It’s no greatly-held secret that I’m a pretty die-hard Nintendo fan. So I had to jump and get Nintendo’s very own version of a game that had up until this point had only appeared on consoles I don’t have, and in arcades, which I also don’t have.
DDR Mario Mix is pretty standard as Dancing games go. Arrows work their way up from the bottom of the screen and cross other arrows at the top of the screen, to the beat of the music. You have to stomp on the corresponding arrows on your dance mat (here called the ‘action pad’). But this Nintendo version differs by adding some story and some minigames. The story? Doesn’t matter. You just pick Mario or Luigi and have to use the power of dance to save the day.
There are two kinds of songs in this game: remixes of songs from past Mario games, which sound great, and public domain songs that sound pretty good, but are a bizarre juxtaposition. You have the main theme from Super Mario Bros. 2, and you have some Tchaikovsky. Even with the music mix padded out with freebie public-domain songs, you still only get 29 songs total (30 if you count the end credits, which I don’t). I was able to play through the game twice and unlock everything in under 2 hours.
Perhaps most puzzling about this game is that DDR is best when played against an actual person. The game comes with one mat. If you want to buy another mat you have to either go get another copy of the game or order a mat from Nintendo’s online store, which I’m sure most people don’t even know exists.
This game isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it just left me wanting more. Which has yet to materialize.