The original Wario Land is one of my all time favorite games, that I still somewhat often re-visit. A few of the songs from random stages are among the most infectious loops of melody ever composed, I can't tell you how often I get those hammering the inside of my head on repeat while doing random tasks. I did play the game a f*ck-ton as a kid, so it may be my own fault.
For real, though, the gameplay & designs alike were just so damn fun, I think there was a real special magic to that era in particular.
The follow-up Wario platformer titles are all great in their own right, well worth playing, but I don't feel that they even REMOTELY compare to the first game vibe-wise. Sure, they're more complex, more colorful, they offer all these different transformations & gimmicks, but to me, Wario never needed any of that extra flare. I suppose the idea was to set his universe more apart from Mario's, but for me, their deviating too much from the subtle simplicity of the first, which made it great, did a disservice to the entire series moving forward. All I ever needed was his little dash move & the hat powerups.
I think there's definitely something to be said as far as the team's lack of direction, given the tons of weird new things they'd try over the years, ultimately re-booting altogether & settling into the Wario Ware thing. That's a whole 'nother thing entirely, but honestly, as much as those games ARE fun, they shouldn't have anything to do with Wario. Deserved to be it's own IP, but they must've had cold feet about that, just like how Prince Fluff became Kirby's Epic Yarn. Simple solution there, IMO, would've been to have the Wario Ware series be Game & Watch related instead. Makes so much more sense.
Wario World was an alright attempt at making the property move with the times, but it just felt so empty, & again, not like Wario. Shake It! was pretty great, loved the hand-drawn animation & more classic visual style, but the gimmicks & timed challenges still put me off. Funny, the Virtual Boy Wario title is the actual nearest relative to the OG, & is great, but obviously it's still difficult to play. I didn't buy that ugly red failure in the 90's, & I'm not going to now, either.
They need to go back to square one, as far as I'm concerned. Should use Rayman Legends/Origins as inspiration. A nice hand-drawn art direction, but with that classic Comic Bom Bom/gag manga style of his inception. He used to be such an ugly little curmudgeon, especially when he was bald & tiny!