario, which sees 9-Volt playing his microgames past his bedtime. He has to hide in his bed to avoid being seen by his mom 5-Volt, but not so much that he actually falls asleep.
    • In "Cruise Control", the player has to accompany Dribble and Spitz in completing 15 microgames in as little time as possible. Tilting the 3DS changes the speed of the microgames.
    • "Split Screen" sees Kat and Ana alternating microgames on the top and bottom of the 3DS with no transitions between them.
• Art Evolution:
  • The characters' designs have evolved subtly over time. For example, between Mega Microgame$! and Smooth Moves, Mona's waist became more realistic, and her eyes became smaller.
  • Game & Wario brought a more definite style change, as all the characters besides Wario himself are now drawn with thick outlines and solid black eyes, similar to Rhythm Heaven.
  • While they both use Limited Animation, Smooth Moves and Game & Wario are noticeably more dynamic and smooth in their animation compared to their predecessors. This is likely thanks to the jump to consoles, which means less limitations overall compared to handhelds.
  • WarioWare Gold has a rounded and cartoony look with exaggerated proportions, distancing itself away from Rhythm Heaven. The characters' eyes are also colored in once again. The animation is noticeably more stiff and limited compared to the other games in the franchise, likely due to the bigger emphasis on voice acting compared to previous titles.
• The Artifact:
  • All the games involve a Random Events Plot to some degree, in which the POV snaps all over the place to follow the antics of whichever cast member is the face of the minigame type you're going to play. This made some amount of sense in the earlier titles, as the closest those games had to an overarching plot was Wario asking them to help him make games, if it even comes to that. Later titles like Gold and Get It Together!, on the other hand, have an overarching plot while still retaining the glimpses into the characters' day-to-day lives, which doesn't quite make so much sense; the story will jump from a video game Tournament Arc to suddenly follow Mona's clothes shopping, for example.
  • Oddly enough, the microgames in both Smooth Moves and its sequel, Move It!. Neither game involve Wario and his friends making microgames as part of the plot. Move It! has them particularly disconnected due to the game's nature as a Vacation Episode, and either way Wario and his crew wouldn't have known about the Form Baton/Form Stones beforehand and thus make microgames themed around them.
  • Mike's whole concept was born from the potential of using the Nintendo DS's microphone to complete microgames. For consoles that does not display this specific feature, Mike has no real purpose to be around but to be Crygor's Robot Buddy.
• Art Shift: The Variety Pack title screens in Get It Together! use very different artstyles compared to the rest of the game. In particular, Frenemy Frenzy's title screen shows the cast in a more realistic artstyle, evoking an action anime.
• Art-Style Clash: The microgames in Get it Together! all have different art styles as usual. However, the playable characters always remain the same. Oddly, the microgame "Basically Water Polo" averts this, with objects and NPC goalies in a very similar art style to the playable characters.
• Ascended Extra:
  • 18-Volt started off as a Satellite Character for 9-Volt, but got more recognition as the games went on. In Smooth Moves, 9-Volt's storyline actually revolves around 18-Volt trying to make up with 9-Volt by buying him a new console, 18-Volt hosts his own set of microgames in D.I.Y. Showcase, and in Game & Wario, 18-Volt hosts one of the modes of the Gamer minigame. Gold keeps the ascension going by giving him his own Story Mode level, complete with a rival figure in the form of 13-Amp.
  • 5-Volt (9-Volt's mom) went from making only cameo appearances to actually playing a key role in "Gamer" in Game & Wario. This reaches its logical conclusion in Gold, where she is treated as a WarioWare Inc. employee with her own stage and everything, just like her son.
  • 9-Volt's pet Fronk served as a background element in his stages for most of the series, but in Gold he gets dialogue and has a supporting role in 9-Volt's stage. This was done as a way to reintroduce the Fronk-themed pop-up microgames from Twisted!, as they later show up in the Ultra League stages with 9-Volt's Fronk as the host.
  • Mr. Sparkles, introduced in Gold, went from a gag infomercial character in that game to the host of Megagame Muscles in Move It!, complete with getting to perform the series-staple new vocal theme for it. Also, he may or may not now be some kind of god.
• Ascended Glitch: In-universe, After Wario and his friends beat the final bug, Wario decides to leave it alone, since it messed everything up in his level, which he believes made it perfect.
• Background Music Override: Quite a few stages in the series have a continuous theme that plays rather than the short ditties typically used until you reach the boss microgame. Here's a list:
  • WarioWare Inc.: Mega Microgame$!: Dribble & Spitz, Kat & Ana and Dr. Crygor.
  • WarioWare Inc. Mega Party Game$!: Survival Fever and One-Controller Survival
  • WarioWare: Twisted!: Mona and Dribble & Spitz, with the latter even allowing you to select the song via the radio in the intro cutscene.
  • WarioWare: Touched!: Ashley.
  • WarioWare: Smooth Moves!: Dribble & Spitz once again, and the Kelerometer.
  • WarioWare D.I.Y.: Jimmy T.
  • WarioWare Gold: Wario Deluxe, and Split Screen.
  • WarioWare Get It Together!: Penny's Mix, whose song also overrides the usual menu music when viewing her artwork gallery.
  • WarioWare: Move It!: Megagame Muscles.
• Badass Family: 9-Volt's family, if only counting his mother 5-Volt. She doesn't look like it, but she's much more of an expert gamer than he is, something that she's embarrassed of.
• Barehanded Blade Block: "Wario Kendo" in the original. Could be Subverted, given that all it does is bruise Wario's nose if you fail, that and the sword breaks in half.
• Battle Boomerang: Mona's main ability of choice in Get It Together! is a boomerang that can be controlled.
• Battle Rapping: 18-Volt's stage in Gold is focused around a rap battle between him and 13-Amp, with a kid's games on the line.
• Beach Episode: Move It! is set on the tropical Caresaway Island, which Wario won 20 trips to (enough for him and all the other recurring characters) after buying many garlic burgers.
• Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts: A variant. Local taxi drivers Dribble and Spitz have a habit of picking up supernatural passengers—usually aliens, though a mermaid has also been seen. Typically, the passenger reveals their true nature after arriving at their destination, and then disappears without a trace.
• Big Bad: Gold features Wario himself. The Wario Bowl games turn out to be nothing more than a scam, with Wario never having any intention to reward anyone, growing increasingly frustrated as the player progresses and trying to escape with all the money he made at the end once again. Even worse, he actually confronts the player after becoming Drunk on the Dark Side due to wearing the pot he stole at the game's opening on his head.
• Big Eater: Aside from Wario himself, you've got Kat & Ana (Gold), Orbulon (also Gold), Cricket & Mantis and even Ashley (D.I.Y. and Get It Together! have her hosting "Food" minigames). There's also the Demon Lord from Ashley's story in Gold, Hum Gree.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: Dribble and Spitz, as well as 18-Volt and 9-Volt. Dribble and 18-Volt tower over Spitz and 9-Volt.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • One of the recurring microgame songs has a distorted voice counting to 8 in Japanese.
  • In Gold, several phone numbers match the subject of the call in Japanese: the EIGA (movie) number had a person who talks about movies, the HAHA (mother) phone number led to 13-Amp's mom, and the ACHI (common way of saying "it's hot") number led to the sumo in "Heat Wave".
• Bird-Poop Gag: One of Wario-Man's microgames in Twisted! called "Power Line Pigeons" involves avoiding being pooped on by pigeons. A similar microgame appears in Get It Together!.
• Black Bead Eyes: Most background characters sport those. Master Mantis is the sole exception, at least among the main characters.
• Bookends: Multiple instances.
  • Almost every game begins with an easy stage hosted by Wario, and later has a more difficult level as either the penultimate or final stage, also hosted by Wario;
    • Both the first and last stages of Mega Microgame$! take place at WarioWare Inc., and both involve Wario getting trapped inside one of his belongings (his radio in the first and his computer in the last).
    • Twisted! and Touched! both begin with a normal Wario stage and end with a Wario-Man stage.
    • Smooth Moves has Wario stealing the Form Baton in the first stage, and a swarm of Tiny Warios feasting on strawberries in the penultimate stage.
    • Game & Wario has the Arrow minigame hosted by Wario at the start, and the Pirates minigame hosted by Pirate Wario as the second-to-last stage.
    • Gold has Wario hosting the three leagues' warmup stages, and Wario Deluxe hosting the final stage.
    • Get it Together! has the first stage of the main story as a level featuring Wario and created by Wario, and the last stage of the main story as that same level, but corrupted by the Mega Bug.
    • Move It! has Wario hosting the first stage as usual. The last stage also has Wario, but this time he is unwillingly fused with the island's volcano, which then threatens the island.
  • The first and last cutscenes in Touched! involve Wario and an old man in a sewer.
  • Gold:
    • The opening cutscene starts with a zoom in on the Earth. The closing cutscene (not including The Stinger with Lulu) ends with a zoom out on the Earth.
    • After starting a new game, you are given 10000 coins that you must spend immediately to enter the tournament. After beating the final stage, you are given 10000 coins as a prize (Wario promised 10 million coins, but he spent most of them on balloons and the rest was split up between the other characters).
    • As mentioned below, Gold was the last first party game released on the Nintendo 3DS to be an original title rather than a remake or port, while Touched! was one of the first games announced and released for the original Nintendo DS, thus bookending the DS family as a whole.
• Boss Remix: During the final phase of the Final Boss fight in Gold, the song that's playing becomes an intense remix of the game's main theme.
• Boss Rush: Unique to Mega Microgame$! is the "Total Boss" tower, in which the player plays all the boss microgames in a row and does not allow skipping the microgames by failing them.
• Boss Warning Siren: All titles have a sound clip whenever a boss stage is coming up next and will linger on the screen between microgames eight beats longer than normal. There will usually (but not always) be an on-screen message telling you that you're about to encounter the boss. Said sound clip varies from game to game, but that in Smooth Moves sounds particularly like a klaxon played to a beat.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Taken literally in two separate games.
  • In the first game, one of the microgames has you catching a baseball; missing it causes the ball to smash through the screen.
  • In Touched!, Wario's boss microgame has you swatting flies on the touch screen; tapping too many times causes the screen to shatter and the flies to come flying out.
• Brick Joke:
  • After Dr. Crygor's stage in Gold, he remarks that another brave soul will find the fungi he left behind in the forest out of terror. After completing Orbulon's stage, Orbulon mentions he and the pigs he gathered found and ate some left behind mushrooms in the same forest, seemingly being ignorant of how scary the forest was.
  • At the beginning of Mona's stage in Move It!, Lulu is chasing a fish with a squirt gun. In the stage's outro, Mona sees the silhouette of a mermaid, which is revealed to just be the same fish getting its revenge by trying to eat Lulu legs-first.
  • Also from Move It!, the video in the game's opening talks about how dancing with the Form Stones could calm any evil. Sure enough, the last stage of the game involves everyone dancing in order to calm down Volcano Wario.
• Bullet Seed: In Pyoro 2, Pyoro spits beans out instead of using his tongue.
• The Bus Came Back: The intro cutscene for Mona's stage in Get It Together! features her Pig, Elephant, and Monkey friends, all of whom had stopped appearing after Smooth Moves. Cractus from Wario Land 4 also makes a return in Move It!.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Wario, naturally. In almost every entry, he's guaranteed to end up humiliated or punished in some form, although in a deservingly manner most of the time.
  • Dr. Crygor often endures a lot of hurt and suffering, thanks to his experiments and inventions almost always backfiring on him. Sometimes though, it's not even his fault, but someone else's, like in Penny's Gold scenario.
  • Orbulon's stories usually end in complete failure on whatever he's attempting to achieve in them.
• Button Mashing:
  • There's a microgame in the original game called "Button Masher" that requires you to smash walking A's & arrows by pushing the corresponding buttons.
  • Several microgames require you to mash the A button to win, such as Banana Munch and Hard Core from Mega Microgame$!, and Nighttime Allergies from that game and Gold.

