A lot of major AAA publishers have had their own music game series over the years. Activision has Guitar Hero, EA has Rock Band, Sega has Samba de Amigo, Sony has Patapon, Konami has Dance Dance Revolution, Ubisoft has Just Dance, and Nintendo has Rhythm Heaven. Stretching back to the days of the Game Boy Advance, the Rhythm Heaven series has also seen releases on Nintendo DS and Wii. Rhythm Heaven Megamix, released for Nintendo 3DS in 2016, is a Greatest Hits minigame package of addictive wackiness and humor that makes it one of the more overlooked first-party Nintendo games on the system.
Rhythm Heaven comes from the same team at Nintendo that has graced us with the WarioWare series for the last two decades. They share the same silly and wacky aesthetic, but instead of microgames, you get addictive rhythm mini-games set to original music that is surprisingly catchy and at some point will likely get stuck in your head after you put the game down.
The mini-games themselves are easy to learn, hard to master. The premise is simple: press the buttons in time to the beat. That’s it. The controls are simple and can usually be played with just the A-button, or some games will incorporate the B-button and the d-pad as secondary inputs as well. Each game has a short tutorial so you’re not going in blind, and you’re scored on each mini-game by how in-time you are with the music. You’ll be hitting baseballs, eating dumplings, dancing with a robot, tap-dancing, practicing karate, slaying demons with a ninja sword, cheerleading, playing ping-pong, slicing vegetables, catching fruit, and all kinds of other random activities.
There’s over 100 minigames to chew through. The majority of them are from previous games in the series, along with about 30 that are new, so there’s a lot of content. However, if you’re new to the series like I was, all the minigames are new.
There is a story, but it’s so wacky and silly, it’s not worth discussing in a review. It fits the tone of the game and will make you chuckle, but it’s not meant to be taken seriously in the slightest. It’s just a reason to have all these music mini-games in one place for you to play through.
After you finish the main story, there’s a challenge mode and a perfect campaign you can take on.
A perfect challenge is exactly what it sounds like. You have to play all the way through the whole mini-game sequence without a single miss. If you miss, you have to start over. You get three chances to complete the challenge. If you fail all three times, the challenge is shut down and you have to wait for another invitation. While you’re playing, you’ll get a notification telling you that a perfect challenge is available to play on a certain mini-game. You can choose to take it on right then, or keep playing the main game, but you only have a certain amount of time to take on the challenge. If you wait too long, the notification disappears and you have to wait to get another one.
The challenge mode is basically the hard mode after you beat the campaign. It has you taking on consecutive minigames with sped up tempos or other twists that make things much more difficult. You’ll be allowed a certain number of misses on some games, or you’ll be graded on your performance at the end. Some challenges have you taking on as many as eight consecutive minigames. If you fail one of the minigames in the challenge, you can start that minigame again, but if you fail three times in the challenge, you have to start completely over at the first minigame.
Between the perfect mode and the challenge mode, the gameplay can get pretty stressful. Thankfully, there’s also a relaxing goat-feeding minigame you can escape to that unlocks mascot collectibles and in-game achievements. Plus, there’s a whole slew of other collectibles for each mini-game you can buy with in-game coins, as well as their music tracks.
VERDICT
If there’s a series that consistently puts together a more addictive package of mini-games than Rhythm Heaven, I’d like to know what it is. It’s hard to feel sad or angry playing it for any length of time, and it’s a game that will put a smile on your face. In fact, it seems to be designed to do just that. If you like rhythm/music games at all, I would normally say it’s a must-buy for 3DS. The whole package is fantastic.
Unfortunately, the bad news is that since it was never released physically in North America, and since Nintendo saw fit to shut down the 3DS eShop, you can’t buy Rhythm Heaven Megamix anymore. However, the good news is that there is a brand new Rhythm Heaven on Switch called Rhythm Heaven Groove. It’s reasonably priced at $40 digital with 80 all new minigames and a multiplayer mode, and is out now, with a playable demo. If Megamix sounds like your speed, give it a try.
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