WarioWare: Touched!

WarioWare: Touched!, known as Sawaru Made in Wario (さわるメイド イン ワリオ Sawaru Meido in Wario, lit. "Touching Made in Wario") in Japan, is a Nintendo DS game, and the fourth game in the WarioWare series. The game itself is made up of many microgames - tiny minigames with a simple idea. WarioWare: Touched! microgames are based on touching the touch screen with the stylus. There are several characters in the game, and each one has his or her own style of microgames, a concept introduced in its predecessor, WarioWare: Twisted!. New major characters, Ashley and Red and Mike, are introduced in this game. In addition, the game includes many "mix characters" - characters whose games are taken from normal characters. Besides the microgames, the game also includes special "toys" won by achieving certain tasks (like scoring a certain amount of points in a specific game). The player can play with these toys using the touch screen, but they do not affect general gameplay.

Story
Wario is walking down a street after having proudly stolen a Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Advance SP, but then he suddenly trips and drops both systems down a manhole. The Sewer Guru then flies up from the hole holding not only the two handheld systems but also a Nintendo DS, and he asks Wario which one he dropped. Wario replies, "Gimme all of 'em!" and lunges at the Sewer Guru, knocking both of them down the manhole. After a brief scuffle Wario emerges with the Nintendo DS. Wario immediately notices that the handheld has two screens, but finds it more peculiar that there are no buttons. Not knowing how to play it, Wario loses a Whack-a-Mole minigame and shakes it angrily, thinking it's busted. However, the stylus flies out into his hand, and Wario suddenly realizes that he must use it to tap the bottom screen. He wins the minigame and then realizes he could make double the profit out of this double-screened apparatus, and so he uses it to make touch-style microgames.

Gameplay
WarioWare: Touched! plays very similarly to most games in the WarioWare series: players play a randomized grouping of very small, short minigames (called "microgames") within a small time-limit and a very brief set of instructions. Periodically, the game speeds up the microgame, thus shortening the time and making it more challenging and pressuring to complete the microgames within the time limit. Players start with four tries every time they start a stage. If they lose a microgame, they lose a try; when players lose all four of their tries, the game ends and players must start over from the beginning. Players earn points for every microgame that comes (winning or losing the microgame does not factor into points gained); at the fifteenth point, players play a boss microgame, which is considerably longer and more challenging than a typical microgame.

A unique feature of WarioWare: Touched! compared to other WarioWare games is the touch screen and microphone feature of the Nintendo DS. WarioWare: Touched! does not make use of any of the face buttons and thus, all inputs by the player are received via touch on the touchscreen or blowing into the microphone.

Characters and stages
All characters in WarioWare get their own microgames. Below is a list of the characters and stages. The first set of microgames the player must complete is always Wario's set. As the player completes more stages, more characters appear in the Games menu. Finally, each stage automatically ends after the player completes the boss stage, but subsequent playthroughs of a stage are continuous, with microgames becoming more difficult after completing a boss stage, until the player has no more tries. Players can get more tries by completing a boss stage, but the max number of tries is always four.

Characters from microgame sets do not introduce any new microgames or any specific touch control, but they mix up microgames from previous employees as described.

Locations
Each of the character's stories take place in various locations in Diamond City.

Microgames
There are a total of 190 microgames in WarioWare: Touched!. Each WarioWare employee has twenty normal microgames (Wario has twenty-one microgames) and a boss microgame. Microgames are categorized by how they are played; for example, Wario's microgames involve tapping or poking objects in the screen, Mona's microgames involve making cutting motions, Jimmy T.'s microgames involve rubbing the screen the right way, and so on. 9-Volt and Wario-Man are the only two employees that mix up differing microgame styles in their microgame mix.

Souvenirs
Souvenirs can be unlocked by completing tasks like getting 30 points on a stage or playing all microgames. Souvenirs can both be stored in Games and in the Toy Room. If stored in Games, souvenirs can be found quickly, but amount of souvenirs the player can store here is limited. If the player wants all the souvenirs at one place, the souvenirs can be stored in the Toy Room. Below is a list of the souvenirs.

Note that in the European and Wii U Virtual Console versions, Mona Pizza cannot be unlocked, since players must have a copy of WarioWare: Twisted! in the Game Boy Advance slot on the Nintendo DS in order to unlock it.

Staff
WarioWare: Touched! is developed by Nintendo SPD Group No.1 and Intelligent Systems. As with most WarioWare games, Yoshio Sakamoto alongside Ryoichi Kitanishi produced the game. As the original WarioWare's team was busy on WarioWare: Twisted, newcomer Ryuichi Nakada was the chief director of Touched!, while Goro Abe, Taku Sugioka, and Teruyuki Hirosawa were the game's other directors.

Development
Development of WarioWare: Touched! overlapped with that of WarioWare: Twisted!. As the series core staff was already busy with the latter title, the team split, and the game was primarily developed by staff new to the series. Producer Yoshio Sakamoto had to scramble to find a director for the project. At the beginning, there was a lack of unified awareness among the new staff to "what made WarioWare funny" and as such, WarioWare: Twisted!'s staff was transferred to WarioWare: Touched! following the completion of the title to help complete the game for the Nintendo DS's launch. The game was developed in a very short period of time, five months, alongside the release of WarioWare: Twisted!.

Quotes

 * Wario here! No offense, but you stink! My Touch Training stage is guaranteed to make you 138 percent less pathetic!
 * Just drag stuff. Even you can do that. (Ashley)
 * Wow! That was some serious funkitude. (Jamie T.)

Glitches
Three microgames in Kat & Ana's set are impossible to complete on some first-run Japanese DSes. The lines in Bright Idea and The Proud, the Fuse cannot be drawn while the flashlight in Midnight Weirdo blinks on and off. Nintendo provided replacement copies for those affected, and the glitches were corrected in later printings and the Western releases.

Trivia

 * European versions of the game are at some points not localized. Despite the game cover in Europe is yellow, the game's title screen and the menu icon are still orange (while in Japanese editions of the game, the title screen and icon are yellow). Also, in the explanation of the microgame Gold Digger, the series' first game is referred to as WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!, while the European title of it is WarioWare, Inc.: Minigame Mania. The game also uses American spelling and grammar in all English versions of the game.
 * In Japanese editions of the game, the music that plays when a boss game is announced is the same as the Speed Up music, while other editions of the game have original music.