Super Mario Party - Sound Stage (Remix)

Описание: Super Mario Party - Sound Stage (Remix)

What? We're only at the second stage, and we already have a Remix? Oh, wait, this isn't Rhythm Heaven. It's Super Mario Party, and Remix is what they call the second stage, or at least the second set of stages. As how it was before, the four characters compete in minigames centered around rhythm. You perform simple actions using movement of the Switch's Joy-Cons, and you're judged on how accurate you are, then given a score based on that. At the end, the scores of the four characters are added up, and whoever has the highest score wins. If you've seen the Normal difficulty one, then you know the drill, so here are the minigames:

Minigame 1: All-Star Swingers
For this one, each participant is given a pitching machine, which will throw the ball on one beat, and you'll have to swing your Joy-Con to a later beat to hit it and score some points. There are three types of balls it swings, each with its own speed: The standard white baseballs take two beats to reach you, the red balls take one beat, and the Mushroom-patterned ones take four beats. Interestingly, the ball will take a different trajectory depending on if you were on point, a bit too early (the ball will go to the left), or a bit too late (the ball will go to the right). Those of you well-versed in Rhythm Heaven will likely think of Spaceball, the stage in Rhythm Heaven GBA (AKA Rhythm Tengoku) that was brought back for Rhythm Heaven Megamix. It certainly did for me!

Minigame 2: Baton and On
Toadette takes on the role of drum major as the four contestants have to match her baton movements as closely as possible. It's pretty simple: Just move the thing up and down, stopping when she provides the cue to stop and resuming when you're told to resume. (Don't forget to wave at the end for extra points.) Though it's a great deal more simple due to this being a single minigame, this does remind me of Major Minor's Majestic March, a rather obscure Wii game in which you play as a marching band's drum major directing the band with your baton, controlled through the Wii Remote. It would've been a VERY hard sell from the start, but it did reunite Masaya Matsuura and Rodney Alan Greenblatt, the two crazy minds behind PaRappa the Rapper (Matsuura handling the game design and music and Greenblatt handling the visuals).

Minigame 3: Fiddler on the Hoof
This one is a horse race. All of the horses are perfectly even in running speed and acceleration, and the difference lies in when you have the horse speed up by pulling on the reins. You do so, of course, to the rhythm, and your cues are pink circles on the ground. I don't think there have been any stages in Rhythm Heaven, as a series, based on any horseback activities, even though I think they'd work quite well and they've covered many, many sports already, with everything from table tennis to sumo wrestling.

Minigame 4: All-Star Swingers
Unique to the Remix difficulty of Sound Stage, you'll play the three stages all over again, except this time the tempo has been increased substantially. All-Star Swingers gives you plenty of time to react to the cues, but that time is greatly reduced here. Still, this is a good one to demonstrate the faster speed without it being necessarily more frustrating for exactly that reason.

Minigame 5: Baton and On
Poor Toadette must be quite tired after scrambling around like that with this increased tempo. Still, she looks happy doing this.

Minigame 6: Fiddler on the Hoof
Normally, I wouldn't consider it so bad with the increased speed here, but the parts near the end where you have to pull the reins rapidly gets a LOT tougher when it's faster like this. You'll see me struggle to catch up here when those segments arrive (I am Monty Mole, by the way).

And lastly, once the results are calculated and a winner is decided, the winner will do a happy dance on the stage. Its pretty interesting to see this character do it, as dancing isn't something he's known to do.