It’s the middle of December. The college semester has just about finished. Kids will be out of school soon. People are putting their Christmas lights and decorations up. The children hang their stockings over the fireplace and dream about the day when they get a visit from a very special person. A person who leaves gifts for all the good little boys and girls in the world. I’m of course referring to none other than Wario and his brand of WarioWare games.

During the last decade, one of the more interesting titles Nintendo made were the WarioWare games; a series of rapid-fire microgames that were some of the most absurd things Nintendo made. I absolutely love this series. So for this week, the Operation Rainfall Retro Commercial Research Team (in other words, me) will take a look at some of the commercials for this wonderful franchise in this week’s Retro Wrap-Up.

Okay, I’m cheating with this last one. I just couldn’t find that many US WarioWare commercials.

Anyway, here are the highlights from this past week.

Justin Graham talks about his experience with Valkyrie Profile in his installment of Oprainfall Origins.

The Last Story was recently listed as the 7th best game of 2012, which has made Sakaguchi quite happy.

A petition for a Wii U version of Dark Souls II started up on Change.org.

Jonathan, Jeff, Chris and myself partake in another episode of the Downpour Podcast to talk about things.

Hell appears to have frozen over, because Capcom decides to support a fan-game celebrating the 25th anniversaries of Mega Man and Street Fighter.

Steve Baltimore reviews Persona 4 Golden for the PS Vita and Scott Macdonald reviews Shadowgate for the NES in this week’s Game of the Past review.

Square Enix announces a browser-based MMO called Star Galaxy. The fans took it well.

Justin Graham takes a look at Azumanga Daioh in this week’s Anime of the Past.

The producer of Senran Kagura Burst talks about the possibility of bringing it to the West via the Nintendo eShop.

Was the US release date of the PS Vita version of Muramasa: The Demon Blade revealed, or is this just another wild rumor? You decide!

Oscar Tong takes a look at Meriweather: An American Epic and follows up on Barkley 2, Pier Solar HD, and more in this week’s Crowdfunding Spotlight.

Square-Enix has released a free-to-play iOS port of Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy. The fans took it well.

Toki Tori 2 will, unfortunately, not meet its December launch date.

Project Crystallis decides to hold a contest where one lucky participant will win a pre-order for Final Fantasy Versus XIII. The deadline is New Year’s Eve.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch has gone gold! Huzzah!

Unchained Blades will finally be available on the eShop early next month.

We conduct an interview with Operation Power Up, a campaign to try and revive Nintendo Power.

Finally, Square-Enix has revealed a new social card-battling RPG for the Mana series. Fans took that very well.

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Santa Wario picture used on the front page was created by Dokugami. Check out Dokugami at DeviantART.com.

Kyle Emch
Kyle has been studying music at college for about three years now. He's played the piano since he was 6 years old and has been recently been learning how to write music. He has followed the Operation Rainfall movement on Facebook since it started and was happy to volunteer for the website. Just don't mention Earthbound or the Mother franchise around him.