Screenshots :.
Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis
DS
Matt
03-05-2007
"Flower Power."
"Colorful blocks and a Mad Monkey...life is complete."
"As tricky as it looks."
"Itsa me, Ima dead!"
One of my earliest gaming memories is sitting down in front of my parents’ PC and staring in a mixture of disbelief and frustration as a pack of marching lemmings missed the last step on a carefully constructed ladder and plunged to their doom onto a nicely shining spike. I used to be utterly addicted to Lemmings the game (until I discovered my brother’s copy of Wolfenstein knocking about on the hard drive, that is), yet it’s a particular niche of gaming that I hadn’t really revisited until about a week ago when I slotted Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 into my DS and had a bugger of a time wrenching it back out again.
Those of you who haven’t yet sampled the game are probably a little confused, with every right. On the face of it you would quite possibly be expecting a game named ‘Mario vs. Donkey Kong’ to pack in more of the classic platform-dashing, barrel-avoiding antics that the original arcade game and subsequent Game Boy and Game Boy Advance follow-ups had. Heck, it’s what I thought I’d be in store for too, until a cursory glance at the back of the box actually told me any different. Gone are the days of guiding Mario around the level to snatch a key and get to a door; instead, you’ll find yourself using the touch screen to guide a number of mechanical Marios around an increasingly complicated selection of levels.
The story backing all this up is classically short-but-sweet, with Mario hoping to unveil his brand new amusement park to the public with his friend Pauline. A loitering Donkey Kong sees this and becomes rather smitten, offering Pauline a mechanical Donkey Kong as a present. Rather questionably given everyone’s favourite gorilla’s penchant for all sorts of rage she refuses, instead taking a mechanical Mario. Fury ensues and DK nabs Pauline and sprints off with her into an elevator. Mario himself in unable to go after the pair, so he sends a wave of the mechanical Marios along to save the day for him.
This is obviously the point where you come in. Each level presents itself as a small snapshot of a classic Mario platform scene, with a number of walkways, gaps, jumps and enemies littered around. The key is to move each of the mini Marios you are given safely across the level to the exit door within a time limit, with bonuses being awarded for saving as many as you can in as quick a time possible. Doing so is merely a matter of swishing your stylus over each mini Mario to tell him which way he’s supposed to be tottering or tapping him to bring him to a grinding halt. It all sounds simple in theory and initial levels are reasonably easy to navigate, but quite quickly the difficulty starts ramping up and challenging you to think in different ways.
Let me give you an example. You may, for instance, find yourself with three mini Marios dotted around a level at the beginning. In the middle is a large water hazard with a floating platform, leading to a walkway with a jump to a higher level. This in turn leads an item box which can be activated before another jump to a further level with a mechanical Donkey Kong guarding the exit. Initial experiments will more-than-likely see your mechanical men tumbling into the water or getting pummelled by the mecha-monkey, but after a while you’ll figure that you can guide one Mario over the water hazard, onto the jump and into the item box, whereupon another of them can be guided over the resulting hammer item and into Donkey Kong, knocking him out and allowing a clear run to the exit. More thought and practice will allow you to synchronise all this to the point where all mini Marios will be in the right point at the right time, leading to the quickest possible completion time. Teamwork can be brilliant fun, can’t it?
Each of your minis has but one chance, meaning that letting them fall into water, tumble too far off a ledge or any such kind of mishap will see them reduced to a crumpled heap of springs and metal. Thankfully, each level can be carefully scouted beforehand so you can get a vague idea of what you’ll need to be doing, with the timer not starting to tick down until you move your first Mario. This becomes an increasingly useful tactic as the game proceeds, with some hellishly tricky levels needing careful consideration and precise manoeuvring in order to be beaten.
The game is divided into eight themed worlds containing nine levels and a boss battle each. The worlds tip their cap toward Mario games past, with – amongst others – a haunted attic, a tropical island and a lava world presented in a wonderfully colourful two-dimensional perspective similar to the quality and styling of New Super Mario Bros. The game also tilts a cap to classic Nintendo tunes along the way, and you can’t help but grin like a big fat fanboy upon hearing the familiar notes of the Bowser’s Castle theme from Super Mario Bros when playing through the Lava Dome levels. It may be a rather new take on the classic Mario and Donkey Kong rivalry, but it’s somewhat pleasing that the game still nods to both characters’ roots visually and audibly.
It’ll last you a good while, too. Finding the best way through each level to get a gold medal is an exacting task should you wish to undertake it, and each level in a world contains one letter of the title ‘Mini Mario’, the collection and completion of which will give the player a mini game to play. The Donkey Kong battles themselves which bookend the activity throughout the worlds are rather tricky affairs with the player firing mini Marios from a cannon at aforementioned gorilla, and you’ll want to try your very best to complete the things without losing any of your mechanical troops in order to gain the best possible completion score. It’s a complete-freak’s heaven. Added in for good measure is a level editor that allows players to make their own devilish portions of puzzle madness and upload them for a friend to try via Wi-Fi.
