First Look: Super 56

Step aside, WarioWare. Super 56 flings a procession of madcap mini-games at players, each employing a single-button control scheme.

Moving through the aisles of indie games at Krakow’s Digital Dragons convention, it took a moment for my brain to assess each effort. But the second I saw a parody of Japanese Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga’s “reiwa” signage, developer Onion Soup Interactive instantly seized my attention. Largely, the studio kept me enraptured as I made my way through Super 56’s procession of WarioWare-style mini-games.

As the moniker implies, Super is a collection of 56 different challenges that last between 20 seconds to a minute. Input uses a single button, with quick taps and longer holds both recognized by the game. While the former requires a very light touch, you’ll receive plenty of practice, since the game’s menus use the same system.

A New Era that Recalls the Old One

The first challenge I faced replaced the “reiwa” kanji with a direction to press the ‘A’ button. Executing that command simulated the manual focusing of a camera. As with all subsequent micro-games, there was a threshold for success. Fail. and the game will deduct a heart from an on-screen health gauge.

There were some obvious nods to the eccentricity of WarioWare. One challenge was located at a gas station, where I was asked to pump exactly four liters of fuel. Another micro-game depicted a 16-bit style tennis match. But instead of controlling either of the athletes, I was a ballboy who had to pick up out-of-play balls before a diligent dog did. There was one diversion that channeled Angry Birds, as I set an angle and power level in hopes of shooting a trio of apples. Much like the series that inspired it, Super 56 varies its challenges. While some require precise timing, others are a bit more complex, requiring players to stay cool under pressure.

The latter was especially important in Super 56’s interpretation of miniature golf. Instead of just worrying about aiming and how much power to apply across the game’s par 6, I also had to switch between three different clubs. Although the developers toss the occasional button-mashing test at you, here I had to think about the best methods for dealing with thick patches of grass and lobbing the ball between islands. And yes, there’s even a mini-game built around Pokémon-style battles.

An Arrow to the Ass

Throughout, there’s a sense of playfulness that might be a bit too impish for a first-party Nintendo game. During the archery challenge, there was a profile of a nude man in a yoga pose. Arcing a projectile into his butt was rewarded with a token used to access Super 56’s large number of unlockables. One mini-game felt like driving a car that persistently pulled to the right, requiring an ample amount of counter steering.  I ended up losing control, knocking a crowd of spectators around like bowling pins. Oops.

One of the things I thoroughly enjoyed where all the references. One mini-game features a spaghetti-armed hedgehog in a bonus game right out of the Sonic series. Humor was plentiful in a mini-game that required a news anchor to look at the proper camera and another that required a character to contort their body into different positions so they could fit through a moving wall. Super 56 manages to turn a parody of Doom into a single-button mini-game, complete with the obligatory circle-strafing boss battle.

The game’s delightfully wonderfully irrelevant storyline is fun too, with cutscenes where a Metroid and House of the Dead-inspired characters offer spirited banter. Complementing the playful feeling is a visual style that uses filters to evoke gaming on a CRT monitor. Although Super 56’s play might recall the simplicity of the sprite-based era, the game’s use of polygonal graphics is cleverly anachronistic. Try the demo on Steam and don’t be surprised if Onion Soup’s alternative world instantaneously grabs you too.