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WarioWare: Inc.: Mega Microgame$ is a the first installment in Nintendo's classic microgame series for the Game Boy Advance. The game centers around a hodgepodge of microgames - games that give you mere seconds to complete a zany, unpredictable task in rapid succession. You need to act quickly and finish these microgames to help Wario and his friends around Diamond City solve their various predicaments.
In this TAS, Pellets completes the main story mode at top speed.

The Objective

The aim of this TAS is to complete all eleven stages of WarioWare, Inc's main campaign, triggering the final cutscene and the "credits," in as little time as possible, whilst also completing the microgames in unorthodox and humanly impossible ways.

Technical Tripe

  • Made in Bizhawk 2.9.1
  • US version
  • Native framerate

Explaining a Few Things (a.k.a. "why'd you do that?")

  • You'll notice that the microgames are played with a set amount of time, so you can't really speed through any of the microgames except for the bosses. This means the TAS must focus on entertainment or playaround factor, so you'll see a lot of completing games at the last possible moment/immediately and being way too close for comfort when dodging things.
  • You'll also see a lot of soft resets (B + A + Select + Start) to quickly return to the title screen. These are done to skip the stage prologues and epilogues, as well as the fake loading screen that triggers when you unlock a new stage, all of which are faster to skip than to sit through.
  • In Punch Out (the boxing boss), normally you would wait for your opponent to punch, then you dodge and counter. However, if you punch early, your opponent will block it and might immediately counter, depending on RNG. Here, I punch on specific frames to trigger this immediate counter to speed up the fight. This trick does not seem to work when the opponent is on one heart.
  • In Dungeon Dilemma (the RPG boss), you might notice very briefly that I wait a few frames to pick the second-to-last choice. I do this so that the "Success" option shows up first on the final turn, which is faster than waiting for the cursor to cycle through to "Success" as the second option.

Potential Improvements (a.k.a. Pobody's Nerfect)

  • There is a possibilitiy that the end of Dribble's boss can be completed faster, either through trickier angles or a different setup.
  • Orbulon's IQ microgames are twice as long as everyone else's. These microgames also show up as part of Jimmy's second remix stage, so it would be optimal to have as few of these microgames as possible. In this TAS, this stage only has three of Orbulon's games, and it is unknown to what extent the selection of microgames for this remix can be manipulated, including if there's a minimum amount of games per set that must be in the remix.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Replacing with a trimmed version from RetroEdit
nymx: This doesn't need any in-dept analysis. This beats the WR by 37 seconds...adjusting for the starting point of the RTA run. As the author has stated...this is mostly waiting on a timer, except for the bosses as the author mentioned. Everything looks good here, while this even beats a previous canceled submission.
Thank you RetroEdit for your review and help!
Accepting to "Standard".
fsvgm777: Processing.

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Posted: 1/16/2026 2:03 AM
TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #10154: Pellets's GBA WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$! in 29:16.209
Posted: 1/20/2026 10:10 PM
(Edited: 1/20/2026 10:41 PM)
Post subject: Review
RetroEdit
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Arcade TAS of 2023
Review: My general impression after watching this TAS was positive. Even though each microgame (probably) has no time save because each has a fixed timer, the author Pellets finished them in a variety of interesting ways. The bosses also seemed better than human play and decently optimized, although there's definitely future possible improvement. For due diligence, I compared this TAS section-by-section to the current human WR (using a script I quickly made). Conveniently, the current WR is on emulator, so I was able to compare GBA frame counts directly. The sections below are listed in TAS order (the WR played some sections in a different order) and use the names from here: 
      Intro Games,  menu: -0.150 (TAS:    4.152, WR:    4.302)
      Intro Games, games:  0.000 (TAS: 1:06.619, WR: 1:06.619)
      Intro Games,  boss:  0.000 (TAS:   14.047, WR:   14.047)
           Sports,  menu: -0.904 (TAS:    9.694, WR:   10.598)
           Sports, games:  0.000 (TAS: 1:37.375, WR: 1:37.375)
           Sports,  boss: -2.595 (TAS:   12.724, WR:   15.319)
           Sci-Fi,  menu: -1.188 (TAS:   10.179, WR:   11.368)
           Sci-Fi, games:  0.000 (TAS: 2:42.002, WR: 2:42.002)
           Sci-Fi,  boss: -2.327 (TAS:   59.185, WR: 1:01.512)
          Strange,  menu: -0.351 (TAS:    9.710, WR:   10.062)
          Strange, games:  0.000 (TAS: 1:33.809, WR: 1:33.809)
          Strange,  boss: -0.418 (TAS:   11.937, WR:   12.356)
Nintendo Classics,  menu: -1.473 (TAS:    9.375, WR:   10.849)
Nintendo Classics, games:  0.000 (TAS: 1:37.442, WR: 1:37.442)
Nintendo Classics,  boss:  0.000 (TAS:   29.266, WR:   29.266)
 Jimmy's Remix #1,  menu: -1.339 (TAS:    9.945, WR:   11.284)
 Jimmy's Remix #1, games:  0.000 (TAS: 2:02.690, WR: 2:02.690)
 Jimmy's Remix #1,  boss: -0.853 (TAS:   14.884, WR:   15.738)
               IQ,  menu: -1.456 (TAS:   10.380, WR:   11.837)
               IQ, games:  0.000 (TAS: 2:18.495, WR: 2:18.495)
               IQ,  boss: -2.159 (TAS:   31.141, WR:   33.301)
          Reality,  menu: -0.468 (TAS:   10.263, WR:   10.732)
          Reality, games:  0.000 (TAS: 1:28.100, WR: 1:28.100)
          Reality,  boss: -3.448 (TAS:   39.881, WR:   43.330)
           Nature,  menu: -1.406 (TAS:   10.346, WR:   11.753)
           Nature, games:  0.000 (TAS: 2:39.959, WR: 2:39.959)
           Nature,  boss: -1.607 (TAS:   38.960, WR:   40.567)
 Jimmy's Remix #2,  menu: -1.691 (TAS:   10.464, WR:   12.155)
 Jimmy's Remix #2, games: -5.859 (TAS: 2:14.176, WR: 2:20.035)
 Jimmy's Remix #2,  boss: -2.159 (TAS:   16.173, WR:   18.333)
    Anything Goes,  menu: -0.853 (TAS:   10.062, WR:   10.916)
    Anything Goes, games:  0.000 (TAS: 2:20.923, WR: 2:20.923)
    Anything Goes,  boss: -1.238 (TAS: 1:09.515, WR: 1:10.754)