C-D

• Call-Back:
  • In the intro to Touched!!, when Wario is confused as to how to play the DS-like console, he tries rotating it, which is how most games are played in Twisted!. However, this wouldn't have made sense to early buyers of the game outside of Japan, which is the only country where Twisted's release preceded Touched's.
  • Gold uses Mega Microgame$!' Story Mode's level completion and Game Over sound effects, as well as Twisted's Boss Warning Siren and "Speed Up!". The WarioWatch mode also returns from Twisted!, with its music being a remix of the song it originally used.
  • The six non-boss microgames in Gold's Touch League Intro each use one of the six touchscreen input styles from Touched!: tap, cut, rub, drag, scribble, and spin.
  • 9-Volt's scenario in Gold is similar to the one he had in the first WarioWare - himself in a JRPG pastiche, roaming the world - except this time, he has Fronk as a party member.
  • Jimmy T's microgame set in Get it Together! has a set of dancing figures in the background reacting to your performance. When a boss stage is called, they dance in the exact same way◊ as the figures in level 3 of Wario Dance Company from Smooth Moves.
  • Move It! is a wholesale sequel to Smooth Moves, as indicated by their Japanese and Korean titles (Dancing Made in Wario and Super Dancing Made in Wario). Both games focus on creating poses using the respective controllers for their systems. The English titles are similar, but less closely related than in Japanese and Korean; Move It!'s first stage also reprises the first stage of Smooth Moves, with Wario holding stone versions of the controllers used and running toward the camera while being chased by something (a boulder trap in Smooth Moves and tribe members in Move It) with the microgame transition zooming in and out of Wario's mouth. The final microgame is Super Wario Dance Company, a direct sequel to the final microgame of Smooth Moves, Wario's Dance Company.
  • Orbulon's stage in Move It! features a multitude of microscopic Orbulons mining through his memories. Several memories can appear in the background when you clear a microgame, including the moai and pyramids from his stage in Get it Together! and the rocket Orbulon was trapped inside in his story from DIY.
• The Cameo:
  • Characters from Rhythm Heaven frequently make appearances, either hidden in the backgrounds of cutscenes or in the microgames themselves. In one odd example, not only does the entire scientist staff from the Rhythm Heaven Megamix game "First Contact" cameo in Wario's intro in Get It Together!, but their names are revealed for the first time in the credits.
  • Jimmy T.'s family from Touched! and Jimmy P. from Smooth Moves make appearances in separate photos on Jimmy T.'s cellphone in his character trailer for Gold.
  • At the end of Jimmy T.'s stage in Move It!, one of the two girls playing in the water has a vague resemblance to Hilda.
• Cartoon Meat: WarioWare: Smooth Moves features the microgame "BYOM", in which the player rotates the Wii Remote in order to roast a joint of manga meat — the kind resembling a meaty cylinder with a Stock Femur Bone through its middle — for cavemen.
• Casting Gag: Some of them happens in the Latin American Spanish dub:
  • Moises Ivan Mora's role as Spitz is very similar to his previous role as Rigby, when he voiced a small but emotional critter, together with a bigger one.
  • Cristina Hernández's role as Ashley is somewhat meta; she's known for voicing Magical Girls, such as Sakura Kinomoto, Chibi-usa and Yu Morisawa, as well as Cute Witches, such as Mildred Hubble. However, she's also playing against type, since Ashley is a quiet and emotionless girl rather than the Genki Girls she's known for.
  • This is not the first time Annie Rojas (Ana) has voiced a ninja before, as she previously voiced Sarada Uchiha in Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: 5-Volt's stage in Gold has her doing workouts in order to have the strength to lift a set of frying pans advertised in the workout video, and as a result, is able to lift an entire cabinet easily at the end of the stage when 9-Volt drops his 3DS under it. This in turn provides a change of gameplay in "Sneaky Gamer" involving the TV. Unlike the original "Gamer" from Game & Wario, 5-Volt can lift up the TV cabinet instead of just appearing though the TV screen.
• Cheaters Never Prosper:
  • At the end of Mega Microgame$!, Wario makes a truckload of money, and attempts to flee in a rocket to avoid paying his employees. Dr. Crygor later flies into the rocket, sending Wario, and all the money, falling into the sea.
  • Happens again in Gold, as the Wario Bowl was nothing more than a huge scam. Wario is eventually defeated by the player and Lulu, then gets confronted by his friends, who force him to split the earnings this time around.
• Celebrity Paradox: A few of the microgames in 9-Volt's sets are based on the Wario Land series, where they are treated as classic Nintendo games. Wario's appearances in microgames are otherwise as flattering self-inserts in his own sets.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The Leagues in Gold are color-coded yellow for Mash, blue for Twist, red for Touch, and purple for Ultra.
• Comeback Mechanic: In "Survival Fever" of Mega Party Game$!, players with more lives left have to play the level 2 variations of microgames, while those with fewer lives get the easier level 1 forms.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure:
  • Smooth Moves:
    • In the main menu of Smooth Moves, Wario's Idle Animation has his pants drop to the ground before he quickly pulls them up.
    • The objective of the microgame "How the West Was Really Won" is to drop your opponent's pants.
  • The box art◊ for Get It Together! shows Wario ripping his pants while forced into a split, revealing his Goofy Print Underwear.
• Company Cross References: Once per game, 9-Volt, 18-Volt and/or 9-Volt will host a set of microgames based on products of Nintendo's past. References to the creations of Nintendo R&D1 (the unit that made the first game), Gunpei Yokoi (the original founder of said R&D unit), and Intelligent Systems (the current developer of the series) are particularly popular.
• Console Cameo:
  • Several of the games, mostly 9-Volt's, include various Nintendo systems. This even extends to 9-Volt's multiplayer mode in Mega Party Game$, which is based on the e-Reader accessory for the GBA.
  • The Form Baton and its attached Balance Stone are quite obviously just a Wii Remote and Nunchuk carved from stone.
  • In D.I.Y. Showcase, the backgrounds includes landmasses based on the right-hand buttons and C-Stick from the Nintendo GameCube controller.
  • Gold features an entire gallery of Nintendo products throughout their history, including items from before their game-producing days.
• Continuity Nod:
  • A lot of the later games feature microgames that replicate previous games in the series.
  • In Gold, Penny's scenario involves Dr. Crygor suffering from a horrible stomachache after drinking a strange liquid, just like his scenario in the very first WarioWare.
  • Mona's character trailer for Gold features a montage of her wearing almost all of her unique outfits from past games.
  • There's several to Wario Land:
    • The "Loot Scoot" and "Float Your Boat" microgames in the first involve Wario using his signature body slam and ground pound, respectively.
    • Much of the music and sound effects from the first game, including Wario's voice, come from Wario Land 4; it shares the same sound engine and composer.
    • Wario's house in Twisted! contains the music box that Wario Land 3 took place in and a picture of the Pyramid from Wario Land 4.
    • The ending of Touched! has Wario suffer the Flat Wario transformation courtesy of the Sewer Guru.
    • Tiny Wario appears as the Disc-One Final Boss in Smooth Moves.
    • Gold's plot hinges upon treasure-hunting, as Wario was prone to do in the Wario Land series.
    • Wario uses his body slam attack as his main move in Get It Together!.
    • Kat and Ana end up fighting Cractus, the boss of the Emerald Passage in Wario Land 4, in their Move It! story
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Wario. He hires his friends to make games for him, but doesn't pay them. At first, they were somewhat forgiving (especially Mona, who is rumoured to have a crush on him), but in the end, half the team quit to work for a rival company. Wario then hires (but still doesn't pay) the "players" to make microgames for him. Despite that, WarioWare went under. So what does Wario do? Create Game & Wario, starting all over again. Game & Wario lasted even less than that, so Wario holds a gaming tournament called the Wario Bowl. He still refuses to pay his friends for their work and even tries to sabotage the tournament to take all the prize money himself, but is thwarted by the player and Lulu. His friends also manage to get their cut of the money.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: The entirety of Get It Together! could have been averted had Wario told someone about the bugs he accidentally allowed in the game BEFORE he began beta testing it in front of them. Needless to say, nobody let Wario live this moment of incompetence down, not even the more forgiving members of Wario's crew.
• Creative Closing Credits:
  • During Twisted!'s credits, the player can press various buttons to change the background.
  • Smooth Moves has a Mii representing each and every single credit; the player controls a moving hole that the Miis can fall into, and the game keeps track of how many you've scored.
  • In D.I.Y., the credits take the form of a shmup game, with each credit represented as an enemy ship; Satoru Iwata's executive producer credit is a large boss UFO. Once again, the game keeps score, and there's even an achievement for getting a perfect score.
  • The credits for Gold are played similar to the toilet paper roll minigame from Touched!, which was one of the returning minigames. When the roll runs out, it's revealed it was supplied by the people of Luxeville.
  • The credits for Get it Together! features every playable character in the game, and each credit can be knocked off the screen. Doing so to every single one of them completes one of the missions.
  • The credits for Move It! feature two boxes of tissues, the one on the left showing the credits and the one on the right showing all their favorite foods. The player must remove all the tissues to view the credits and at the end it shows their time.
• Creator Cameo:
  • In-universe. With the exception of the intro stages of Twisted! and Touched!, all of Wario's microgames feature either him or a part of his design like his nose, mustache, gloves, or W symbol, being the closest thing to a "theme" for him.
