Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix Review

[-/Deathborn/-]

As you may or may not know, DDR:Mario Mix went out of print for reasons unknown a week after its release in October (US Release date). I have recently acquired a copy (dance pad and all, factory sealed) on EBay. Well, not ME directly, but at any rate, I have it. One of the stores I went to beforehand said its more like a collector's item now. Once I got time to play it, I must've exercised my feet for nearly 3 hours, with some breaks in between. Some of you probably heard its more for kids, it's way to easy, etc. That's on the easy difficulty (equal to "beginner" in the official DDR games), but on sometimes normal (like a level between beginner and standard in DDR) hard (more of a semi-heavy in DDR), then the very hard and super hard levels (heavy and Oni in certain DDR games).

The songs are remixed classical like Turkish March put into a dance style. It actually sounds nothing like the originals. The other songs are from Mario games (ex. "Rollercoastering" is the Luigi Circuit music from Double Dash). Fortunately, the ones remixed from Mario games are usually recognizable. The difficulty levels on songs aren't all consistent. For instance, one song unlocked early (Demolition Dance) has a normal level that's more like easy. While Cabin Fever, another song unlocked later, has a normal level that had me jumbling all over the pad like a madman. It's pretty deceiving. But the highest, Super Hard, must be unlocked by beating the song on Very Hard. That kind of sucked. The song count is 29. TWENTY-NINE?!? There's DDR games that have 140 plus songs!

The story mode is, as you may expect, cheesy. The story is weak, but the "Mush Modes" make up for it. Things like Goombas, Koopas, Bomb-ombs, and many more things come up the screen and you have to either stomp on them or avoid them.

The minigames aren't too spectacular. At least they didn't make them the main event of the game. There's very few, maybe 5. About three use the left and right arrows and the up to to do certain things, like run the jump to the top of a pole from the end of a level from Super Mario Bros.

Overall, the reason it went out of print is unknown to me. Its a decent DDR game, but if you want some REAL DDR action with enough modes and songs to keep your feet moving for hours, turn to the arcade games or Ultramix 1, 2, and 3. All in all, I'd give this game a 9.1 out of 10. The main reason pulling it down is the ammount of songs and decieving difficulty levels.

[Yero Thropp]

Yero Thropp<----DDR fan.

Yero Thropp<----played the game at a friend's dorm

Yero Thropp<---- BEAT EVERY SONG ON EVERY DIFFICULTY LEVEL in one day.

Yero Thropp<---- can do standard/heavy songs on DDR (6-8 "foot" songs)



Not only was the game annoyingly easy, but it was... well, annoying. I got sick of hearing all of the new upbeat Mario music (and it was just plain weird to see Bowser breakdance...)

The game is spectacular for kids. But if you're over the age of 15, and just starting to play DDR based games, pick up a DDR game and start on simple levels. Better songs, no annoying backrounds, better training modes... just better overall. I still don't know what the Nintendo people were thinking when they made this game.

I dunno about 9.1 out of ten... if my kid wanted to play a DDR game, I wouldn't get him the Mario Mix, I'd get him the real thing. I can't even rate this game, it's just so bad...

[PNT510]

[b]I had plans of getting the game for my friend, because gamecube is the only system he owns and I know he likes DDR quite a bit. Sadly(or thankfully) the game was out of stock after a couple of weeks and never seen again.

[The Blue Avenger]

Yeah, it's not bad, but I would have gone for a standard DDR game had I a different console besides GameCube. I do like the music, though. Moustache and Barrel and Gorilla is addictive.