After his surprise debut as the antagonist of Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins on the Game Boy, Wario quickly became one of Nintendo’s most popular characters. Wario is the anti-Mario; a cowardly, greedy and selfish guy with an insatiable appetite for money and power. Wario starred in his first game, Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, on the Game Boy, and went to make another three portable games (and one on the GameCube that we’d rather forget) and numerous Mario Party/Sports appearances before starring in the amazing Wario Ware series. Now Nintendo has the garlic loving bugger returning to his roots with a new Wario Land game entitled The Shake Dimension.

Our story takes place in the magical world of Yuretopia (which happens to be sealed in a small globe in a museum), which has been invaded by the Shake King and his legion of evil pirates. They’ve kidnapped Yuretopia’s sovereign, Queen Merelda and her loyal subjects, the Merfles. The Shake King was after the Bottomless Coin Sake, a magic pouch which releases untold wealth when shaken vigorously. Captain Mapel Syrup (now apparently an ally of Wario) observes this crisis from the outside world. She sends Wario the globe containing Yuretopia, and the last free Merfle tells him of their peril. After hearing about the sack (which may just satisfy his lust for money), Wario agrees to travel to Yuretopia, defeat the Shake King and rescue Merelda and her people.

For The Shake Dimension, Nintendo has outsourced a lot of the work to other studios, with the game design and programming legwork handled by new studio Good Feel (founded by ex-Konami fellows), while the visual design was handled by renowned Japanese animation studio Production I.G. (Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor). It’s this visual design which is The Shake Dimension’s greatest asset – all of the characters in the game are drawn and animated like traditional cartoon characters, rather than pixel based sprites like most video games. The result is characters with amazingly high levels of detail that move with unmatched fluidity. The game’s backgrounds are beautiful, highly detailed hand-drawn landscapes with liberal use of watercolours – it’s a pity that there’s a little less parallax scrolling employed on the scenery than is demanded by a modern game. Production I.G. also produced the game’s cinematics, which are produced in a fairly typical anime style, but are still quite impressive and charming, though the story is told through subtitles rather than voice overs.


Fans of the old two-dimensional style of platform game should feel right at home with The Shake Dimension, as it rarely strays from the traditional genre mould. Those who played Wario Land 4 should feel very familiar with the control setup employed by the game. The action is controlled in a more traditional manner than most Wii games – players hold the remote sideways, using the D-Pad to move Wario, the 1 button to use his shoulder barge attack, and the 2 button to jump. On top of your traditional control moves, The Shake Dimension also employs some motion control antics. Shaking is the key to recovering treasure trapped in bags and enemies, and freeing the Merfles from their prison cells. When you pick up an enemy or an object, you have to tilt the Wii Remote to aim your throw. You can also execute a ground smash move at any time by shaking the remote up and down. There’s not a whole lot of complexity to The Shake Dimension’s controls, but they get the job done.

Yuretopia is split into five different worlds, each of which contains six parts; five regular levels and a boss fight. The basic goal of your regular levels is to run to the end of the level, collecting as much cash as you can along the way, to free the trapped Merfle. Upon releasing the unwilling detainee, you need to rush back to the start of the level before the timer runs out. Level designs are pretty clever, with multiple paths and all sorts of crazy gadgets to help you along your way. Some levels defy convention, and will have you doing something completely different, like commanding Wario’s submarine through the depths of the sea. The Shake Dimension’s boss fights are a real highlight; the bosses are massive, and intimidating, and require you to make use of specific techniques while dodging the usual patterned attacks. Some of the boss fights stray from the norm – the second encounter has you piloting a sort of tilt-car fitted with a boxing glove; the boss is throwing wrenches and tyres, and you’ve got to line them up and punch them back at him so they shatter his engine. Each boss will grant you a new power or item that is necessary to defeating the Shake King in the final encounter.

After defeating a boss in a given area, you are not actually automatically entitled to go onto the next world. Instead, you have got to fork over a bunch of money to Mapel Syrup so she can give you the next treasure map. More often than not, you’ll fall short of the rather hefty amount required to buy the next map, and will need to grind through a couple of replays of levels to make the dosh for the next world. This process is a real drag, and probably the most annoying thing about the game. Mapel’s shop also has a lot of other goodies, like health increases and such which can make the game a bit easier, but taking the time to buy these will obviously mean that you will need to spend even longer grinding for the money for the new worlds.


Truth be told, you do not really need The Shake Dimension to be any easier. Wario’s latest adventure should only take the average gamer roughly five hours to complete. While that might not sound a lot, The Shake Dimension has a lot of extra little bits to extend its life beyond that point. Each of the levels has a number of achievements, usually in the order of three to five, that will have you hunting down a certain number of coins, killing a specific golden enemy, or making it back to the gate with the Merfle with a set amount of time left on the clock. While these achievements are pretty easy at the start of the game, they get considerably difficult later in the piece, so those who wish to gain full completion could easily spend more than 10 hours with the game. On top of the achievements, each level also has three bits of hidden treasure to find and collect.

Wario Land: The Shake Dimension is a lovely looking platformer with some fantastic levels and boss fights, but it’s a little bit too easy, rather short, and requires a little more money grinding than it should. I would love to see developers re-use the drawing and animation techniques that Good Feel and Production I.G. have employed in this game – it would certainly make any 2D game look a whole lot prettier. For anyone in need of a bit of old-school platforming action this holiday, The Shake Dimension should be enough to satisfy those retro urges.