I think mini-games are to video games as french fries are to cheeseburgers. They often compliment a game’s core experience with a delicious, crispy break from the main course. Eventually, the minds behind video games thought that these little distractions could be more than just a break from the game. Nintendo made that clear with their charming WarioWare series, a franchise that gave the limelight to these quick time-wasters. With that franchise, the âmini-game compilationâ became popular, particularly on handhelds like the Nintendo DS. With its unique features like stylus and touch screen control, the DS made a lot of mini-games more innovative and interesting than they had ever been before. With that in mind, Atlus â a publisher whose focus is usually centered on delivering strategy and role-playing games to the DS â took a shot at this âcompilation genreâ with their very own title, called 101-in-1: Explosive Megamix.
Believe it or not, there really are 101 different mini-games to play in this title. Some of them are simply Flash games that were rebuilt with the stylus and touch screen mechanics in mind, and others are more unique and fresh. With that in mind, do these 101 distractions deserve your attention? Has Atlus put together a mix that can outdo Nintendo’s four-year-old WarioWare: Touched, or do these mini-games give you 101 reasons not to spend your cash on Explosive Megamix?
At twenty cents per game, is the Megamix really Explosive? Hit the jump to find out.
I will admit that it is difficult for me to go through this review without comparing Atlus’s compilation with Nintendo’s WarioWare franchise, so I apologize if there are a massive amount of comparisons in my critique. Moving on, I will tell you about one major hole in Explosive Megamix: it is completely missing the whimsical characters and silly storylines that made WarioWare an interesting game outside of its dozens of âmicrogamesâ. A lot of the laughs I got out of WarioWare involved its ridiculous cast and their wacky antics. None of this charm is present in Explosive Megamix, which is a shame indeed.
In this mini-game, you control the race car with the stylus and avoid hitting other cars.
Explosive Megamix chooses to take a detour from that route; it instead puts out a large quantity of games that range from target shooting and classic-style top-down shooters to miniature sports and driving challenges. There are some unique games here, like âElevator Escapeâ, âSushiâ, âFliesâ, and âUrban Skydivingâ. Some of the mini-games are direct rip-offs from classic games like Missile Command, Space Invaders, and the board game Battleship. Some are simple, like âDartsâ and âSharpshooterâ. There are also some real big duds, like the first game you play – âBasketballâ – and the equally-annoying âBouncerâ. Many of them, like âBouncerâ, can be played for free as online Flash games.
With Explosive Megamix, it seems like Atlus took the âquantityâ approach rather than the âqualityâ one. Explosive Megamix has a handful of entertaining little distractions to play, but even if the package had better games to offer, something should have been done about the stylus and touch screen controls. Some of the games are essentially broken. For example, I couldn’t â in more than 15 attempts â understand how to do the damn âCircusâ mini-game. It’s almost like the touch screen didn’t work; I simply couldn’t figure out how to play it at all. I had similar trouble with the âBouncerâ game, where you are supposed to keep a soccer ball in the air for as long as possible by touching the bottom of it as it falls back toward the ground. Other games are far too touchy â the âBasketballâ game is essentially the hardest mini-game of all time, unless the player is capable of finding the perfect touch and technique for shooting and making a basket. My personal record was four baskets within the one-minute time limit, and the high score requires a lot more success than four lucky shots.
“Basketball” – the bane of my existence.
There are other reasons for some of the mini-games falling flat; reasons that go beyond a lack of originality or personality. First, each game contains a high score that must be attained before the game is officially âcompletedâ. Unfortunately, some of the high scores for many of these mini-games demand a relentlessly perfect performance from the player. This might be easier if the controls and game objectives were defined more clearly in the game menu, but some of the hints are so vague that it is difficult to know what you are supposed to do all the time. Many of the games end up being a frustrating chore, or worse yet, forgettable altogether. What is less forgettable is the miserable background music â if you play Explosive Megamix, do yourself the small favor of muting your DS. Your ears will be grateful.
As you complete mini-games and earn high scores, you collect coins. These coins can be spent in the painstaking task of opening up the 91 locked games that aren’t playable right out of the package. That’s right â you can only play 10 of those 101 games at first, and some of them aren’t very much fun at all. What a scam! The game’s title advertises 101 games; why aren’t more of them available from the beginning?! When you do finally start unlocking games, it’s really a matter of chance â sometimes you’ll find a decent mini-game, and sometimes you will unlock a really stupid game that burns through your coins. You really aren’t given much of a clue about the locked games. Before you buy a new game, you only see the title of the game and a purchase button. This means that you might end up wasting a lot of hard-earned credit on some annoying mini-game that is poorly explained in its help menu, or one that simply doesn’t work properly to begin with.
“Darts” is pretty self-explanatory…unlike many of the locked games found in Explosive Megamix.
To be fair, Explosive Megamix isn’t all bad â there are some fun little games found buried deep within the bad ones. Some of my favorites were mentioned earlier â âUrban Skydivingâ and âElevator Escapeâ, both of which require simple timing skills. The âSerpentâ mini-game is simply a rebuilt version of the classic game Snake, and it is one of the most entertaining mini-games offered on the cartridge. âPest Splatteringâ is also fun; it is basically the same as the old mini-game found in Mario Paint. I also enjoyed âCurlersâ, which is basically a quick game of shuffleboard. There’s even âTornado Hockeyâ, an air hockey mini-game. This particular game would have been more fun if getting through the CPU opponent’s brick wall defenses wasn’t such a frustrating exercise. It is sad to say, but I would claim that one out of every seven or eight mini-games is actually worth playing. Even fewer are worth playing over and over again.
Unfortunately, Explosive Megamix’s small helping of decent mini-games isn’t quite enough to warrant a recommendation to most DS owners. The four-year-old WarioWare: Touched is a much better compilation, and it even offers unlockable toys and items to play with when you start beating all of the mini-games. Explosive Megamix is playable as a multi-card game, provided that you have a friend who decided to burn $20 on their own copy â but overall, Atlus’s compilation falters in comparison to other similar games. Even if you consider that each mini-game costs about 20 cents apiece, you are basically blowing more than $10 or $15 on bad mini-games.
I’m not sure why there is no defending CPU player – a.k.a. the Steel Curtain – in this screenshot.
There has been a handful of great DS games so far in 2009, but sadly, Explosive Megamix isn’t the âexplosiveâ compilation that its name makes it out to be. If you want a better compilation, try WarioWare: Touched or the recently-released, notable Retro Game Challenge. Explosive Megamix is too bland, too generic, too unpredictable, and too frustrating to warrant the tossing away of a valuable Jefferson.