It’s hard not to be charmed by March of The Minis, really. Beneath the colourful, playful exterior is a fiercely challenging puzzle title that’ll give your brain a thorough workout. What’s more, it’s a title that makes great use of touch-screen feature of the console to allow an intuitive, enjoyable experience. If nothing else, Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 is further proof of something we’ve known for a good year or so now: for enjoyable, innovative gaming, the DS is where it is at. Long may that continue.
Those of you who haven’t yet sampled the game are probably a little confused, with every right. On the face of it you would quite possibly be expecting a game named ‘Mario vs. Donkey Kong’ to pack in more of the classic platform-dashing, barrel-avoiding antics that the original arcade game and subsequent Game Boy and Game Boy Advance follow-ups had. Heck, it’s what I thought I’d be in store for too, until a cursory glance at the back of the box actually told me any different. Gone are the days of guiding Mario around the level to snatch a key and get to a door; instead, you’ll find yourself using the touch screen to guide a number of mechanical Marios around an increasingly complicated selection of levels.
The story backing all this up is classically short-but-sweet, with Mario hoping to unveil his brand new amusement park to the public with his friend Pauline. A loitering Donkey Kong sees this and becomes rather smitten, offering Pauline a mechanical Donkey Kong as a present. Rather questionably given everyone’s favourite gorilla’s penchant for all sorts of rage she refuses, instead taking a mechanical Mario. Fury ensues and DK nabs Pauline and sprints off with her into an elevator. Mario himself in unable to go after the pair, so he sends a wave of the mechanical Marios along to save the day for him.
This is obviously the point where you come in. Each level presents itself as a small snapshot of a classic Mario platform scene, with a number of walkways, gaps, jumps and enemies littered around. The key is to move each of the mini Marios you are given safely across the level to the exit door within a time limit, with bonuses being awarded for saving as many as you can in as quick a time possible. Doing so is merely a matter of swishing your stylus over each mini Mario to tell him which way he’s supposed to be tottering or tapping him to bring him to a grinding halt. It all sounds simple in theory and initial levels are reasonably easy to navigate, but quite quickly the difficulty starts ramping up and challenging you to think in different ways.
Let me give you an example. You may, for instance, find yourself with three mini Marios dotted around a level at the beginning. In the middle is a large water hazard with a floating platform, leading to a walkway with a jump to a higher level. This in turn leads an item box which can be activated before another jump to a further level with a mechanical Donkey Kong guarding the exit. Initial experiments will more-than-likely see your mechanical men tumbling into the water or getting pummelled by the mecha-monkey, but after a while you’ll figure that you can guide one Mario over the water hazard, onto the jump and into the item box, whereupon another of them can be guided over the resulting hammer item and into Donkey Kong, knocking him out and allowing a clear run to the exit. More thought and practice will allow you to synchronise all this to the point where all mini Marios will be in the right point at the right time, leading to the quickest possible completion time. Teamwork can be brilliant fun, can’t it?
Each of your minis has but one chance, meaning that letting them fall into water, tumble too far off a ledge or any such kind of mishap will see them reduced to a crumpled heap of springs and metal. Thankfully, each level can be carefully scouted beforehand so you can get a vague idea of what you’ll need to be doing, with the timer not starting to tick down until you move your first Mario. This becomes an increasingly useful tactic as the game proceeds, with some hellishly tricky levels needing careful consideration and precise manoeuvring in order to be beaten.
The game is divided into eight themed worlds containing nine levels and a boss battle each. The worlds tip their cap toward Mario games past, with – amongst others – a haunted attic, a tropical island and a lava world presented in a wonderfully colourful two-dimensional perspective similar to the quality and styling of New Super Mario Bros. The game also tilts a cap to classic Nintendo tunes along the way, and you can’t help but grin like a big fat fanboy upon hearing the familiar notes of the Bowser’s Castle theme from Super Mario Bros when playing through the Lava Dome levels. It may be a rather new take on the classic Mario and Donkey Kong rivalry, but it’s somewhat pleasing that the game still nods to both characters’ roots visually and audibly.
It’ll last you a good while, too. Finding the best way through each level to get a gold medal is an exacting task should you wish to undertake it, and each level in a world contains one letter of the title ‘Mini Mario’, the collection and completion of which will give the player a mini game to play. The Donkey Kong battles themselves which bookend the activity throughout the worlds are rather tricky affairs with the player firing mini Marios from a cannon at aforementioned gorilla, and you’ll want to try your very best to complete the things without losing any of your mechanical troops in order to gain the best possible completion score. It’s a complete-freak’s heaven. Added in for good measure is a level editor that allows players to make their own devilish portions of puzzle madness and upload them for a friend to try via Wi-Fi.
It’s hard not to be charmed by March of The Minis, really. Beneath the colourful, playful exterior is a fiercely challenging puzzle title that’ll give your brain a thorough workout. What’s more, it’s a title that makes great use of touch-screen feature of the console to allow an intuitive, enjoyable experience. If nothing else, Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 is further proof of something we’ve known for a good year or so now: for enjoyable, innovative gaming, the DS is where it is at. Long may that continue.
9/10