WarioWare: Move It! is a bit of an Accessibility Nightmare،
Coming off the heights of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, WarioWare: Move It! hits stores later today. As the eleventh entry in the series, Move It! doesn’t exactly break from the franchise’s well-established formula. It’s packed with colorful visuals, wacky characters, and an equally bizarre collection of microgames that are sure to please longtime fans. Unfortunately, it’s weighed down by one of the most bizarre design decisions I’ve seen in a while.
Motion control issues
In what I can only assume is a commitment to motion controls, WarioWare: Move It! doesn’t give players the luxury of playing with a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller or any other more traditional input method. As soon as you start the game, you will be prompted to connect a pair of Joy-Cons. And for those of you who think you can get around this by using a Joy-Con Grip, think again. Move it! expects (or rather demands) that you play with a Joy-Con in each hand.
Although most gamers don’t pay attention to this type of requirement, it presents several obstacles for some Switch owners. For starters, the inability to play with a Pro Controller or docked Joy-Con puts the kibosh on most types of handheld gaming. The only way to play on the go is to prop up your Switch using the included kickstand and play from a few feet away. Worse yet, if you’re playing on a Switch Lite, you’ll need a separated a set of Joy-Cons on hand and another method of holding your Switch Lite upright.
Knowledgeable readers might raise an eyebrow here – after all, this isn’t the first time a Switch game has hit shelves without support for handheld gaming. Every Just Dance entry on the platform requires the use of a detached Joy-Con, as do a handful of first-party fitness games (Fitness Boxing, Ring Fit Adventure) and multiplayer-centric titles (1-2 Switch , Super Mario Party). ). That being said, most of these games don’t feature the same restrictive gameplay styles as WarioWare: Move It! centers around.
Get up, get up
Not only WarioWare: Move It! require the use of detached Joy-Cons, but for all intents and purposes this requires players to play standing up and have a full range of motion (and some room to move around). Each microgame has an associated “shape” (or pose), which encourages players to hold their Joy-Con in a very specific way. One shape might ask you to hold your hands above your head, a Joy-Con in each hand, while another might ask you to keep your arms outstretched to either side.
While you could try playing while seated, some microgames would be rather difficult to play, while others are essentially impossible to beat without getting up. The rigid control schemes, the inability to play seated, the amount of movement one must make to make your way through the single-player story — these requirements will seem trivial to the majority of players, but to those who don’t are not. able-bodied or physically disabled, WarioWare: Move It! is beyond their reach.
The obvious solution
Sure, motion controls aren’t new to the franchise, but it’s also 2023. Accessibility options have come a long way in the last decade. Few years ago, blind players could not only play, but beat The Last of Us Part IIand Just Dance 2023 – a game which, for the record, focuses on dancing – even allows players to filter out maps that require standing or jumping.
Putting on my game developer hat for a second, the solution here seems rather obvious. WarioWare: Move it! Should have come with an alternative control scheme for those who need to play seated or with a more traditional controller. I can’t say that all of the microgames offered would translate well to a gamepad, but the majority of them would, and it’s not like the series didn’t start on the Game Boy Advance , with only a d-pad and a few buttons to enjoy it.
It remains to be seen whether Nintendo will address these shortcomings, but given that they’ve also released a handful of other board games with similar restrictions, I won’t hold my breath.