  • In a more traditional example, Satoru Iwata appears as a shopkeeper in Smooth Moves.
• Cultural Translation: In the Japanese version of Smooth Moves, the Form Baton poses are all very specific Japanese concepts, and Kabuki Sounds play on the explanation screens while a narrator reads out the descriptions (the comedy being that he's a non-Japanese speaker with a noticeable accent). In the international versions, the poses were changed to more general concepts while keeping the same controls, the music was replaced with a soothing track, and the narrator is very calm and relaxed while delivering non-sequiturs to carry over the humor. For example, two different versions of the same pose:
  Japanese: Waterfall climbing. With the Form Baton in vertical position, place your thumb gently on the button. This form, beautiful as the koi that climbs violent waterfalls, steals the hearts of those who see it.
  English: The Umbrella. Hold the Form Baton vertically, thumb resting lightly on the button. Through this stance, you channel the quiet dignity of a circus clown in the midst of a thunderstorm.
• Cute Kitten: Disco dancing kittens in Smooth Moves! Later on, Jimmy P.'s stage has dancing puppies, and the similarity is lampshaded at the end. Another cute kitty appears in Jimmy's scenario in Gold; she gives Jimmy a major popularity boost by jumping into his afro.
• Cute Witch: Ashley is a cute young girl, and her outfit resembles a school uniform more than a witch's robe, but she still has potent magical abilities.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • Certain classic microgames (such as the snowboarding game) in Gold return but under a different control scheme (the snowboard game in question now using the "Twist" controls as opposed to the "Mash" controls like it did in Mega Microgame$!).
  • In-universe, this is what prompted the "Stylus Hunt" microgame in Gold. 9-Volt has every model of the Nintendo 3DS line, but keeps forgetting where the stylus is held on each one.
• Darker and Edgier: The title screens of the various minigames within Game & Wario. Can also overlap with Hotter and Sexier for some of them.
• Dark Reprise: The final stage of Gold has a more serious remix of Wario's introductionary league levels. Fitting since the host is Wario in his Wario Deluxe form also acting as the final boss of the game. Surprisingly enough it also gets a Triumphant Reprise in the same level once Lulu comes to confront Wario Deluxe and also help the player preventing Wario Deluxe from cheating further.
• Deadpan Snarker: The "forms" in Smooth Moves are explained by an incredibly dry narrator, which contrasts with their humorous descriptions.
• Death Glare:
  • Ashley and 5-Volt are masters of this when pissed off or serious, thanks to their Glowing Eyes of Doom.
  • In Get It Together!, all of the present cast glares at Wario just before chasing him after it's revealed that Wario's poor programming skills are what caused the Game Bugs they've spent the game defeating.
• Degraded Boss: In Gold, some of the boss microgames from earlier games ("Dungeon Dilemma", "The Frog Flap", and the skateboard segment of "Wario's Adventure" from Mega Microgame$!, "Stumblebot" from Twisted!, and "Star Fox" from Smooth Moves) are found in shortened versions as regular microgames. (Inverted in three cases, however: Loot Scoot from Mega Microgame$!, Clawing for More from Touched!, and One Hit Wonder from Smooth Moves.)
• Deliberately Monochrome: The unlockable Sheriff minigame in Mega Microgame$! starts off with mostly black-and-white graphics, unlike the original arcade game which had color; however, complete enough loops through the game and the color graphics will gradually be restored.
• Demon Head: In Smooth Moves, 9-Volt towers over and screams "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" to 18-Volt after a tug-of-war over a Game & Watch between the two ends up breaking it.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Mike, despite getting his own Image Song, seems to do nothing now besides show up in scenes with the Crygors. He gets a bit more importance in Gold, which includes some of his Blow microgames, but still qualifies as this trope since he doesn't get his own stage. He finally gets to be a playable character in Get It Together!.
  • In Touched!, Orbulon only makes small appearances, like in Ashley's story, and Dribble and Spitz only get a cameo in Mike's story. All three go back to hosting games in Smooth Moves onwards.
  • D.I.Y. zig-zags with this, as only Mona, Jimmy T., Ashley, Orbulon, and 9-Volt host games this time. As for the other characters...
    • Young Cricket and Master Mantis don't host games anymore, being relegated to hosting the exercises in the Assembly Dojo.
    • Penny is kind of on the fence between this and Ascended Supporting Character, considering she has a considerable presence and actually interacts with Wario on a significant level. In the tutorial.
    • Dribble & Spitz, Kat & Ana, and 18-Volt all go MIA in the main game. However, they do host games in D.I.Y. Showcase, giving 18-Volt A Day in the Limelight in the process.
    • Dr. Crygor only briefly appears in the intro, and doesn't appear at all in Showcase. However, it's his invention that drives the plot and gameplay once again (like in Twisted!), so this could be considered a case of Small Role, Big Impact.
  • Fronk is the only microgame host in Gold who does not become a playable character in Get It Together!.
• Denser and Wackier: After Mega Microgame$!, the series gradually became sillier with each consecutive installment. Which is impressive, since the first game is already pretty... out there.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • A few in Gold:
    • The characters have a distinctive voice clip if:
    • The player has fallen down to only one life left.
    • The player gets a close call at a microgame.
    • The player recovers a life after successfully completing a boss game.
    • The game attempts a Bait-and-Switch that the player doesn't fall for.
      Wario: Can't fool you!
      Jimmy T.: Nice catch!
      Mona: Aren't you clever!
      Mike: That was a trap.
      Wario Deluxe: No mess-up?!
    • The player does get fooled by a Bait-and-Switch.
    • The player goes through 15 games without making a mistake.
    • The player loses three games in a row, taking them straight from the max amount of lives to one.
    • The player wins five microgames in a row while only having one life left.
    • The player loses by doing literally nothing with their system at all.
      Kat & Ana: Pay attention!
      Ashley: ...Hello?
      Mona: Are you there?
      Penny: You froze!
      Dribble: ...You taking a nap?
      Dr. Crygor: Wake up already!
      Orbulon: Can you hear me?
    • The player reaches a boss stage with only one life left. Winning the boss stage with said last life also triggers a specific message as they're given a second life.
      Penny: You can do this!
      Dr. Crygor: Oh, I can't watch!
      Lulu: Be careful!
    • Pausing and unpausing the game causes the music to delay slightly. This wouldn't affect most stages much, as the entire score is composed by short win/lose jingles so it gets back on track when the next jingle plays. But the final stage features a full-length theme that plays throughout the whole stage (even overriding microgame music). The developers worked around this by designing the theme to be composed entirely by short jingles, so if the music is delayed after pausing, it still gets back on track every four beats or so.
  • The characters in Get It Together! have various voice clips for when they get hurt. Each character also has special voice clips for when they get hurt by fire or electricity. In addition, they also have voice clips for when you win a double-length microgame early, causing it to end prematurely.
  • Characters in Get it Together! can have specific reactions to microgames that they are a good or bad fit for; for example, losing a microgame with a "good fit" character will often lead to them exclaiming in frustration or surprise.
  • In Get It Together!, Penny uses a water cannon to move around. Any microgame that involves water will actually react appropriately to the water that Penny shoots. For example, one microgame involves tipping a watering can to water a plant. With Penny, you can just water the plant yourself with your cannon. Similarly, she can use the cannon to put out fires in microgames that include fire, even if there is normally no water.
  • Many microgames in Get It Together! have multiple solutions. In Orbulon's "Spotlight", for example, you need to point the spotlight at the performer. But instead of moving the light, you can move the performer into the spotlight instead.
• Difficulty by Acceleration: The microgames themselves are ludicrously simple, so the bulk of the challenge is keeping up with them when they start going super-fast (up to 200% faster!).
• Disc-One Final Boss:
  • Smooth Moves has Tiny Wario. While his stage technically wraps up the main story, there's more to do afterwards, including Orbulon's stage and Dr. Crygor's stage.
  • Get It Together! has the Wario Bug, who seems like a traditional final boss for the series due to taking on the image of Wario, being the biggest Game Bug, his stage having the traditional Wario-themed microgames of final stages past, and him throwing curveballs by attacking your characters during the in-between periods between games. After this level, it seems like the story is wrapped up nicely, with the bugs being (mostly) destroyed and everyone returning to the real world. Then it turns out three members of Wario's entourage are still missing, and you have to play five more stages before reaching the real ending.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Wario Deluxe's introduction involves a lot of Toilet Humor innuendo, made funnier by the reveal that the treasure of Luxeville is a toilet.
• Double Play: In Get It Together!, some Wario Cup events have the player controlling two copies of the same character simultaneously, as if playing in co-op.
• Dream Intro: In the WarioWare D.I.Y. intro, Dr. Crygor dreams about playing a Wii, when suddenly several characters come out of the TV screen and fly towards him. He wakes up and is then inspired to make the Super MakerMatic 21.
• Drop the Washtub: In Get It Together!, failing the microgame "Hide-and-Go-Ninja" results in the player character getting knocked out by a falling washtub.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: Wario once he turns into Wario Deluxe in Gold. He even gets the obligatory lightning bolt powers.
  Wario Deluxe: Oh! The money! The power! I can feel it— inside! Gurgling!... Building! It's... it's, uh... EXPLOSIVE!

