WTF work time fun hands-on

Nintendo may have the whacked-out-minigame market in its iron-fisted grasp, but few of the WarioWare micro-challenges are quite as mystifying as those in WTF. The idea here is that you're trapped in a sort of personal retail Hell, forced to take repetitive jobs that make no sense, all for a meager wage that you'll just use to buy more soul-sucking items. Whoa... that's actually kinda deep for a game with moose racing.

The Drunken Mayor is a great example of WTF 's edgier minigames - you're a tipsy man of power required to cut ribbons at ceremonies all over town. Thing is, you slam a few back in between every cutting, so each new mission becomes harder to control. Eventually you're stumbling all over the place and just can't line up the scissors - your dark secret (and secret, liquid lover) has been found out.

Other games include a world class paper-rock-scissors tournament, space ship landing and amazingly cryptic attempts at culling a young woman's phone number just to have her turn you down in the end. You begin with a small sampling of these games, but as you play and earn more cash, you can plunk some coins into various gambling machines for new content. They all dispense items at random, though some cost more than others due to the chance you'll unlock some truly messed up game... like a hand bell ringing rhythm game starring impossibly endowed anime girls or a recreation of Bishop's knife-and-hand game from Alien.