Completion Time: 2h:06m:00s
Rating: 5/10

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Do the Mario

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Here we are, hot off the heels of my completion of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and we find ourselves in what is essentially "Mario Month" on the site. And what luck! There are two GameCube bounties that I can pick up, and I'm planning on completing them both! This is actually a little last minute for me, as I had a different write-up planned for this time around (there are a handful of GameCube games I've completed prior to starting this blog series), but that one can wait for a little while. I've got some Mario games to complete! And for this one, I got the chance to dig out something I've never actually used before... the DDR Mario floor mat:

Leave it to Nintendo, having me get up and move around while playing a game

While I didn't use the mat for my entire time with DDR: Mario Mix (I'll get into why later), I DID use it for a fair amount and I found myself moving around way more than I thought I would. I mean, I'm not really accustomed to these types of games outside of one or two instances at an arcade maybe. But we should probably get right to it.

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Swing Your Arms

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The Music Keys have been stolen from the Truffle Towers vault within the Mushroom Kingdom, which I'm sure is surprising to any Mario fan that picks up the game. We LOVE the Music Keys! But without them, the land will start falling into chaos, so we have to recover these artifacts to restore the balance to the Mario universe. But who could be behind this dastardly scheme? There's a large cadre of villains in the franchise, and the opening cutscene shows a silhouette that suspiciously like Waluigi. Well THAT'S interesting at least, so I guess a final boss fight with Waluigi is in the works... oh who am I kidding, it's ultimately just Bowser again.

Boy, King Koopa has some moves!

OK, so to back up a bit, this game is pretty interesting for having Waluigi be the primary antagonist. You do have a small dance battle with him at the end of World 1, and even though that's the end of his involvement, the events of the game are entirely his fault. Even Bowser's inclusion at the final fight, as he wouldn't be there with those keys had Waluigi not stupidly removed them in the first place. What I'm trying to say is: even though this still isn't a mainline Mario title, it's nice that Waluigi is actively doing something on his own and not just skulking around a tennis court or something.

Yeah, now that I've seen Bowser do a flip, these two aren't impressing me.

So I should probably address the Mario Mix Action Pad, or mat (since that's what it is). I did use it for quite a while, and I was surprised by how easy to use and responsive it was. Everything I did had what felt like an instantaneous response, which you really want with a rhythm game. And I found myself a bit surprised that I was actually starting to sweat a little bit, even though at the time I was only in Normal Mode. You can primarily thank the mini-games for this, as they require fast spamming of buttons that are pretty easy with a controller, but a lot harder with a dance mat. At any rate, I might've gone a bit too hard, because during the Wario fight at the end of World 3, I started noticing myself missing a lot of notes, or getting them too early. As it turns out, something I did caused the Right button of the Action Pad to stick. So that was my first rank in the game that was less than C, because you can't really pause the game mid-dance, so I had to finish what I had started. After the fact, no matter how much I repositioned and massaged that side of the mat, the Right arrow input was never the same again. Quite the shame, as I was planning on playing through the entire game with it at least once. But thankfully, the game is pretty accessible, and like any of the Guitar Hero/Rock Band games, you can use a control so long as you know what button corresponds to what direction. And I had to use a controller at that point, because even something as simple as the flagpole minigame just wasn't working right anymore. Again, quite the shame, but what else was I going to do?

I don't know how high you expect me to jump when I'm running with one foot.

So I continued along with the remaining two worlds, not that there was too much else going on, and it took me a little while to get accustomed to using the controller instead of the Action Pad, but I got used to it eventually and started making good progress on the game. At the end, Bowser was defeated, I danced through the credits, and then jumped straight into EX Mode to go through it all again! I mean, still had to complete the game after all, that's the point of this whole exercise. But altogether, you can get through the main story in less than an hour, so two hours with a little extra in their for cleanup isn't much to be concerned about. Overall I just found the game a little lacking. I wish there was some more song variety as far as Mario remixes go, and I couldn't help but notice how watered down everything felt. But at the end of the day, it isn't like this is a main entry in the Mario canon, so the fact that it's as polished as it is keeps me from actively disliking the game. I just wish there was more to it (and that I hadn't accidentally broken the most interesting part about playing it).

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Completing the Game

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Completing this game really isn't anything special, at least I don't think so. It isn't really that difficult either, even considering the different "difficulty-based" unlockables. Because you see, next to nothing is unlocked through Rankings. Just through actually making it through worlds, modes and songs on different difficulties. Which is something I can do easily with a C rank. Hell, when my dance pad stopped working I fully failed that Wario boss fight with an F rank. Or so I thought, because since I still made it through without my dance meter depleting, the story continued to the next world. The rankings don't do much of anything, they're just tied to your statistics and I think you might get more coins in the story mode if you get a better rank, although I can't say that's something I ever ran into.

You think a B rank will stop Dance Master L?

So if that's the case, what actually goes into completion? Well, thankfully not all that much. First things first, you need to beat Story Mode once through, and following that start up EX Story Mode using the opposite character (if you beat regular Story Mode with Mario, use Luigi in EX Mode. And vice versa). As you make your way through EX Mode, each World's item shop will suddenly have a "secret" song to purchase, which will unlock a new title to dance your way through in FreePlay mode. These increase by 100 coins for each purchase, with the final song costing 400 coins to unlock. Now, this was also never a problem, because seeing as how the game never really posed a challenge (even as I was playing EX Mode on the hardest difficulty), I never purchased items to help me. I solely used my coins on the songs and never had any issue, even ending the game with 755 coins. At any rate, once you've gotten EX Mode taken care of, you should have every song and mini-game unlocked for usage, and there isn't much to do past that point. If you want to try and get every "note" in the game, which is just status information basically, then there's one for reaching a couple of high combos and there's a status message for each individual rank, not that these unlock anything for you. The latter you might very well find yourself with just by playing through the game, I know I did, though if your time is anything like mine was prior to my mat giving out mid-dance, you may have to actively try for the F rank. Shouldn't be too difficult there, but now you've completed Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix!

Now I'm fully prepared for my next dance party with friends. Once I get more working mats, that is...

Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix is a decently fun time that's widely accessible to the point that you can easily play it without the shoddy peripheral. And I imagine this would be more fun if there was a bit more too it, and if I had been playing alongside others as well for some challenging versus mode matches. But I can't say it's terrible, its one of those interesting novelties that Nintendo likes crafting for their consoles, and this Mario Mix mat is the natural evolution of the NES's Power Pad. But yeah, not a lot to dig into here and not even a lot of interesting remixes to engage with. I feel like this could've been something so much more interesting, but as per usual the bar is pretty high for most Mario games.

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 11/652