E-G

• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Mega Microgame$! comes off as being very basic and vanilla when compared to later games, as there are no real gimmicks or different control styles attached to the gameplay, with the player only having to simply press the A button and d-pad on the GBA to complete microgames and little else. There were also no control tutorials or added warnings prior to the microgames unlike later games, with the objectives not always being clear, leading to a bit of trial and error that later games would smooth out.
    • As a side effect to the above, the characters who host the microgames in Mega Microgame$ have microgames revolving around a loose aesthetic theme, like Jimmy T. with sports or Dribble & Spitz with science fiction. A lot of the later installments starting with Twisted would instead focus more of each host having a specific gameplay gimmick, with only the Volts still following the old fashion method of focusing on a Nintendo theme but with miscellaneous gameplay. The aesthetic theming returned for D.I.Y. games due to the game relying on simple taps for gameplay. Interestingly, Gold and Get It Together would later compromise with the two concepts. The former separating the gameplay styles into different hosts but unifying them under a specific theme, while the latter has dedicated themes but also introduces new playable character to mix up the gameplay during the first run-through.
  • The remix stages for the first few games were hosted by Jimmy T., his family, or someone who coincidentally resembles him. Later games had remix stages hosted by the characters whose microgames are in said remix (for example, the second remix stage of Gold is hosted by the Volt characters, Ashley, and the non-humans to represent their microgames).
  • A few non-remix stages in the earlier games would reuse microgames from stages before them (two good examples of this being Dribble & Spitz's stage and Kat & Ana's stage, which both reuse microgames from Wario's Intro Games folder). Later games only reuse microgames in stages that explicitly are dedicated to combining microgame sets from past stages.
  • In Mega Microgame$! and Twisted!, double-length microgames, which last 16 beats instead of 8, were almost entirely exclusive to Orbulon's sets (save for two Wario-Man microgames in the latter game). Later WarioWare games spread double-length microgames throughout everyone's stages.
  • 9-Volt's Fronk was originally called "Shag" in Mega Microgame$! (a shortened version of his Japanese name, Shaggy). Due to the word being a vulgar swear word in Britain however, his English name was changed to "Fronk" starting with Twisted!
  • Unlike in the later games, Wario does not receive any unique form for the final stage in Mega Microgame$!. Twisted! would be the game to start that tradition.
  • In Mega Microgame$!, not only are 9-Volt's pants yellow instead of green, but some sprites show him with a Childish Tooth Gap, something that has not appeared in any other game since.
  • The first two GBA games use a generic black bomb as a timer instead of the signature blue Wario bomb, which would become the timer starting with Touched!.
• Easy Level Trick:
  • As playing Mike's microgames in Touched! and Gold require using the microphone, to avoid feeling light-headed and dizzy after a while, you can simply just input random noises instead of actually blowing air continuously.
  • The "Happy Birthday!" microgame in Gold (a returnee from Twisted!) requires you to rotate Wario fairly precisely so he can blow out up to three candles. Since it's a Wario Deluxe microgame, it secretly supports the microphone, and blowing into it causes Wario to spit more puffs of air, making the game easier.
• Eat The Dog: In Ashley's stage in Get It Together!, she's hungry enough to consider eating Red.
• Endless Game: Upon replaying a microgame set, you just keep playing the games faster and faster until you fail four times.
• Epic Fail: Wario's game in Get It Together! was so buggy that the bugs within it became sentient, kicking off the plot where everyone gets sucked into his game.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • As shown in the introduction to his microgame set in Get It Together!, while Orbulon is in the middle of "absorbing all of Earth's culture", he flat out refuses to take anything from Wario's house.
  • Speaking of Get It Together!, not even the more forgiving members of the cast are willing to overlook Wario failing to inform them of the game bugs before they were trapped in the game.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Wario Deluxe in Gold, who is portrayed slightly more seriously and threateningly than old, regular Wario.
• Exact Words: In Gold; was there ever any doubt that the "some jerk" who would "walk away ten million coins richer" was Wario himself?
• Excuse Plot: The entire franchise could be described as a series of wacky and completely random mini-games tied together with a "Wario and acquaintances"-themed Framing Device that has zero connection to any of the mini-games, as it's very rare for any of the characters to even show up in the mini-games (with the exception of Get It Together!). The "plots" of each game are equally disjointed and simple. For example, in Gold, Wario is hungry and wants pizza, but is broke, so he starts a video game tournament scam to get rich, said tournament being the one you participate in.
• Eye Beams:
  • "Alien Laser Hero", Dr. Crygor's boss stage in the original, has you control a giant robotic head that uses eye lasers to defend the Earth from asteroids and debris.
  • The original game has "Dry Eye" where you administer eye drops to someone, and a later game called "Laser Vision", where Wario shatters the eye drop bottle with Eye Beams.
    Don't even think about putting that in my eye! I hate eye drops!
• Face Fault:
  • In Twisted!, this is how Sal Out reacts when you fail a microgame in Mona's stage.
  • In Gold, the characters in the Potluck and Dancing Team stages fall backwards if you fail their microgames.
  • Mona inverts the trope in Get It Together! by falling backwards when she discovers that her pets were trashing her room behind her back in her stage's intro cutscene.
    Mona: Really!?
• Face–Heel Turn: 9-Volt appears as a villain in 18-Volt's stage in D.I.Y. Showcase, since he left WarioWare while 18-Volt stayed.
• The Faceless: 5-Volt, up until Game & Wario, was only seen from behind and from the knees down and later as a silhouette in the epilogue of 9-Volt's and 18-Volt's level in Twisted! and as a silhouette in a game over screen in Touched!.
• Fake Longevity: Gold has this problem in multiple stages:
  • The first problem is that each character has only just over enough microgames for a single run. The problems here are twofold: replaying the character's stage means you'll get almost the same exact set of microgames every time, but conversely, you need to play it at least twice to get them all.
  • The second problem is that in order to unlock additional modes, you need to grind the modes you have for coins unless you get really lucky with the machine. You get a very small amount by completing the main game, which means the odds of getting a mode that gives coins - let alone getting a mode you'll play a lot - is stacked against you.
  • Get It Together! also has the grinding, but luckily you don't need to unlock any modes by doing so. All you need to do is complete the Story mode, and everything's unlocked. The only things you need to grind for are Prezzies to increase the characters' Job rank.
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: Occurs at the end of Gold. After Wario loses the tournament, the credits begin to roll, before the rest of the cast interrupts, demanding payment from Wario for help with his tournament. The real credits roll not long afterwards.
• Fake Static: In the intro to Gold, when Wario calls Mona about making some games, she asks how much the job pays. Wario, being the cheapskate he is, responds to this question by faking phone static.
• False Reassurance: This little gem from Penny: "Experiments are guaranteed to be 100% not-entirely-lethal.".
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: There's anthropomorphic animals (Dribble and Spitz), an alien (Orbulon), a witch (Ashley), a sentient robot (Mike), and a woman with ghostly powers (5-Volt). And those are just the ones in the main cast.
• Fat Bastard: Wario, unsurprisingly.
• Final-Exam Boss:
  • The various Jimmy T. interludes (hosted by himself in Mega Microgame$!, his family members in Twisted! and Touched!, and himself and Jimmy P. in Smooth Moves) play out like this, combining all of the microgames from the previous three stages you played and ramping up the difficulty. More like midterm bosses.
  • Wario himself frequently does this, compiling everything seen from the other characters into a set of completely new microgames under the banner "Anything Goes", including Wario-Man in Touched!, which utilizes all of the different touch motions in previous stages, and Tiny Wario in Smooth Moves, who is the only one to utilize all^*barring The Diner since it requires the Nunchuk and isn't introduced until after this stage of the different Form Baton stances.
  • The Ultra League in Gold is a weird variant of this. The first two stages are similar to the Jimmy T. interludes from games past, taking two themes each and mixing up all of the microgames belonging to those themes. However, both stages also throw in microphone-based games and half-length games not seen anywhere else. The third and final stage, Wario Deluxe, plays the trope more straight, featuring completely new microgames utilizing all of the different game styles while also throwing in a bit of Interface Screw in the middle to keep players on their toes. The final boss microgame of the stage is the best example, as it requires of you to use all the game styles to win.
  • Get It Together! features every variant in the series, with the True Final Boss being an exam on how well you know the controls of every playable character.
• Food Porn:
  • Kat & Ana's intro in Gold features pictures of real-life food.
  • The microgame "Stove Slider" from Get it Together! presents you with a pot of delicious-looking photorealistic food if you win (either chicken stew or beef stew depending on the difficulty).
• Foreshadowing:
  • In Gold, Wario proudly announces the Wario Bowl as the "Most Deluxe Tournament Ever". The pot he gets is also a clue with its scent.
  • In Get It Together!, the True Final Boss secretly being Pyoro is hinted at by having the gang climb a beanstalk, beans being Pyoro's Trademark Favorite Food, and the poop creature summoned to fight Dribble being bird-shaped. Dribble and Spitz' level also has the trademark flying beans from Pyoro's games in the background.
• Four Is Death: Fail four microgames during a stage and it's game over.
• Free-Range Children: Several examples from the series' younger characters:
  • Kat and Ana are kindergarteners, yet they're never seen with parental supervision.
  • Ashley lives alone, and it's never clarified what exactly her parents are up to beyond living in a separate house from their daughter.
  • Lulu is also left totally on her own when she comes to Diamond City, to the point that Young Cricket mistakes her for a missing child.
  • A subversion: in earlier games, 9-Volt and 18-Volt usually hang out unsupervised. Once 5-Volt was established as a proper character in Game & Wario, she became a parental figure for both of them, and the series in general. 18-Volt isn't actually related to them, and by his own admission his parents aren't usually home, but he still obeys 5-Volt as though she was his mom.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Inverted and zigzagged. Gold showcases the weird relationship between Wario and his friends. On one side, the crew don't begrudge Wario at all to the point of wanting to invite him to one of their gatherings. On the other side, Wario in turn doesn't think likewise of his friends, at best seeing them as nothing more than willing flunkies in his get-rich-quick schemes.
• Fun with Acronyms: The Diamond Software collection of microgames is exclusive to the DS version of D.I.Y. The Wii counterpart game, meanwhile, has Wario-Man Software.
• Fun with Homophones: Orbulon's stage in Gold has him ordering french fries at sub-zero temperature, and a milkshake with extra picante. Or rather, chilly fries and a chili shake.
• Furry Confusion: Dribble and Spitz are an anthropomorphic dog and cat respectively, and are far from being the only ones in the series, but that doesn't stop regular dogs and cats (like Ana's pet dog Shadow or the cat from Jimmy T.'s Gold scenario) from existing.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Dr. Crygor and his granddaughter Penny, who both seemingly come up with at least one new invention in each entry.
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • On level three of the needle-threading game in the original, a design oversight sometimes puts the eye of the needle out of the thread's reach, making it impossible to win. A real buzzkill when you're racking up a high score on the Thrilling Tower and this glitch takes you out. This was fixed in Gold.
  • The main villains of Get It Together! present an In-Universe example, as they tear at Wario's game with their powers, so Wario has to defeat them to cleanse his game.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The story and gameplay in most of these games (bar perhaps Game & Wario) have absolutely nothing to do with each other. This is because the games you're actually playing are video games made by the characters, who are apparently employees of WarioWare Inc. and hence are surreal, arcade style experiences.
• Game Maker: WarioWare D.I.Y. While its microgame engine allows for all different genres of games to be made, they're all still strictly microgames.
• Gameplay Roulette: Part of the standard gameplay.
• Game Within a Game: Every microgame you play is, in-universe, designed by one of the characters of the series. There are also a few other in-universe games, such as the recurring unlockable Pyoro series.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: Not counting Mike and Fronk, there are four guys and four girls on the Dancing Team in Gold.
• Genre-Busting: The series can be loosely considered mini-game collections, but it does it in such an unusual way (games are typically about 4 seconds long, must be done in quick succession, are presented in random order, and the goal is to survive a predetermined number of them before failing four times), and has an emphasis on single-player rather than multiplayer, that gamers and critics alike have largely given up trying to classify it at all.
• Ghost Leg Lottery:
  • One of the minigames in Mega Microgame$! utilizes this lottery mechanic, where you select between pipes in which to pour boiling water to direct it into a cup of instant noodles below.
  • In D.I.Y., the goal of a wire microgame is to choose one of three buttons that will lead to the dancing man.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: "Milky Way Delirium" from Mega Party Game$! has a giant robot appear without warning at the very end of the game (the instructions mention an "ultimate challenge" but not the robot itself). The leading player must win a microgame (with the other players' asteroids as interference) to destroy it.
• Given Name Reveal: Move It! names the female martial artist often seen with Young Cricket as "Cicada".
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Ashley's eyes tend to glow red whenever she gets pissed.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Wario, Mona and Spitz all wear goggles over their head, but at no point do they actually use it over their eyes, not even when riding their vehicles.
• Golden Snitch: In Mega Party Game$, "Milky Way Delirium" tasks players with taking planets on a 5x5 reversi-style board by winning microgames... however, once the board is filled, the winner is decided by having the player with the most planets play one final microgame, with planets belonging to anyone else remaining on-screen to block their view. If they win this microgame, they win the whole game — if not, all the other players do.
• Goofy Print Underwear:
  • "How the West Was Really Won" in Smooth Moves features Super Mushroom, Fire Flower, and Starman-print boxers.
  • The box art for Get It Together! shows Wario splitting his pants, revealing underwear with a W pattern.
• Grand Finale: One can see Gold as a grand finale to the Nintendo 3DS, seeing as how the following first-party games are ports or remakes of older ones.
• Gratuitous Disco Sequence: Why, yes, the Thang family, seemingly stuck in the '70s.
• Gross-Out Show: Downplayed. There are plenty of disgusting microgames (as expected of anything involving Wario), but they're just a portion of the general wackiness of the series. Nose-picking features in just about every game in the series, becoming a Running Gag.