[Total]: -33.954 (= -33.954 +0.000) (TAS: 29:03.886, WR: 29:37.841)
 menu: -11.284
 games: -5.859
 boss: -16.809
Here, menus encompass everything prior to and after each of the 11 sections. Games are everything except the boss game. The 5.859s of time saved in the Jimmy's Remix #2 games seems to confirm it can have a random amount of IQ minigames (perhaps it will always have a minimum amount, though?) (For good measure, I also compared to the WR using the video times directly. That comparison generally has more noise because of time delta granularity differences due to the GBA frame rate. The WR also loses an additional 0.1 seconds during Sci-Fi because the emulator application itself lagged.) So this comparison shows the TAS is faster or equal in every section. Technically, the TAS probably lost a bit of time in some parts if each boss timing was further subdivided, but it's not significant, as each TAS boss was net faster than the corresponding WR boss. (Getting even further in the weeds, "faster or equal in every section" is an imperfect metric, because a future TAS with more RNG manipulation would probably lose minor time to this TAS in some parts to save time overall.) All-in-all, this TAS seems like it would make a solid first publication—though I have some potential bias: see below. An improvement: I went a bit further than necessary for review purposes and tinkered with the inputs. This led to a 7-frame improvement in the final "Run, dummy!" section by doing first-frame A-presses instead an autofire on-off pattern. I also found a few other improvements to other bosses' RNG that would require redoing the entire TAS or major portions to sync (and probably require more tools and scripts to optimize well).
Posted: 1/25/2026 10:56 PM
nymx
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RetroEdit wrote:
Review I went a bit further than necessary for review purposes and tinkered with the inputs. This led to a 7-frame improvement in the final "Run, dummy!" section by doing first-frame A-presses instead an autofire on-off pattern. I also found a few other improvements to other bosses' RNG that would require redoing the entire TAS or major portions to sync (and probably require more tools and scripts to optimize well).
Just wanting to be clear here...are you requesting co-authorship?
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
Posted: 1/27/2026 4:06 PM
(Edited: 1/27/2026 4:08 PM)
RetroEdit
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Arcade TAS of 2023
Sorry for the delay and lack of clarity. I'll say... no thanks on coauthorship this time. It took less than 5 minutes to create and in my eyes, my improvement is pretty close in spirit to removing trailing blank frames at the end of a movie (which would not generally merit coauthorship).
Posted: 1/27/2026 6:44 PM
nymx
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RetroEdit wrote:
Sorry for the delay and lack of clarity. I'll say... no thanks on coauthorship this time. It took less than 5 minutes to create and in my eyes, my improvement is pretty close in spirit to removing trailing blank frames at the end of a movie (which would not generally merit coauthorship).
Thank you. I'll be passing judgement tonight on this.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
Posted: 2/1/2026 8:38 AM
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [6962] GBA WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$! by Pellets in 29:16.209