How twelve person multiplayer works in Wario Ware: Smooth Moves

On the back of the box Odoru Made in Wario (Wario Ware: Smooth Moves) says you can play with twelve people at the same time. It’s true you can and the video below is a demo of how it works out. First everyone makes an angel and you’re randomly chosen to do microgames until you mess up. The last person standing wins. Instead of having to deal with multiple remotes, everyone shares one and you have to quickly pass it over to the next person before it’s their turn.

There are three other ways to play Wario Ware: Smooth Moves with 2-5 people. One mode starts off with a footrace and you do mini games to run faster. At the end of the race there everyone is tied up above a pond and you take turns cutting ropes until one person falls into the water. Then there’s the a mode where you take turns pumping a balloon with the Wii remote by using as a hand pump. After you take a turn blowing up the balloon you do a microgame and the next person gets to pump the balloon. You keep taking turns until one person over inflates it and the balloon explodes. The key is to fill the balloon with tons of air in the beginning and barely pump it when its ready to explode (hinted by the flashing red screen). Lastly there is a mode like hot potato where you take turns passing the Wii remote and doing microgames until someone fails their game. The difference between this and the twelve player angel mode is you can choose the style of game they do. If you know someone has a hard time doing tengu (games where the controller is on your nose) you can pick that to throw them off.

Besides microgame battles there are three other multiplayer games to play if you have two people. You can play 301 darts where you and another player compete to see who can get their score down first. In darts a cursor appears on the dart board and you throw a dart towards the cursor like you were throwing a dart, except you don’t let the remote go. It takes time to get your aim down, but the darts game is pretty good. Then there’s a foot race game where one player holds the nunchuck and the other holds the remote. The goal of the game is to see how far you can run in sixty seconds. You don’t actually run in the footrace game, instead you time your jumps to avoid manholes, mudtraps and pick up cakes that give you the temporary power to fly. You’re supposed to jump, but you can easily cheat by lifting the remote or nunchuck up instead of jumping. Once people figure that out, it takes the fun out of the game.

Starnose is my favorite out of the three. Like the footrace game you’re tethered to the other player through the nunchuck. Each piece controls a nose shaped ship where you lift the remote or nunchuck to control your ship. Once you take flight there are icons that increase your nose size and obstacles to dodge. While you could just fly through the maze, you can be aggressive and bump the other player into walls.