Nintendo has announced Pictonico!, a fun and innovative mobile game that turns your photos into rapid-fire comedy microgames. It’s essentially tapping into TikTok culture's need for quick-fire seconds of fun before swiping for more. In some ways, it feels like Nintendo’s best thing in years, and also one of the most old-fashioned Nintendo games to come along in a while. With that in mind, the other reaction is, why on earth isn’t this a WarioWare game?
The moment footage started doing the rounds, people immediately clocked the feel and design Nintendo is going for, because Pictonico! has that exact same scrappy chaotic energy as DS WarioWare – it’s quick-fire nonsense, ugly-funny visual gags, split-second reactions and simple design Nintendo used to make all the time during the DS and Wii years. In fact, these kinds of games were all the rage at one point, from WarioWare to Bishi Bashi Special and even the recently resurrected Point Black, via the excellent G’AIM’E console.
Instead of branding this as a new WarioWare for Gen Z, Nintendo has gone with an entirely new name and marketing, which is bold, but also maybe a little baffling when you remember how hard it is to launch a fresh mobile game in 2026 without people instantly scrolling past it thinking it’s a photo filter app or just another data grab.
The actual idea is extremely Nintendo in design, maybe more Nintendo than a lot of Nintendo’s recent games. The app pulls from your own photos and turns them into tiny absurd mini-games, and there’s even a little of the old Game Boy Camera era in the silly little games you can play, which is a reminder that Nintendo has always been a company that would happily spend millions making something completely ridiculous and take a gamble on hanging on a trend at just the right time.
Which is why I still can’t quite get over the fact that this isn't a new WarioWare game. Comparisons aren’t going away because visually, structurally, tonally, Pictonico! already feels like a series of offshoots, and honestly, slapping WarioWare on the logo probably would’ve done half the marketing work for Nintendo overnight.
But people know what WarioWare is, or at least recognise the name, if not the games themselves. Say the name, see the character, and you instantly get the pitch: fast, stupid, funny, loud, probably a little gross, and definitely Nintendo. That’s valuable branding, especially on mobile, where you’ve got about three seconds before someone loses interest, opens TikTok instead, and goes down a shame well of generic AI filters.
At the same time, I can imagine why Nintendo didn’t do it. WarioWare has become its own carefully managed thing now, and Pictonico! looks more disposable and experimental in a good way, like an old-school Nintendo side project that escaped from the DS era. If this were a WarioWare entry, it would also have raised expectations and development costs, as Nintendo fans would demand more animation, more Wario finesse, and perhaps wouldn’t overlook any shortcuts the game takes.
That might be why people are reacting so warmly to it in the first place. For years, players have wanted Nintendo to get weird again and make the kind of oddball experimental nonsense the company used to release between major games because somebody inside the building had a funny idea. But obviously, without spending stupid money on something like the Virtual Boy, but maybe more in line with Paper Mario and Tomodachi Life, which has, obviously, made an awkward comeback.
Pictonico! feels like one of those weird Nintendo projects, which is probably why so many people immediately assumed Wario had to be involved somehow. For a certain generation of Nintendo fans, WarioWare wasn’t just a series; it was the label Nintendo stuck on its strangest ideas. But here’s the thing, I’d imagine if Pictonico! Takes off, we’d more than likely get special branded event editions, Pictonico! Wario Edition can’t be far off.
