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Wario Land 4 first showed up on Carbon-izer as part of "Games of June 2019", the first in that series of pages, and thus, the review will be a modified and updated version of that.

Although it was at least the second playthrough at that point, I associate Wario Land 4 most strongly with visiting my uncle's apartment in New Jersey (staying for a period on assignment with the company, not his permanent residence) in 2007. There was something about Wario Land 4's weird and moody atmosphere (which was also brought over into WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames!) that paired with the totally foreign experience of the New Jersey/New York area (the latter just a few day trips). It also had some strong associations with retail...at that point, it was the height of the "malls blogs" era (even MallsofAmerica was still updating, and at that point, no major retail chains had closed since the early 2000s).

One of the things that Wario Land 4 was good at was almost every stage being unique, with some enemies unique to each world...though sometimes this was frustrating. One level, "The Big Board", had a gimmick based on RNG (or just good timing) but when used with quicksave features it becomes a joke. Other literal "hit-and-miss" levels, like Domino Row, also were difficult without quicksave features, but quicksave makes everything a bit TOO easy. Ultimately, there are only 16 levels not counting the intro and final level, but it's a good enough experience that it doesn't feel underserved or overstayed its welcome, with the levels large enough to explore but not long enough that it just feels like a drag. (This was a problem I had with Yoshi's Island DS), which I played for the first time as well in 2007.

FINAL RATING: