Why WarioWare: Smooth Moves is the best bit of drunken fun you'll ever have

WarioWare: Smooth Moves (2007)

WarioWare: Smooth Moves (2007)

I’m fully aware that impressionable children may be reading this, so I hate to advocate mind-altering drugs here, but I just want to say that I am thankful to alcohol for many varied reasons. In general, all it’s ever done for me is make me shouty, belligerent, uninhibited, free-spending, giggly, light-headed and stupid. And for all of that, I’ll be forever grateful for its existence.

You see, I know you’ll find this hard to believe but I used to be a dreadful stick in the mud. If ever a moment passed when I wasn’t at the top of my mental game, I would feel embarrassed. Do you know what this left me as? An overly studious, financially conscious bore who wouldn’t have known what a girl was if one came up and… well, not sat on me, but you know what I mean.

---

Actually, not much has changed for me from Monday to Friday; I’m still Mr. Boring with double grey denim. Once Friday afternoon hits though, and I have a few uninterrupted sleeps ahead of me, that all changes.

Suddenly I’m on the double gins, ranting and raving like Ollie Reed, and it isn’t long before my bum is out. There used to be the mandatory traffic cone on my head as well, but that was more something from my student days and, as you can imagine, I’ve grown up a lot since then.

I know, I know. I really shouldn’t be making the case for lowering oneself into being a drunken, hollering idiot. But you can’t argue with the laughs inebriation can bring. There’s a lot to be said for crashing around drunkenly in shopping trollies, or getting up on your mate’s shoulders and having jousting matches with one another - especially if you’re only witnessing this as a safe-standing spectator.

Then there’s “Watch This’‘. I love Watch This; anytime someone comes out with Watch This, I’m standing to attention like a meerkat because it’s 100% guaranteed that something is about to go dreadfully wrong for that person. Their suicidal overconfidence will immediately come back to bite them, painfully.

If you call a Watch This, then you’ ae committed to whatever crazy plan you’ve just conjured up, and you must go through with it. You now have a audience. Whatever you do will backfire horrendously, and you’ll be left embarrassed, beetroot red, possibly even mangled, in front of everyone watching. Sounds great to me.

And even if you do end up getting carted off to the hospital with your leg pointing the wrong way, and your ankle gone so bulbous it’s in another postcode, then at least you’ll have another fabulous story for life. That’s assuming of course that you can even remember it. And having a repertoire of drunken stories to draw from really is invaluable to any raconteur.

You’ll want to leave your inhibitions at the door and maybe even pour yourself a preparatory drink or three before sticking on WarioWare: Smooth Moves for Nintendo Wii, this I can tell you.

This game was released in the very early stages of the console, when the Wii was moving like hotcakes and literally any game would have sold by the sackful. It was also a time when kids, adults and even your granny were amazed by what the Wii Remote could do, or as this game calls it, the Form Baton.

Of course, with hindsight we now know that the Wiimote wasn’t all that capable really, good for not much more than waggling around the place. But it was really new-wave thinking for us gaming plebs, a bit of motion control. The WarioWare games had become known for giving test-runs to all of Nintendo’s console gimmicks - the twisting and the touching on GBA and DS. God forbid you’d have to mash a button every now and then.

Even busting this game out at a party could cause you some initial embarrassment, given that the design, presentation and cutscenes are so wild, so insane, so quintessentially Japanese. You may find yourself apologising once or twice, especially when one of your social peers has a microgame that called for them to frantically wash a cow’s bum.

No hyperbole there, Cow Anus Washing (not the actual name) really is here, and it’s just one of the 200 or so 5-second microgames featured in Smooth Moves. Anything really does go in this game, and it’s almost impossible to explain WarioWare to a layperson - you just have to sit down and feel its madness for yourself.

Of course, the biggest flaw of these games is that you can pretty much be done with at least 85% of the game in about two hours. You wouldn’t want to have spent full whack on this game back in the day, that’s for sure. These days you can bag it for about a tenner, which is a lot more like it. After all, you don’t get two pints for a tenner anymore. I’m not so sure you’d even get a gin and tonic for a ten-spot these days.

Get this one out at a party with a nice few drinks and a Wii Remotes (with the strap, of course - safety first) and then stand back. You’ll get a great laugh, watching people do fast paced microgames using such elegant poses as The Umbrella, the Samurai, the Mohawk and the Big Cheese.

It quickly becomes the most ridiculous and therefore the most funny thing you ever saw. It probably won’t be long until someone falls over or smashes a glass or your TV or their collarbone, but that only adds to the laughter. It all adds up to what the Irish call ‘gas craic’, which can range from a sensible chuckle all the way up to forcible dismemberment.

It really is just the longevity that holds WW: SM back, but how do you even combat that? The microgames by their nature can’t last anymore than 5-10 seconds each, so even if you crammed a thousand of them in there, you’d be lucky to get three hours worth of gameplay, plus a few admittedly funny cutscenes. But that’s OK, I’ve had nights out and pub stints that have lasted less time than that, and they’ve been some of the best nights I’ve had.

It’s between this and the original WarioWare for title of best WarioWare game, I reckon. Treat Smooth Moves as that quirky liqueur you break out only every so often, just the right tonic for a guaranteed burst of fun and memories. With any luck, you’ll wake up the next day with your muscles feeling stiff, a slight headache nagging at you, and you’re wondering what on earth just happened.

2 January 2026