I finally beat Vs. COM mode in Wario’s Woods after all these years. It’s one of my favorite puzzles games ever, and I’ve owned it since I was a kid, but I had never beaten Wario. More than once a glitch/freeze has caused me to lose my spot, either on the cart or with a save state. Other times, I just ran out of steam. But I booted this up on a whim at about 2 AM and finished just now at about 4:30 AM.

It’s still an immensely satisfying play. Controlling an avatar that’s disrupted by the flow of the field creates a style of matching puzzle games that’s entirely unique. There’s a level of randomness and urgency in Wario’s Woods that feels completely improvisational when compared to the higher, more mechanically-defined play of puzzle games like Tetris Attack. You’re fighting over your own control, since your “cursor” is limited by the field, and that degree of input adds a lot of uncertainty in how matches progress, because you can mess up simple inputs as opposed to just failing to notice proper combo and chain potential. Add to that some incredible sound design with eccentric voice clips, big explosions, and large screen-clearing effects, and you have a game that becomes about sudden, unexpected big moves that are extremely addictive.

I managed to beat all COMs without losing a single match, but I did lose about 4-5 rounds. Coincidentally and ironically, Wario was one of the quickest to go down. I think the AI might actually get easier as it goes along, because they aren’t great at handling the more crowded playing field. If you set up a bunch of four-unit combos, the Thwomp can quickly trap them.

I also noticed there weren’t any color-changing squids, diagonal monsters, or the disappearing ones. Maybe I have to play on a higher difficulty for those. I appreciate the variety of colorful opponents and changing backgrounds, but I wish they had bothered to include more music. It gets old hearing the same song for 100 rounds. I also think it would’ve been cool if they included the AI opponents as selectable avatars in the 2-player mode, since they have fully finished sprites, but whatever. It was a lot of fun to revisit one of Nintendo’s most underrated original games.