Here is the story behind WarioWare Inc.: Mega Party Game$. Once upon a time, an evil cartoon character named Wario decided to become very rich by going into the video game business. He did not try hard to produce good games because he neither liked nor respected his audience. He was in the business for cash and nothing else. He rounded up some unambitious programmers and gave them vague instructions and very low wages and an impossibly short deadline. Then he foisted the result on an unsuspecting public and prepared to flee to the Cayman Islands.

This was also the story behind a Game Boy title with a similar name ("WarioWare Inc.: Mega Micro Game$") that came out last spring. The joke this month is that once Wario learned the true earnings potential of crappy video games he decided it wouldn't hurt to go back to the well a few more times.

This all felt like terrific satire the first time around and it is even funnier now. For Wario's business model -- take a slack, crappy, lame, embarrassingly half-assed product and promote it with unembarrassed enthusiasm -- is in wide use across the industry. You would not believe how many video game companies do that week in and week out and suffer only enormous sales and rising stock prices as their punishment. Or, rather, you would have no trouble believing that at all, on account of you have spent many hours shaking with anger at those rogues and thieves and their drivel. The point is, there is still plenty of strong feeling out there around the issue, and more than enough to sustain another WarioWare.

But never mind all that. How is it as a plaything? It is transcendently great. Like its Game Boy predecessor, it is composed almost entirely of teeny weeny little games lasting only three or four seconds each. There is one where a beautiful sobbing woman appears on the screen. A long tendril of snot dangles from her nose, growing longer and heavier with every passing moment. Your task is to hit the "A" button over and over again until she has snorted it all back in. Ick, yes, but also funny in a Beavis kind of way. Besides, it is over before you can count to five and who can take offence that quickly anyway?

There is another little game where you are a bouncing super-villain on what looks like a half-baked re-creation of an old Super Mario title. Anthropomorphic mushrooms wander around; you must bounce on all their heads before your allotted four seconds are up.

There is a little game where you are in charge of a knife. Your opponent is a steak. You must wiggle your joystick back and forth in a cutting motion until the meat is sliced through.

There is a little game where you are a little stick person playing skip-rope. When the rope swings near your feet, you must press the "A" button to jump. Then you must press "A" once more when it comes around another time. Then you almost have time to press "A" a third time, but the four seconds end and the game does too.

There are dozens and dozens of little teeny games here. Many of them are lifted, their blippy little Game Boy graphics intact, from last year's release. This is OK for two reasons. One, it makes the joke funnier. Two, they are still way more fun than 90 percent of the software ever released for a home console.

The whole exercise is held together with threads designed to turn it into a party activity. You may take turns playing these teeny weeny games with your pals, racking up points for each win, or you may compete head to head in special multi-player teeny weeny games, or you may be asked to annoy your pals while they are playing teeny weeny games. An example: one variation charges a single player with the mini games, and everybody else with a controller gets to run around the screen, blocking the main player's view of the action. Ha ha ha! I made you lose! Etc.

At last count Mega Party Game$ features at least three mini-games involving nose-picking or snot. If you are patient you probably will find more.