At the risk of compromising my maturity, I bought DDR with Mario last night.
The shop had a sign outside saying "Only 1 copy left! Hurry!" but when I got in they'd actually got two copies left, and that's all they'd ordered apparently, as they didn't expect the game to sell much.
Anyway, I got it home, hooked it up and played for a bit.
The mat feels a bit thicker and softer than standard DDR issue, but that might just be my bad memory. There's warnings everywhere telling you to make sure the room is lit properly when you play, don't clown around on the mat, and that kind of thing. They coddle you a bit too much, I think, since kids will be kids regardless of what the game says.
On to the game... Waluigi has nicked the song spheres and is making everyone in the world dance (what a loss in productivity!) so Mario has to get them back. You do this by dancing, of course. I'm still on the first stage, and so far all the dancing has just been left and right, to get you into the swing of things. In between dance-offs, there's some minigames. First one was like whack-a-mole, using the 4 directions of the ddr pad to whack kuripos that appear from their holes. This is fast and furious, so maybe a pro DDRer would be better than me. I missed most of them once it built up speed
Second bit of non-standard DDR activity, you have to jump at the flag, like the old Mario games when you finish a stage. You alternate left and right as fast as possible to build up speed, then hit up to jump, like track & field. Quite fun.
The music has been good so far. In between stages when it's telling the story, it's typical mario RPG stuff, but in the dance acts so far I've had a dance version of the Mario theme and a dance version of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, both of which were good, and preferable to the usual DDR Euro stuff (no offence to DDR fans intended).
I expect the dance moves to heat up a bit, but so far it's interesting, at least, to a beginner DDR player. Will post more as I continue to play.
The shop had a sign outside saying "Only 1 copy left! Hurry!" but when I got in they'd actually got two copies left, and that's all they'd ordered apparently, as they didn't expect the game to sell much.
Anyway, I got it home, hooked it up and played for a bit.
The mat feels a bit thicker and softer than standard DDR issue, but that might just be my bad memory. There's warnings everywhere telling you to make sure the room is lit properly when you play, don't clown around on the mat, and that kind of thing. They coddle you a bit too much, I think, since kids will be kids regardless of what the game says.
On to the game... Waluigi has nicked the song spheres and is making everyone in the world dance (what a loss in productivity!) so Mario has to get them back. You do this by dancing, of course. I'm still on the first stage, and so far all the dancing has just been left and right, to get you into the swing of things. In between dance-offs, there's some minigames. First one was like whack-a-mole, using the 4 directions of the ddr pad to whack kuripos that appear from their holes. This is fast and furious, so maybe a pro DDRer would be better than me. I missed most of them once it built up speed
Second bit of non-standard DDR activity, you have to jump at the flag, like the old Mario games when you finish a stage. You alternate left and right as fast as possible to build up speed, then hit up to jump, like track & field. Quite fun.The music has been good so far. In between stages when it's telling the story, it's typical mario RPG stuff, but in the dance acts so far I've had a dance version of the Mario theme and a dance version of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, both of which were good, and preferable to the usual DDR Euro stuff (no offence to DDR fans intended).
I expect the dance moves to heat up a bit, but so far it's interesting, at least, to a beginner DDR player. Will post more as I continue to play.
