Proof-positive that Nintendo has a lock on heavy-duty whimsy, WarioWare Smooth Moves for Wii pretty much exemplifies what Wii is all about.

Like WarioWare titles before it, Smooth Moves is a collection of "microgames," some two hundred of them, actually, each utilizing the system's crafty Wii-mote in totally exclusive ways, tilting, swinging, stabbing, swatting, balancing, mashing and manhandling the thing like no other controller aught to be handled, invoking in-game activities like sawing logs, thumb wrestling, picking noses (seriously), pumping iron, shaving, cranking, etcetera, etcetera.

It's a testament to the Wii-motes wide-ranging motion sensitive sensibilities, if nothing else -- also a fine example of its minute-motion precision, with most activities easily actuated within a forearm's radius of your starting position. If you ever snap your wriststrap and send the Wii-mote flying off to shatter the chandelier, that pretty much makes you a clumsy oaf and has nothing to do with the hardware. You probably shouldn't be handing power tools or small children, either.

Anyway, true to the WarioWare theme, none of the capsulated, really-really-mini (or "micro," if you will) games are particularly difficult in and of themselves; the trick is to figure out what, exactly, is required to complete them. Each is thrown at you randomly with no instruction other than how to grip your 'mote (like an umbrella, a handlebar, a TV remote, etc.) before the frantic little task timer (a lit fuse) commences. It keeps you on your toes, keeps the gray matter stimulated with rapid-fire flightiness, and pretty much dares you not to break out laughing at the ridiculousness of each situation because that would most likely make you fail.

Still, in spite of Smooth Moves' obvious content abundance, on the whole it's too short, because each game, delivered in thematic clusters, lasts but a couple of seconds, and that doesn't exactly add up to hours of fresh gameplay -- repetitive gameplay, sure, wholly novel and innovative, yes, and fitfully additive, indisputably, but never as fresh as the first fix.

Secondly, similarly, Smooth Moves sports only a token multiplayer mode (played from a single Wii-mote plus the nunchuk attachment for a second player, or by passing the Wii-mote around like a hot potato), which is short lived, anticlimactic, offline only and feels completely like an ad-hoc afterthought, though the game clearly begs for more Wii Sports- or Mario Party-like interactivity with at least two players, ideally more, right out of the box. Alas, it's mostly just you picking that nose all by your lonesome.

• TIP: You need to complete the single player game of WarioWare Smooth Moves before you can access all the multiplayer stuff, though just completing the Tiny Wario stages will unlock a scant few multiplayer games.