Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix - First Play

“You’re so beautiful, man. I like that haircut, I like that polyester look.” – The Deejay, Saturday Night Fever

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to begin this play rating by telling you that I am a dance game rookie. Dance floor veteran? Oh yeah. In fact, my clumsily charming moves were the direct inspiration for my brainchild: the television show So You Think You Can Dance. I was betrayed by my closest friend, who undercut me and sold the rights of the show to FOX. Since then, I’ve been unable to put the hurt aside and shake it in public, but now with the release of Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix, I’m inspired to dust off the Saturday Night Fever quotes, get myself up out of my Game Chair, and boogie on my Game Floor.

“Would you just watch the hair? You know, I spend a long time on my hair….” Tony Manero, Saturday Night Fever

So now that you’ve been warned I’m a dance game novice, you know that this and future play ratings will not give you a sense of how Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix stacks up against dance games past and present; instead it will give you an insight into the dance gaming experiences of a clumsy child-at-heart.

Actually, I bought this game for two main reasons: (i) Mario is my bud from way back in the day. (We used to go out to a club and have contests to see who could get the most phone numbers. Ah, those were the days), and (ii) My Baby got tired of losing to me at Madden, so I needed a new game she would play with me. When I first brought DDR:MM home, I popped it in ready for a head-to-head match up only to find that all but one song needed to be unlocked in Story mode. That one introductory song didn’t hold our interest for very long, and so soon I was on my own to do the unlocking for the household. (You see? I do my part of the chores around here. I’m very enlightened like that.)

On your first time through Story mode, you can choose either Easy or Normal difficulty. Since the first song on Easy put me to sleep, I decided to proceed at the Normal level. This was still incredibly easy…I blew through the entire game in just under two hours. I think that’s a good thing, though, since, with most of the newly unwrapped game under wraps, you want to be able to quickly unlock a good selection of tunes for Free mode. Additionally, I think there’s still some more story gameplay to go here, as I’ve only unlocked about half of the tunes.

Story mode was a good time, too. The very guessable plot is as follows: Waluigi stole the music keys, which are spheres that hold the power of music, and released the power of music into the land. Hmm, you know, that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing. To make the situation seem a little more dire, Toad goes on to explain that chaos will reign until the keys are gathered back up. I’ll give you one guess as to which chubby Italian plumber is called upon to retrieve the keys. And guess how our protagonist gets himself out of trouble when he finds himself stuck in a pipe, besieged by koopas, or face-to-face with one of his arch-enemies? You guessed it, it’s boogie time. And, of course, as Mario progresses through worlds of varying topographies, he collects coins that he can use to buy power ups, such as 1-ups or potions that refill his dance meter when your mistakes cause it to empty. Of course, after a set number of battles, your adventure through a world culminates in, you guessed it, a boss battle in the form of a dance-off. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…without the dancing of course.

So, yeah, this story is Barney and Friends to Fire Emblem’s War And Peace, but it works perfectly, giving you just the right amount of time to catch your breath between dances while providing at least some kind of narrative to step you through the unlocking of these songs. Essentially they put in a story mode for those of you who want it, but made it unobtrusive enough for those who just want to get down.

It just wouldn’t be a Mario game unless things got crazy after a while, now would it? If you’re looking for a dancing game viewed through the looking glass, DDR:MM won’t disappoint. Mush Mode is a feature whereby, instead of stepping on arrows as they float past, you step on goombas, koopas, and the like. All Mario rules apply, of course, and so koopas require two steps to get rid of them, hammers cause damage if you let them get past, and so on. In another style, you have to protect the Bob-ombs sitting on top of the screen by stepping on flames as they rise while moving deceptively back and forth. Things start getting really loopy late in the game when Cheep Cheeps jump up and knock the arrows as they’re ascending so that they point in a different direction. In addition, in between songs there are often mini-games that are sometimes inane and sometimes show a clever new use of the dance pad controller. Ever wanted to play whack-a-mole with your feet? Now you’ve got the chance. My favorite is the recreation of the flag jump at the end of each world in Super Mario Bros. I’m sure my neighbors downstairs love it when we play that one.

This game is fun to watch, too. Again, there’s nothing technically brilliant about the graphics here, but they are very artfully done in the traditional Mario style with a keen eye to design, balance, and all those other fancy words they teach you in art appreciation courses. I mean, once I’ve got the basics of hitting the arrows correctly in time, I need a little more to entertain me, and the backgrounds do jus that. They’ve got levels I wish I could freely explore, Mario waving his big, white gloves in the groove, and best of all, Bowser shaking his spiky tail to the beat as if he’s on Soul Train.

Of course, the music is very important in a dancing game, and I’m happy to report that the producers of DDR:MM paid a great deal of attention to getting this aspect of the game right as well. Now, you probably won’t hear any of these tunes at any kind of serious dance party (though there are a couple that wouldn’t be completely out of place), but the craftsmanship on these tunes is admirable. Often based on themes from games in Mario’s past, all of these songs have been funked and grooved up with all the appropriate sounds, structures, and rhythms of modern dance music. It’s not constant rhythmic complexity, but it is more challenging than what I was expecting. Personally, I love what they’ve done with the music, and I think it fits the rest of the game perfectly. After all, just like a complex storyline wouldn’t fit here, neither would hardcore house beats, either.

The only complaint I’ve got so far is with the gameplay. For the most part things work all right, and I’ve been impressed with the pounding that the included dance pad can take, however, the pad’s traction is almost non-existent and it slides around as I’m dancing. Since the pad is also completely smooth, there are no tactile clues as to where the buttons are. Almost without fail I have to take my eyes off the screen once per dance to recalibrate where the buttons are. Obviously, considering the speed with which I saved the world from the curse of music being released everywhere, it hasn’t affected me too drastically yet. In my next play ratings, I’ll let you know if it affects me in other areas of the game.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to the game to “make up” some more moves. As Tony said on Saturday Night Fever when asked if he made up a move, “Well, I saw it on TV first, then I made it up.”