H-L

• Handcar Pursuit:
  • One of the microgames in Touched!. Complete with being chased by another handcar, Wario in his car and a train respectively for the different difficulty levels.
  • Twisted! too; in fact it's the boss stage for the Dribble and Spitz stage (Steer Clear).
  • Another in ''Move It!"; this one has a boulder chasing the handcar.
• Her Codename Was Mary Sue: Most of Wario's microgames involve him in some form.
• Hoarding the Profits:
  • During the outro of WarioWare: Mega Microgames!!, Wario tries to hoard all of the money from the games that his company made, which Mona finds to her dismay.
  • In Warioware Gold, Wario holds a tournament with the promise of prize money, once again hiring his usual group to help him with the tournament. Not only did he have no intention of rewarding the winner of the tournament, but he also had no intent of paying his employees. After they subdue him, they find that he has already spent most of the money and divide what is left evenly amongst themselves while the player just gets what they paid for the entry fee as their prize for winning the tournament.
• Homage:
  • 9-Volt's and 18-Volt's microgames and worlds are shout-outs to various classic Nintendo games such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and F-Zero, as well as older, pre-videogame Nintendo merchandise.
  • Since Intelligent Systems became the main developer of the series, they've been keen to reference their own classic games as well, Nintendo Wars and Fire Emblem in particular.
  • And then in Game & Wario there's a straight Nostalgia Level, Gamer, which uses the old micro-game based gameplay from the original Mega Microgame$!...with a Red Light, Green Light styled twist. (9-Volt's playing the game late at night, so he has to hide whenever his mom is looking.)
• Honest Axe: Spoofed in Touched!. Wario drops two Game Boy Advance systems into an open sewer; an old angel pops out carrying both systems and a Nintendo DS, asking him which one he dropped. Wario's response? "Gimme all of them!" *tackle*
• Humiliation Conga: In Gold, After Wario Deluxe's defeat, Lulu successfully gets her pot(ty) to take back to Luxeville. Wario lets her have it and ends the game, except 9-Volt and the rest of the crew arrive and they want their share of the money. Wario being the greedy cad he is tries to get away with the money himself but he trips and Young Cricket catches him. The game officially ends with the others dividing up the winnings while Wario cries out in defeat.
  Wario: The cash is mine! It's mine! MINE! WARIO'S!
• Hypno Pendulum: The "Sleep Clinic" microgame in Get It Together! has the goal of hypnotizing Wario with a pocket watch (or, in the 3rd level, a banana bunch).
• Identical Stranger: Jimmy T.'s doppelgänger, Jimmy P., was introduced in Smooth Moves.
• Idol Singer:
  • Minor character Sal Out, who sings the "Mona Pizza" song.
  • Penny's life goal is to become this one day.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Ashley. It doesn't show up that much in the games, and it's implied in her English theme, but her Japanese theme outright states it.
• Image Song:
  • Kat and Ana had one in the first game, "Four Seasons". "Drifting Away" is one for Dribble and Spitz, though it's sung from the perspective of the passenger they picked up.
  • Later on, Mona, Ashley, and Mike all got their own themes, though Mona's is more about her pizza shop than it is about her.
  • "Body Rock" from D.I.Y. may count as this for Jimmy T.
  • Penny gets one that plays during her set in Get It Together!
• The Imp: Ashley's familiar, Red, is a red devil-like imp.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: Happens to Red in Move It!. As he and Ashley are building a sand castle, Red notices some berries and eats them all, but the berries caused him to shrink. He frantically begs Ashley to change him back. Ashley attempts to do so, but instead delightfully trolls with him a bit. Then, she uses her magic to make some cube berries for Red to eat in order to grow back to normal. Red turns back to normal size at first, but instead, the cube berries caused him to grow WAY too big. Much to Ashley's amusement.
• Intentional Engrish for Funny: A subtle example in 9-Volt's stage in the first game: the words at the top of the giant Game Boy-esque console say "DO NOT MATRIX WITH STEREO," a reference to the actual Game Boy having the words "DOT MATRIX WITH STEREO SOUND" on it.
• Interactive Start Up: Touched!, Twisted!, and Smooth Moves have interactive gimmicks that appear on the title screen.
• Interface Screw: Gold has this with the final stage, Wario Deluxe, which briefly removes the warning for the type of microgame coming up, requiring the player to react quickly. A variant of this appears in an unlockable mode aptly called "Wario Interrupts".
• Interface Spoiler: Double Subverted in Get It Together! The crew selection screen shows 13 characters, you get 3 in the first level, and one more in each subsequent level except the final one. This lets you tell how many levels are left. Then, once you defeat Bug Wario and return to the real world, the crew notices Red, Master Mantis, and Lulu are still trapped in the game world, and return to save them. This reveals that the game was actually lying to you about how many characters there were, because the interface changes to accommodate more characters... five of them, to be exact, even though you only need to rescue three people, hinting that there's just a tiny bit more to do after saving the prisoners.
• "I Want" Song:
  • Ashley's Song, after spending a lot of time bragging about her magical powers, quietly mentions how she really just wants to have friends.
  • Penny's Song explains how she wants to become the world's best "singer-scientist", and how she'll always get back up after her mistakes.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Wario is described as such by himself and Mona.
• Kaizo Trap:
  • Even after defeating the... planet from Ashley's boss game in Touched, you can still be hit by a stray bullet.
  • In "Gamer/Sneaky Gamer", beating the boss stage does not prevent 5-Volt from catching 9-Volt in the act during the few seconds that lead to the "Game Clear" message.
• Later-Installment Weirdness:
  • WarioWare Gold is a very different game in structure and tone compared to its predecessors. It is the first title in the series that doesn't showcase a unique control scheme or console gimmick, but rather a "greatest hits" package of all the microgames from the GBA and DS titles and even Smooth Moves. The "WarioWare" in the title is a mere artifact, as the game has nothing to do with the WarioWare Inc. game company, but rather a gaming tournament called the Wario Bowl. The game also features full voice acting, the artstyle has evolved to be more cartoony and exaggerated to seperate itself from Rhythm Heaven, and there is a more grounded tone compared to the weirdness which the series became known for. Gold is the first game to have a true antagonist (Wario himself), when previous games had no villains. Finally, Wario-Man is totally missing, though he was absent from Smooth Moves and Game & Wario anyway.
  • Gold also started a trend where Wario's final stage would have Wario or something that has his likeness as an active threat in the story. Not only that, but said threat would disrupt the gameplay or even try attacking the player in-between microgames. This all contrasts to previous games where the final story was simply "Wario has fun with his new transformation".
  • Get It Together! has you controlling a "crew" of various characters within the microgames, each of whom has their own unique control scheme. This results in the microgames being a bit less abstract in their goals, usually involving either getting to a certain location or interacting with a particular object. The various unlockables are also tied to each of the characters, rather than being separate rewards. It's also the first game where the post-game Towers play a significant role in the plot.
  • Move It! is a return to the traditional microgame gameplay, but moves the setting away from the "WarioWare Inc." company much like in Gold, with its plot instead revolving around the WarioWare Crew'' going on an island vacation that just so happens to feature microgames. The cast is also back to being fully voice-acted, and Wario plays the role of the antagonist once more.
• Leitmotif: Everyone has a particular tone, even when not considering vocal songs.
• Level in Boss Clothing: The True Final Boss of Get it Together! is fought similar to the game's microgames in its arena, with each round of the fight being its own "microgame". It even has a boss stage in the Wario/Pyoro duel, which is an untimed Rush Boss.
• Lighter and Softer: Ashley's theme in Super Smash Bros. Brawl; not only is it lighter and softer, but Ashley's voice is replaced with "less creepy" singers.
• Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: The series has a plethora of anthropomorphic animal characters, major and minor, starting with series' mainstays Dribble (a dog) and Spitz (a cat).
• Looming Silhouette of Rage: Ashley in Touched!, when she collides with Orbulon.
• Loves Me Not: Touched! has a microgame based around this concept called "No Love for You", where the player has to pluck all the petals off of a flower within the given time limit. On the first level of difficulty, the flower is replaced with a four-leaf clover.
• Luck-Based Mission: Unlocking all of the various microgames in the first game. You'll have to replay each character's stage constantly just to get each and every last minigame, since the order and time certain minigames appear is completely random. Not hard, but a big time waster.
• Lucky Charms Title: Mega Microgame$! and its GameCube port Mega Party Game$! both replace a normal "s" with a dollar sign.

