Co-developed by Intelligent Systems and Nintendo R&D1, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Games!, is a collection of party-based minigames that are supposed to test your reactions and skill. And the games have “Wario-based japes” flavour to them.
You start the game in an elevator ascending floors. Every floor has a minigame that you must complete to progress. The more minigames in a sequence that you beat or complete, the greater your chances of being upgraded to the next class upon the game’s conclusion.
Mega Party Games is made to look like you’re playing on a Game Boy Advance, which ties in to the crossover it has with the similar game, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! on the Game Boy Advance. I’m not sure which came first – the chicken or the egg, but both games have very similar presentation, characters and minigames.
The main problem I have with the WarioWare games is that – while the minigames themselves are really well-constructed and fun to play – they don’t last very long at all (five to ten seconds each, max), which makes for a very fractured game. IMHO. While I haven’t got an issue with quick games, I have got an issue with “micro attention spans“…
Occasionally you have to complete a “boss stage”, which is just another minigame with slightly more meat to it. Occasionally you’ll also get to meet various special guests, and video game fans will identify these for fun with their pals…
WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Games! is not my favourite collection of minigames, but it is polished and playable enough to be a significant title in the sub-genre.
WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Games! was released in 2003 in Japan, and in 2004 everywhere else.
More: WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Games! on Wikipedia
The King of Grabs 
Regarding your point – I believe (but could be mistaken) the GBA version came first, and this was essentially an expanded version of that game. Pretty much the entirety of that game seems to be included here, with a slightly fleshed out single player – but still similar – and multiplayer added.
Had some good times with this one. The multiplayer was always worth a laugh, the sci-fi one where you claim parts of the board based on how many minigames you were willing to try and do in a run was usually the best one, that and the turtles balancing one where you sat on a tower of turtles and gained one for each game you lost, but could still stay in the game by maintaining your balance on them. If you fell, you not only turned into a turtle yourself, but could then hop around and knock the other players to put them off their balance! Pretty evil.
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I also remember the Game Boy Advance version coming first – and this was just a re-implementation of it…with multiplayer.
The multiplayer feature of being able to mess with your opponents once you got knocked out was the real fun here. I recall one game or set of games where you wandered around the screen messing with peoples’ view of the goals.
Nintendo was still in its prime during this era; understand that this game isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but it – like many other GameCube games – displayed a real dedication to experimentation that perhaps culminated in the Wii and Nintendo DS, both with very unique and fun methods of control that expanded what gameplay could be. Feels like modern Nintendo has lost that innovative edge and today is trading on the past or “just another console”. The new ideas are all coming from indie devs on Steam.
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