After thousands of microgames, how does WarioWare stay fresh?

polygon.com:

For 20 years, Goro Abe has lived and breathed Wario, overseeing the development of thousands of microgames in the WarioWare series. In the creation of WarioWare: Move It! for Nintendo Switch, Abe helped whittle down more than a thousand ideas to ultimately deliver on 223 weird and wacky fresh microgames.

And while the platforms may change, and the way people interact with WarioWare games shifts from title to title, Abe says that the most important factors that make a good microgame haven’t changed since WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Game$! debuted on Game Boy Advance in 2003. “Microgame controls and rules should be intuitive, where any player can instantly grasp how they work,” Abe says. He still expects people to fail them on their first try, though. Those microgames, Abe adds, should also “make sense to as wide a range of ages and audiences as possible.”

Polygon recently interviewed Abe via email to discuss his work on WarioWare: Move It!, and his work as co-director, gameplay designer, and programmer on the WarioWare series. He discusses what still excites him about making microgames for two decades — spoiler: “games where you move your butt” is one of them — and the long-term effects of WarioWare microgame development on the human brain.

You can read our full, translated interview below.

Polygon: What were the team’s most important goals in making a new WarioWare game built for Nintendo Switch?

Goro Abe: The initial concept was to combine elements of a party game like WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Game$! and a more movement-based game like WarioWare: Smooth Moves into a motion control WarioWare party game for the Nintendo Switch system.

As we developed the game, we wanted to make the poses during gameplay silly-looking,