After a long hiatus, Pauline returns in March of the Minis, once again acting as Donkey Kong’s love interest. The Mario Toy Company has recently introduced a new line of toys, including Mini Donkey Kong, Mini Toad, Mini Mario and Mini Peach figures. In addition to this, Mario is opening a theme park, and is at the opening with Pauline to cut the ribbon. Donkey Kong immediately falls in love with the vixen and proudly shows off his Mini DK figurine; although Pauline ignores the ape and chooses the Mini Mario figurine instead, which in turn makes Donkey Kong go into a fit and kidnaps the lovely brunette. Being the heroic man that he is, Mario chases after Donkey Kong to rescue Pauline.
Pauline makes a return, as does a few other familiar characters.
Instead of Mario jumping around and killing baddies, you’ll be directing the Mini Marios to do your dirty work. The gameplay is very akin to Lemmings, where you must direct the Mini Marios to a safe house and overcome the perils that lay ahead. The game is broken up into 8 worlds, each with 9 stages to complete, including a boss battle with the big Kong himself and a mini game. At the start of each stage you’ll have several Mini Marios to control, where the aim is to use the stylus to direct them to a position, which will hopefully be the safe house. You will use the stylus to move them left or right, jump and stop. In addition to this, you can hit switches, burn logs and hit water valves in an attempt to make the road ahead much easier for your little creations. Populating each level are a handful of gold coins and letter pieces that go towards your end score, determining whether you’re rewarded with a bronze, silver or gold star. The letters are used to spell out the word ‘Mini Mario’ in each world, and after finding all of the letters you’ll unlock a ‘whack-a-mole’-like game. Boss battles are an interesting inclusion where you’ll need to direct a cannon (or a similar device) and shoot Mini Marios at the ape, causing him to eventually run off scared to the next world if you succeed.
The game includes a handful of well-implemented puzzles, which help jolt the old brain. However, most levels are fairly straightforward and are rather easy to complete, resulting in a relatively short adventure that can be completed in a matter of hours. Even with the inclusion of two unlockable areas after completing the game, and the pressure of acquiring gold stars in each level, the overall adventure is terribly short and most importantly, easy. There’s a lack of depth and difficultly in most levels, and an absence of unlockable content to prolong the experience.
Generally, most levels are extremely well-structured and offer a lot of variety in design and concepts. The most basic of levels require you to merely hit switches, meanwhile the later levels include such obstacles as ghosts, magnetic walls and catapulting apes. You can even test your own creation skills by tackling the game’s level editor where you’ll be able to create your own, with added obstacles and all. A nice addition to this is that it also uses the DS’s WiFi system quite effectively. You can create your levels and then send them to anyone across the world, and receive others. While the main adventure is fairly short and underwhelming, this mode does a great job of expanding the length of the game, especially if you’re interested in tweaking your own little levels for others to try.
Play in the game's levels or create your own.
March of the Minis has an excellent presentation, which can only be expected from Nintendo Software Technology, after its recent efforts on Metroid Prime: Hunters. The game includes several full-motion video clips, and even voice acting. The visuals of the stages are extremely sharp and full of colour, resulting in a rather stellar performance, despite the levels being relatively small in size. Equally, the audio is also in top shape with plenty of familiar tunes and new ones making an appearance in the levels, including tunes from Super Mario 64 and even Donkey Kong 64. Unfortunately though, on the audio side of things, each world only uses one tune for its stages, which tends to become quite repetitive.
The game doesn’t hold up quite as well as the original, and instead feels a tad incomplete with its short adventure and simple level puzzles. The level editor, while an amazing idea, lacks depth and freedom to create large levels and to include many of the mechanics found throughout the main game. In the end, March of the Minis is a shadow of something much more.
Doesn't sound like it's quite worth getting the game, but it was a good effort from the looks of it.
You always commend Nintendo's 'effort' regardless of it something is good or not. Don't you see how odd that seems? It's like either you're a fanboy or you must be getting paid by Nintendo. That 'most improved member' banner isn't really fitting for you imo.
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