M-O

• Mad Scientist: Dr. Crygor, a scientist who lives on a deserted island and comes up with at least one bizarre invention per game. D.I.Y. in particular revolves around his latest invention, the Super MakerMatic 21.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Penny Crygor is significantly cuter than her... eccentric grandfather. She does, however, share his interest in inventing.
• Marathon Level: Master Mode in the GameCube game consists of playing every microgame in a row.
• Market-Based Title:
  • The first game has the subtitle Mega Microgame$! in American languages, and Minigame Mania in European languages. The removal of the dollar sign makes sense, as while the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand use dollars, most European countries do not.
  • WarioWare: D.I.Y. uses the extended subtitle WarioWare: Do It Yourself in European languages, likely to accommodate for non-English speakers.
• Matchlight Danger Revelation: The third level of "On Strike" in Gold tells you to "Strike, then blow!" the match, rather than just striking. The reason why you have to put it out is revealed after it's lit, as the background changes from a matchbox to that of a bunch of explosives.
• Meaningful Name: The two ninja kids are named Kat and Ana. Put their names together and you get "katana", a sword commonly wielded by ninjas.
• Meat-O-Vision: In Get It Together!, Ashley's intro shows her hungry enough that her vision of Red briefly morphs into a hamburger.
• Medium Blending: The cutscenes that take place in the "real world" in Get It Together! use the series' typical cartoony artstyle juxtaposed with real places as background art.
• Megamix Game: Gold, with its high volume of returning microgames, modes, and music.
• Memory Match Mini-Game: Some installments feature a minigame that involves turning over pairs of matching cards. As a microgame, there are only four cards (due to the game's rapidfire nature) while Gold features a stand-alone game with ten pairs on the board.
• Minigame Game: The point of the series, as pointed out in the first game's British title.
• Mona Pizza Smile: In the American version of Twisted! only.
• Mood Whiplash: Kat's story in Mega Microgame$! is notably more serious in tone compared to the other stories, as it has Kat save Ana and the prince/princess from the clutches of the demonic skeleton Boneheads, all played seriously with little humor and set to a slow and dramatic enka song. While this is slightly offset by the microgames, which remain as silly as ever, Kat's story is still a large shift in tone from the rest of the game's wacky and humorous tone.
• Mook Promotion: Three microgames get this treatment in Gold: "Loot Scoot" from Mega Microgame$! as Wario's Mash League boss microgame, "One Hit Wonder" from Smooth Moves as 5-Volt's boss micrograme, and "Clawing for More" from Touched! as 9-Volt's boss microgame.
• Mundane Made Awesome: A common theme of the series' microgames. They usually take an everyday activity or event and transform it into a quirky, satisfying challenge.
• Musical Nod: The soundtracks for the first game and Mega Party Game$! take very heavy inspiration from Wario Land 4's, having the same composer and using most of the same sounds, and even some of the same songs ("H-Hurry Up!" openly starts playing when Crygor floods his home after breaking his toilet, "Curious Factory" plays during the Paper Plane microgame, and "Crescent Moon Village" is used during most of the ending, among other tracks).
• Mythology Gag:
  • All of the "Sound Bomber" minigames from Mario Artist: Polygon Studio appear in Mega Microgame$!, albeit with different visuals. The Baker from Polygon Studio (commonly mistaken for the exercising man from Mario Paint) has also made a few cameos throughout the series.
  • In Get It Together!, one of Dribble's unlockable picture shows his cab flying past the planets from Crazy Galaxy, an April Fools' Day joke from the Nintendo Badge Arcade about a fake game starring an older incarnation of Ashley.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: In Get It Together!'s final level, the Mega Bug will attack the player character directly inbetween microgames every now and then.
• Never Say "Die":
  • Averted with a Dribble and Spitz game in the first installment that involves dodging bombs with a scooter, which is called Scoot or Die (which is, no doubt, a pun-based Shout-Out to Skate or Die).
  • Gold has both the words "die" and "kill" used in two different instances (one from new side-character Doris-1 and the other by Red).
• New Job as the Plot Demands: Mona has been a gelato worker, a soda jerk, a pizza delivery girl, a rock star, a cheerleader, a meat bun vendor, a temple explorer, and a criminal photographer and paparazzi, on top of her overarching job of developing microgames for WarioWare Inc.
• New Neighbours as the Plot Demands: So where were the characters who start appearing in Twisted!, Touched! or Smooth Moves back in the GBA original again, and how come all these ancient places never appeared on the maps of the game world before they became important to the plot? At least 18-Volt has the New Transfer Student excuse.
• Ninja: The twins, Kat and Ana.
• No Antagonist:
  • Most of the games' stages consist of characters trying to do something relevant to their job/interests as you complete their minigames, with them very rarely facing an actual opposing force (ex: Kat & Ana in Smooth Moves, Mona in Touched!, etc.). Wario himself is the closest thing the series has to an overarching villain, and only because he's taking advantage of his friends' efforts.
  • Gold averts this for once by having Wario become a clear antagonist figure. Him stealing a strange golden artifact is the catalyst for the game's overarching plot and then he comes up with a scam in the form of the Wario Bowl, making the player go through several microgame stages, but denying their reward once they get to the end. The player has to fight him for it.
  • Get It Together! also averts this by having Game Bugs and the Mega Bug as the main antagonists causing the crew's levels to glitch out.
  • Move It! zigzags this. While some scenarios DO have antagonists (Leo/Cractus, Cicada, etc.), there is no overarching threat and most characters are just trying to enjoy themselves in their vacation. Then Wario is suddenly fused with a volcano against his will at the end and now everyone's in danger.
• No Fair Cheating:
  • In D.I.Y., a stage and comic are unlocked each day you play until you have them all. You could set your clock forward a day at a time to unlock them. Your DS's clock can be set backward, but the game's clock will stay forward and won't move until the DS matches. Of course, setting your DS clock backward before starting your save file will let you avoid this.
  • You can't cheat the "Character Development" minigame by just randomly tapping a falling letter on the screen; you have to spell the word on the bottom of the screen in order.
  • In Gold, if you play a minigame that requires you to do nothing, it will occasionally require an input, so as to keep you on your toes.
  • In the Autograph! minigame in Gold, you have to provide a practice signature you then have to reproduce as accurately as you can in order to get enough satisfaction points from your fans to get a high score. But don't think about cheating by submitting very simple lines and squiggles as a practice signature to reproduce as it'll be rejected.
• No Plot? No Problem!: Considering its a bunch of micro/minigames, this is what the series boils down to. You have this one thing to do. No time for questions. Just do it. Gold and Get It Together! averted this by having actual storylines from start to finish, with genuine antagonists.
• No Poker Face: The microgame "Joker Face" has you facing such a character. Their expression makes it very clear what card is the joker.
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • In Smooth Moves, the microgame called "Animal Crossing: Wild World" is modeled after the original Animal Crossing instead. This was amended in Gold.
  • "Wario Dance Company" in Gold is based on "Wario de Mambo" from Twisted! rather than the Smooth Moves boss game of the same name. The song for that stage is called "Wario de Mucho", however.
• Nonstandard Character Design: Wario himself, given that his supporting cast has a largely Animesque style compared to the traditional cartoony Mario look.
• Nostalgia Level: 9-Volt's stage in every game is a mix of classic Nintendo games. Game & Wario takes this further by having his stage be a call-back to the WarioWare series itself.
• Numerical Theme Naming: 9-Volt, 5-Volt, 18-Volt, and 13-Amp all share a number theme in their names. Only 9 and 5 are related.
• Obvious Rule Patch: The "Fragile!" microgame introduced in Twisted! that requires not tilting the system could be cheesed when played on its own by leaving the system idle. Its successor in Touched!^note Initially unnamed, later named "Tread Carefully" in Gold is not accessible as a standalone microgame, while in Gold both microgames sometimes require active input to win.
• Oddball in the Series: All of the games released between Smooth Moves and Gold stray from the original formula in one way or another, but none more than Snapped!: it uses a form of input (the DSi camera) not explored in any of the following games, features a very different format where the player progresses whether or not they succeed or fail at the microgames (none of which speed up or have difficulty levels), is extremely short even by the series' standards with only 20 microgames (not counting calibrating the camera, a full playthrough is around 20 minutes), and has no extra content or storyline to speak of. Further cementing its status as an oddball is that it's the only game in the series to not be directly referenced in Gold (though some of its music shows up in Lulu's character trailer for the game).
• Officially Shortened Title: More of a downplayed case as the original English title isn't much longer. Originally, the series' original English title was WarioWare, Inc, which was used for Mega Microgame$! and Mega Party Game$!. Starting with Twisted!, the "Inc" suffix was removed from the title, leaving it as simply WarioWare.
• Old-Fashioned Fruit Stomping: Get It Together! features the boss game Great Juice, where all your characters have to stomp or press down on a bunch of grapes to help a watchful farmer make grape juice.
• Old Master: Master Mantis is an elderly martial arts teacher who has taken on Young Cricket as a student. His idea of training appears to consist mostly of eating and hanging out.
• One Game for the Price of Two: D.I.Y. Showcase was a WiiWare companion game for D.I.Y. that was required for 100% Completion of the medals in D.I.Y. and featured some extra games, comics, and records from several of the traditional characters that weren't in D.I.Y. itself. There's nothing special in Showcase that really requires D.I.Y. however, other than being able to play your own creations on the TV screen rather than just the built-in ones and other people's.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: In most microgames you play in every installment, you only get one shot to clear the goal. Screw up in any way, and it's a fail. Not that you'd really have any time to try again, given this game's nature. Typically the games also include a bonus stage in which the player has only one "life" instead of four. This is also enforced for the Pyoro battle in Get It Together!.
• Only in It for the Money: Wario gets into the game developer business solely to get rich quick. Success varies.
• Ordinary High-School Student: Mona, who changes jobs with each new game.
• Otaku: 9-Volt and 18-Volt are hardcore fanboys of all things Nintendo.
• Our Product Sucks: Pizza Dinosaur admits their pizzas have tough crust and thin sauce, but boast that people will have to buy them anyway because they're everywhere.
• Out of Focus:
  • Dribble, Spitz, and Orbulon took a temporary backseat in Touched! as mere cameo appearances.
  • In D.I.Y. and D.I.Y. Showcase, the cast is split in two. Kat, Ana, Dribble, Spitz, and 18-Volt only appear as stamps in D.I.Y., while Mona, Jimmy, Ashley, and Orbulon don't appear at all in D.I.Y. Showcase. Young Cricket and Master Mantis have a minor role hosting tutorials. Also, even though Dr. Crygor invented the MakerMatic that the games are based around, he only appears in the game's opening; his granddaughter Penny gets A Day in the Limelight instead.
  • Mike, due to being designed around the Nintendo DS's microphone, fell out of focus after his introduction in Touched!. He plays a larger role in Gold (but doesn't get his own stage), and becomes a playable character in Get It Together!.

