What relation is Wario to Mario? Brother? Twin? Cousin? It's been a long debated subject across the world, and hopefully the release of Wario World on the GameCube will see the missing piece of this puzzling family jigsaw finally put together.Some people could be forgiven for thinking that Wario was born straight onto a GameCube screen - anybody who has never owned a SNES that is. Wario regularly used to star in games such as Mario and Wario and Wario's Woods. Unfortunately none of them flung Wario to the unforeseeable heights of his relation Mario, and so he was dropped onto the small, portable screen.Finally, after 4 successful games on handheld consoles, he will finally be back to our home consoles in what looks to be a great game.

If you put your money on this game having a pitiful story line when you first heard about it, you should be running down to your local bookies and collecting your money right about now. Nintendo games of late have gained a reputation of having a paper - thin plot and this game only adds to the trend. Would you believe that, deep in Wario's castle there is a room filled with all the treasures he has collected on his adventures. One of the precious jewels is a Black gem which has the 'mysterious' power to change his hard earned stash into an army of evil monsters and such. Wario, being the gluttonous fool that he is, must go into his treasure room and collect as much treasure as is humanly possible for a fat, red nosed Italian dressed in dungarees.

Fear not all you who enjoyed playing his hand held charades as the game is still going to stick to the winning Side Scrolling formula, although the game will be in full 3D, allowing for some amazing visuals. The side-scrolling may not be to everyone's liking, as it allows minimal exploration and limits freedom to the player. Thankfully, as Super Mario World 1 and 2 showed on the SNES, Nintendo are capable of making great levels with lots of things to find, even if you've been through it 10 times before, and hopefully the same people will be using all of their expertise on this project. Another key feature is the interactive scenery in the game, which, Nintendo boast, means that almost anything can be picked up, smashed or even used as a weapon against those nasty money monsters.

Puzzles appear to be a big part in the game tapestry, and you'll no doubt have to solve many imaginative and fresh ones to let you progress further in the game. One of the weirdest things highlighted in Nintendo's press release for the game is 'Balance atop mysterious floating balls that have sticky surfaces and jump ball to ball to reach new areas'. Is it just me, or were Nintendo saying that you had to jump on sticky balls to complete the game? Is this one of Nintendo's new 'Adult' games to get a wider audience? To some it might sound that Nintendo were scraping the bottom of the barrel of ideas for this game. To others it might sound like Nintendo are trying to keep as much of the game as possible under wraps to make sure of a shocking game. To me it seems to Shiguru Miyamoto has finally gone insane.

The game was originally coming out for Christmas but, as you can tell, it has been pushed back, and is now slated for a Quarter 1, 2003 release in the US

Just as an after thought, if the Monsters are made out money, will the final boss be Bill gates? Just a thought...