Wario Land 3

Wario is no hero. Wario is greedy, selfish, and in this game practically immortal on top of it — and from that grows one of the cleverest platforming concepts ever released on the Game Boy Color. Wario Land 3 by Nintendo R&D1 threw out the rule the whole genre rests on: that enemies can kill you.

Instead of lives and death, an entirely different logic operates here. When something rams into Wario, he doesn't die — he transforms. Normal Wario becomes a zombie, an inflated balloon, a burning fireball, or a flattened pancake. And each of these transformations opens different paths. The zombie passes through a certain floor, the balloon floats upward, the fiery Wario ignites things you otherwise can't. An accident suddenly becomes a tool, and the whole game turns into a giant puzzle about how to cleverly damage your antihero at the right moment.

Thanks to this, Wario Land 3 far transcends an ordinary platformer and comes closer to a metroidvania wrapped in a puzzle game. The world doesn't unlock linearly — you collect music boxes that gradually make new areas accessible, and you return to previously visited levels with new abilities to reach places you couldn't before. Each level hides treasures and secrets you'll uncover only once you have the right transformation or ability.

This nonlinearity and depth make the game far more than just a laid-back platformer for the road. It's a title that forces you to think, explore, and return, while keeping the light-hearted, playful tone typical of Wario's escapades. And paradoxically, immortality doesn't lower the challenge — it just shifts it from reflexes to the head.

It's no accident that Wario Land 3 is so often named among the best games on the Game Boy Color at all. It combines Nintendo's technical assurance with an idea that could easily have become just a gimmick, but here forms the backbone of the entire design. It's a platformer that will convince you that being vulnerable now and then is actually the best ability of all.

Why play: The brilliant idea of an immortal, shape-shifting Wario turns an ordinary platformer into a sprawling puzzle metroidvania — one of the best titles on the entire GBC.