P-R

• Paper-Thin Disguise: In Mona's ending in Touched!, rival pop singer Vanessa briefly tries to disguise herself as Mona, but she retains her green hair and purple clothing. No one buys it.
• Parody Magic Spell:
  • Ashley - "Pantalones Giganticus!"
  • In the Japanese version, she uses several of them that make up "Made in Wario is number one" pronounced backwards.
• Pinball Projectile: In the Get It Together! microgame "Mean Magic", the evil wizard's magical projectiles ricochet off floors, walls, and ceilings.
• Potty Emergency:
  • The Framing Device for Wario-Man's stage in D.I.Y. Showcase is Wario-Man coming across a series of people trying to get into restrooms, only for the shoddy door handles to keep them from easily getting the door open. Your goal: complete a microgame to have Wario-Man successfully pull the door open for them.
  • The major reason behind Lulu's adventure in Gold. The treasure he stole from her village is actually a toilet, and it's the only one they have, meaning that everybody's been holding it up ever since. Subverted though, as the elder of the village actually bought a modern toilet while Lulu was away.
• Power-Up Food: Garlic for Wario. Gold reveals that this is actually mandrake.
• Predatory Business: Pizza Dinosaur, who pride themselves on being everywhere and have no qualms with literally destroying the competition.
• Press X to Die: Each game usually comes with at least one microgame that tells you to do nothing, meant to catch you off guard. You lose if you push a button, or tilt the system to crack an egg, or blow into the microphone to knock Fronks off a tightrope. Gold subverts this by occasionally requiring you to do something during these games, so you can't just rack up a high score by setting the system down.
• Press X to Not Die: A lot of microgames closely resemble Quick Time Events.
• Projectile Pocketing: In effect in Get It Together! out of necessity. Since various characters are reliant on projectiles (particularly 18-Volt since he cannot move), shooting collectibles will tally them up and contribute to microgame goals. The trope is taken the extra mile and inverted occasionally—shooting certain objects that you must take collectibles to will deliver the items from your person to that object.
• Promoted to Playable: While select characters such as Ashley were playable in past games via minigames, most of the cast were non playable hosts in the story modes of past games. That is, until Get It Together!, where instead of you directly completing the microgames, you get to control the main cast themselves to complete them, each with their own special abilities.
• Punny Name:
  • More than half of the microgames.
  • A few characters, but the most obvious are the two ninjas, Kat and Ana. See what they did there?
• Quality over Quantity:
  • In the series, this is the contrast between Mona Pizza and Pizza Dinosaur. While in their shared theme song, Mona Pizza boasts about how great their pizzas are, Pizza Dinosaur only boasts about how they're everywhere, while acknowledging that their pizzas are terrible. In Twisted!, Pizza Dinosaur has its business being taken away by Mona Pizza, driving them to use more aggressive measures of competition.
  • The series in general is about a small team of people cranking out games on a per-minute rate. Each game is about 4 to 8 seconds long, and hundreds of them pour out at a time. Wario has seen much success with this model, both in the stories for the games and in real life sales of the video games in this series. (So basically, this game is an aversion where quantity wins out.)
• Random Events Plot: The series is random events distilled into a game. It works on three levels: On the smallest scale are the hundreds of 4-second games the gameplay is made up of, each of which are connected only by art style or by basic gameplay mechanic, and from the second playthrough and onwards, appear in random order. Next up are each chapter in the game, which have different characters acting independently of each other (in the same game, for instance, you have a pizza delivery girl with animal sidekicks shooting soccer balls, and then later you have a mad scientist building a karaoke robot to do janitorial work); their success is somehow determined by the aforementioned 4-second games. At the highest level is the series itself, where not only is there some level of Negative Continuity (along with some real continuity—it's confusing), every game in the series to date has used a radically different control gimmick.
• Rapid-Fire Comedy: In a way. Considering the fast paced nature of the games and the VERY weird presentations at times, things can get very comedic very quickly. And as things speed up, so too does the silliness, to the point that whatever gag the microgame has may not even last one second before it's suddenly over and the next one comes up.
• Recursive Reality:
  • In Twisted!, one of the souvenirs is a Twisted! cartridge. Selecting it plays a (Wario-ified) GBA startup screen, then returns to the title screen.
  • In Gold, the player can unlock models of the consoles from the 3DS family. Pressing the Power button on them lets you play a small selection of Mash League microgames using the on-screen A Button.
  • One "Nintendo Classics" microgame in Get It Together! is... WarioWare: Twisted! You have to spin an on-screen GBA to play a retro microgame. The first time you play this, you're technically within five layers of games at this point.^note The real-life player is playing Get It Together!, where the in-game characters are sucked inside their own game, where 9-Volt plays his own AR game, which has him play microgames within it, one of which is a Twisted! microgame-within-a-microgame.
• Recycled Soundtrack: Mega Microgame$! uses a lot of Wario Land 4 music and sound effects for its cutscenes and mini game music. This is most easily heard with the Crescent Moon Village theme used in the ending and the Curious Factory theme used during Paper Plane.
• Regional Bonus: In the Japanese version of D.I.Y., one of 9-Volt's games is based on The Mysterious Murasame Castle. Since that game wasn't released outside of Japan until a few years later, the international versions replaced it with one based on Pikmin instead. The two games can be played on either version via Socialization Bonus.
• Replay Mode:
  • Series-wide: All games have featured a menu where you can replay the microgames you've unlocked in the characters' corresponding chapters or any of the special unlockable modes. Since you're now playing them outside those chapters and modes, they double as Endless Games, so when you're in one the game challenges you to clear them as many times in a row as possible before losing four times, increasing the difficulty gradually.
  • In Smooth Moves and Move It!, the theater lets you view the stage cutscenes again, which is handy since the stages switch to endless mode after being beaten once.
  • In Gold, all story cutscenes can be replayed in a gallery accessible from the menu recording the extras you've unlocked.
• Required Party Member: In Get It Together!, you are locked into using the level's host as part of your party on your first time playing through the level. For characters without their own set of microgames, they are forced into the party either during the Intro stage or as the first character in the Remixes and the Towers. Penny also gets a level exclusive to her that no other character is allowed to play.
• Retcon: The Gamer minigame implied 5-Volt's inexplicably terrifying presence was just 9-Volt's sleep-deprived perception of his mother. Get It Together! states 5-Volt has out of body experiences and she uses that ability to keep an eye on 9-Volt and make sure he isn't staying up past his bedtime.
• Road-Sign Reversal: During Dribble and Spitz's story in Move It!, which takes place at a motorboat race, a seagull sits on a road sign, causing it to change directions and sending nearly every competitor the wrong way as a result. The only one who doesn't go the wrong way is the High-Octane Hippo, who ends up claiming a Dark Horse Victory.
• Rock Theme Naming: Gold introduces many places in Diamond City that are aptly named after precious gems, such as Emerald Street, Agate Forest and Crystal Park.
• Rhythm Game: A few microgames task the player to time button presses to the beat; a few are even based on Rhythm Heaven, its sister series. The game as a whole runs on a beat with a rising BPM. In most titles, regular microgames are 2 measures, and long ones are 4 measures.
• Running Gag:
  • Every official WarioWare installment has a game involving nose-picking, usually as one of Mona's games.
    • In Twisted!, while there is no standard microgame involving nose-picking, Kat and Ana's boss microgame has it as the method of defeating the enemies and the boss at the end of it.
    • In D.I.Y., the nose-picking minigame is also used as confirmation as to whether or not you wish to erase your data.
    • In Get It Together!, after beating the boss microgame, a game involving nose-picking also appears as the last thing in order to defeat the Mega Bug.
  • Noses in general, considering Wario's got the biggest one of them all.
  • Mona getting a new job every game.
  • Dribble and Spitz transporting a supernatural creature... and getting stiffed on the fare.
  • Some rendition of the fictional game Pyoro appearing.
  • The postgame levels always tend to include animal-themed towers, with the framing device between microgames being an elevator. Among others, Mega Microgame$! has pigs, Touched! has bears, Smooth Moves has elephants, and Gold has a lion (All Mixed Up), an alligator (Thrill Ride), and an eagle (Super Hard).
  • Since Twisted!, Wario transforming into various alter-egos and having their microgames be the final set and end of the story (or, in Get It Together!, the Disc-One Final Boss, though it is still the final set as the five story segments after it do not introduce new microgames).
  • Gold has the baby face from Mario Paint and its sound appear at several points, such as the level 3 version of the "Shave the World" microgame and as a possible distraction in "Wario Interrupts".
  • Also in Gold, every game based around reuniting two lovers is now themed to Orihime and Hikoboshi.

