Wario Land: Shake It!

Wario Land: Shake It! is the last classic entry in Wario's platforming branch and also one of the best-looking titles released in two dimensions on Wii. The whole game is hand-drawn, animated in the style of a traditional cartoon, and topped off with cinematic cutscenes that could easily air on television. Wario sets out into a world trapped inside an old globe toy to pull out every last bit of gold he can reach, since the main hero's motivation is, as always, pure greed.

The gameplay is built on the fact that Wario isn't vulnerable in the usual sense. Enemies knock him around, set him on fire, or squash him flat, but he just turns into a ridiculous shape and keeps going, which makes the main levels feel more like spatial puzzles than tests of reflexes. The controller is held sideways like a classic gamepad, and the only motion-control element is shaking it, which makes Wario spill coins from his sack, shake the whole screen, or break the ground beneath him. Every level has the same structure: the player fights their way to a final cage, frees a small creature, and that triggers a countdown during which they must retrace their way back through every room to the entrance. This dash is the heart of the game and forces you to memorize your route.

Completed tasks and collected gold unlock further levels and upgrades, so replaying pays off. The music is playful and jazzy, matching the overall comedic tone that has always set the Wario series apart from the Mario branch. Contemporary reviews praised the artistic execution and thoughtful level design, while criticizing the shorter length and lower difficulty of the main line. Commercially it never ranked among the console's biggest hits, and today it's a somewhat forgotten gem that holds up well against far more famous two-dimensional platformers of its time. For Wii owners it's one of the few titles where the value hides more in execution than in scope, and anyone who loves hand-drawn animation won't find many better representatives on the console. The series never returned to this style again.