S-T

• Scare Chord: This plays in the background whenever 5-Volt passes by the window in Gamer in Game & Wario and Sneaky Gamer in Gold.
• Scary Stinging Swarm: Kat and Ana get chased by them after Kat stupidly decides to poke a beehive.
• Send in the Clones: Jimmy T. has a whole family of afro-wearing dancers. Smooth Moves also introduced Jimmy P., his Identical Stranger.
• Sexy Sweater Girl: A recurring character in the series is "Baroness Drip", a sweater girl drawn in a bishoujo anime style, whose beauty is a bit marred by the fact that her nose is always dripping with snot.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The epilogue to Gold: Lulu takes the treasure (actually the village toilet) Wario stole back to Luxeville, only to find that the villagers had since replaced it with a more advanced toilet in her absence.
• Shapeshifting Seducer: In Mega Party Game$!, Orbulon disguises himself as an attractive woman to hitch a ride from Dribble and Spitz. Surprisingly, the two of them don't really care when the disguise wears off.
• Shared Universe:
  • Of course, like its sister series, WarioWare is a spin off of the larger Mario series and a few microgames (that are not from 9-Volt) actually have Mario characters cameo in them, such as Mario appearing in "Burying the Hatchet" and him and Toad appearing in "You Scratch Mine". One microgame from Get It Together! also features the Banana Peel item from Mario Kart in one of its variants.
  • The WarioWare games have direct ties to Rhythm Heaven and its various rhythm games. Initially, the connection was just limited to cameos (such as the Alien Bunnies appearing in Remix 7 of Rhythm Tengoku in place of the marchers from Marching Orders), but it got more concrete later on. Rhythm Heaven Megamix features a doll of Ashley on Saltwater's desk at the café (which later gets referenced in Gold by a phone call from said café), one of Mr. Sparkles' cards in WarioWare Gold implies that he works out at the same gym as the wrestler from Ringside, and Mona owns a doll of Megamix protagonist Tibby in Get It Together!. And Cicada's appearance in Move It! pretty much makes it unquestionable at this point.
• Shoddy Knockoff Product: Parodied with Dr. Wario, Wario's knockoff of Dr. Mario. There are also some questionable interpretations of Super Mario Bros. and Punch-Out!!.
• Shout-Out: Enough examples for its own page.
• Sliding Scale of Realistic vs. Fantastic: Surreal without a doubt, way more than the parent Super Mario Bros. and Wario Land series, and quite possibly the most surreal first-party work ever put out by Nintendo.
• Solo Sequence: In contrast to the rest of the stages in Get It Together!'s story mode, Penny's Mix only features Penny as the sole playable character in the stage, as she travels to and through the game world in order to meet up with the others.
• The Song Remains the Same: Sometimes averted (Mona Pizza's Song, for example), sometimes played straight (Kat and Ana's Song, for example).
• Speak in Unison: All of Kat and Ana's in-game quotes in Smooth Moves, Gold, and Move It! are spoken together. In addition, the main cast dips into this trope a lot in both Get it Together! and Move It!'s cutscenes.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Ashley has been accused of being one, as during the lull between Game & Wario and Gold, nearly all new material relating to the series besides the cast's appearance in Rhythm Heaven Megamix focused near exclusively on her and Red, with only token acknowledgments of her home series and the ensemble. This has mostly died down with Gold and its marketing putting a more even focus on the whole cast, however.
• Starfish Language: According to the description of the alien "instrument" in D.I.Y., the sounds made by the instrument are how an alien talks. And if you haven't guessed, it sounds nothing like human speech.
• Stylistic Suck: The graphics of the microgames often invoke this, especially 3D ones, though there are often just as many aversions. Best exemplified in Get It Together!, where some microgames have professional 3D models and artwork while others look like they were drawn by a five-year-old in Microsoft Paint.
  • The Cutscenes often deliberately use cheap and stiff animation, especially in "Gold".
• Super-Deformed:
  • The final story level of Smooth Moves chibifies Wario, in reference to Tiny Wario from Wario Land.
  • The entire main cast becomes chibified in Get It Together! as a result of being sucked into the game world in the opening cutscene.
• Suddenly Voiced: Gold is the first entry in the series to feature full voice acting in the story cutscenes as opposed to text like in the previous games. It's also the first game in which Wario has a different voice actor depending on the language version (he's still voiced by Charles Martinet in the English version).
• Tamer and Chaster: In the first two games, Mona's default outfit was a red crop top and miniskirt that exposed her midriff. Her outfit in Gold and Get It Together! is mostly the same, but with a more modest one-piece red dress that covers her midsection.
• Tear-Apart Tug-of-War: In Smooth Moves, 18-Volt breaks 9-Volt's Game & Watch when he can't wait his turn and tries to grab it. They eventually make up when they find a new one at a game shop.
• Temporary Online Content:
  • A few of the medals in D.I.Y. require entering microgame design contests that were periodically held by Nintendo. Nintendo no longer holds these contests, so if you hadn't already gotten the medals for them you can now no longer obtain them. Thankfully, it's still possible to get all the records even without these medals. The same, of course, goes for the microgames that won those contests. Even while they were running, you could only access the two most recent contest sets at a time to download their microgames. Now, you can't get any of them, unless you can get them from other players.
  • Because most of the online services for the Wii and DS have been shut down, the online-related medals can't be unlocked anymore, meaning that not all records can be unlocked on one save file. Fortunately, there's a way around this as well: because the records you obtain from medals are semi-randomized, you can obtain the ones you lack from a friend or relative. If all you care about are the music on the records and not having the full collection in your game under the built-in section, you could also copy the music from the records you could get into new records in the music maker, send said records to D.I.Y. Showcase, then restart your game and get new ones.
• Tiger Versus Dragon: The rap battle between 13-Amp vs. 18-Volt in Gold has graffiti-styled art respectively representing them as a dragon and a tiger.
• Throw It In!: invokedIn-universe example in Get It Together! After defeating the Mega Bug, Wario lets it live in the Anything Goes stage as he enjoyed the stage theme that its Wario Bug transformation brought.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Wario has always been a greedy asshole, but no one can say that the money he made in those games was not earned legitimately, even if it was at the expense of his friends' efforts (who never get paid). In Gold, Wario outright tricks people to hand over money to participate in a competition for a prize that will never come, which is downright criminal business. And this is not even mentioning the part where he plunges the world into everlasting darkness, but it's ambiguous if that was done on purpose.
• Tower Defense: "Pumpkin Panic" in Gold, where Ashley has to protect a patch from waves of invading Mandrakes.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Prior to the game's release, the Japanese website for Get It Together! showed off screenshots of several title screens related to the game's multiplayer modes, which ended up giving away the fact that Penny appears in the game, and that she, Pyoro and Red are playable characters, which was kept vague prior.
• Trapped in TV Land: The main plot of Get It Together! revolves around Wario and friends getting sucked into their newly made console, with the crew having to play through their own microgames and fight the game bugs in order to escape.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay:
  • Very common due to the extremely short nature of the microgames and accompanying instructions that are mostly vague.
  • In Get It Together! each character has some Prezzies they like and some they don't, and while some are logical (Wario loves garlic and money), some don't make much sense (Mona, for some strange reason, loves being given random unidentified hairs). Mostly you have to just pick randomly and hope for the best. Thankfully, once you give a character a Prezzie their reaction is recorded, so you only have to guess once.
• True Final Boss: Get It Together! is the first game to have one after the "main" story. The fight with Pyoro is its own stage that uses every character.
• Truck Driver's Gear Change: In Get It Together!, Penny's Image Song, being a pop song, modulates slightly up in pitch just before the end.

U-Y

• Unconventional Learning Experience: In-Universe in "Math Quest", 9-Volt's story in Gold: 9-Volt hates math class, so when his pet/friend Fronk learns this, he phrases the math problems in the context of a Role-Playing Game, using 9-Volt's hobby of gaming to prove that he's already learned a lot of math from doing damage calculations while playing video games. Fronk then gives 9-Volt the idea to imagine math as an RPG to make the assignments more engaging to complete.
  Fronk: Let's see here. Huh... 100 minus 56.
  9-Volt: [groans]
  Fronk: How 'bout this? A hero has a hundred hit points and takes 56 damage from an enemy. What's his remaining HP?
  9-Volt: 44...right?
  Fronk: Exactly. Good work. Now let's try the next one. A wizard casts 12 spells, and each deals 42 damage. What's the total damage?
  9-Volt: 504!
  Fronk: A-ha! See? You are good at math!
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: A bit of a meta example - Get It Together! has a boss battle that spans the length of an entire stage.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: Considering the whole thing is Gameplay Roulette, this comes up about once per game, often in boss fights.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: In Get It Together!, Penny's water cannon acts like real water. Need to move a dog's tongue to make it drink water? Just pour it directly into his mouth. Cooling down some hot food? A stream of water will do the trick. Something's on fire? Put it out. The game even has a few missions that reward you for doing this.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable:
  • In the needle-threading microgame in Mona's stage in Mega Microgame$!, sometimes the needle is placed too high or too low to thread, making that game unwinnable. This was fixed when it returned in Gold.
  • It's entirely possible to get stuck in 9-Volt's Level 2 Boss Stage in Get It Together! if you're playing as 18-Volt, with no way out besides killing yourself by either falling in a pit or waiting for the time limit to reach zero.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Wario Deluxe in Gold and the Wario Bug in Get It Together! do this if you fail their microgames. Wario Deluxe leans in his balloons' basket with a sly smile, seemingly satisfied over your failure, and taunts you, even asking if you're "done so soon" when you get a Game Over, while the Wario Bug waves his hands to taunt you and even goes as far as to screw with your senses by glitching out the screen.
• Unwinnable by Design: In D.I.Y., there isn't really anything stopping you from creating or even uploading microgames that are unwinnable. All you have to do is set a winning condition, but the Game Maker doesn't check if it's actually achievable.
• Vague Age: Most of the cast really (save for the ones with confirmed ages like Crygor and Orbulon). Ashley is probably the most glaring example, since different sources have given her different ages, and she tends to look younger or older depending on the artstyle.
• Variable Mix:
  • On Dribble and Spitz's stage in Smooth Moves, the vocal song "Tomorrow Hill" plays throughout the level. When you mess up, the song distorts. You might think it's just an effect placed over the original song, but it's actually a Variable Mix- the distorted parts of the song are actually sung differently, sometimes even with nonsensical words in place of the normal ones ("Already said my goodbyes" becomes "Already ate my french fry", for example). This alternate version of the song, "Falling Off Tomorrow Hill", can even be heard in the Sound Test.
  • D.I.Y. combines this with a Background Music Override for Jimmy's stage. The stage plays a dedicated song over all the microgames. The song has variants for failing a microgame, and the vocals are pitch shifted to keep up with the tempo as the stage speeds up.
  • Get It Together!:
    • A handful of microgames have alternative themes for winning or losing: "Wanted", "Mermaid Tears", "Mystifying Mirror", and "Unlock Me" have winning themes, while "Defend the Flowers" and "Sort It Out" have losing themes.
    • Whenever you mess up in the stage Penny's Mix, its song (aptly titled Penny's Song) will change to reflect this, with the instruments becoming distorted and off-key and/or playing alternate, less uplifting note progressions. Also, much like "Tomorrow Hill", there are alternate lyrics for your failures — "even when she aims for the high note" becomes "even when she lands on a flat note", for example.
• Verbed Title: Several games in the series have this kind of title, such as Twisted!, Touched!, and Snapped.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: During Kat & Ana's prologue in Twisted!, you can do an incredibly easy action command or watch a kindergartner (Ana) get stung by bees while desperately flailing her arms. There's no penalty for it.
• Video Game Perversity Potential: Unlike many later Nintendo games, D.I.Y. lacks any kind of censorship system, meaning it's totally possible to make suggestive or outright explicit microgames and share them with others with no consequences.
• Villainous Glutton: Wario. Even if he is the main character.
• Visual Pun: In Gold, the Credits minigame has you unravel toilet paper to read the staff's names: a literal Credits Roll.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Hope you can control 9-Volt by the time you get to his Get It Together! boss stage — it's a runthrough of the first stage of Super Mario World, but he's uncontrollable and can't jump from his skateboard for vertical movement without grabbing for the midair rings. There's still a time limit too.
• What Does She See in Him?: Believe it or not, Mona has a thing for Wario. Wario also thinks she's "cute".
• What the Hell, Player?: The characters tend to have this reaction when you fail their microgames. Wario Deluxe and the Wario Bug are exceptions for failing their microgames.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: [Number]-[Electrical Term] is seemingly common in Diamond City.
• Wingding Eyes:
  • Most of the game intros have Wario getting dollar-sign eyes when he gets inspired by some new technology.
  • Some characters get X-eyes if you fail their microgames. Wario, Jimmy, and Spitz in Mega Microgame$! present an example, and Jimmy retains his in Twisted!!, and even gets star eyes if you win his microgames in the games up to Touched!!, with his family joining in for the lattermost. Wario also gets his X-eyes back when you fail his Wario-Man form's microgames. Penny also gets X's in her eyes if she gets hurt.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing:
  • Touched! has a minigame that requires you not to blow/talk into the microphone to win. Unique in that it only shows up if you have been playing microphone-oriented minigames (and no, you can't access through normal means via going to a menu page and accessing a marathon of it.)
  • Twisted! also has a minigame that requires you not to move at all, unlike everything else in the game. This one can be marathoned; one can easily reach the maximum score by leaving the GBA resting on a flat surface.
  • D.I.Y. allows the player to make a game that is won from the start, provided they have the knowledge to make such a game.
  • Gold has a few games that work like this, but then they sometimes throw a curveball where you need to do something to win, just so you don't get complacent.
  • Get It Together! has several games that could work like this, depending on what crew member you use. However, it is all luck-based.
• Worthless Treasure Twist: At the end of Gold, Lulu reveals to Wario that the pot he stole from her village is actually the toilet they use to potty. Wario seems to find it pretty funny anyway.
• Yandere: Ashley, borderline and only in the English version:
  ...And yes, it's true,
  I don't have as many friends as you,
  But I think you're nice and maybe we could be friends!
  And if you say no, you're toast...
• Yonkoma: Basically, the kind of comics that you can create in D.I.Y.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Get It Together! initially has a point where you would think the game would end...until the cast realizes they've yet to rescue a few people.

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WATCH!

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