Yes, it's time for a review of yet another Dance Dance Revolution. I mentioned in my previous DDR review (DDR Extreme 2) that rather than play the next game in the series I might skip around a bit, and I did end up going back and checking out an early oddball game in the series, Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Mix. In North America the game was released on the original PlayStation soon after the original Dance Dance Revolution PlayStation release, although in Japan it was released a couple of years and many iterations after the original DDR arcade release.
I didn't really have high hopes for the game, but it is an interesting curiosity. Mickey and gang provide a skin for the familiar DDR core, although the bulk of the songs are fairly odd dance versions of familiar Disney tunes such as "It's a Small World" and "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah", some of which are repeated in different guises. There are only a handful of cover songs, and the rest of the tracklisting consists of the usual DDR type of techno. The game has one of the smallest tracklistings of any DDR game I've played, which is a drawback, and there aren't any unlockable songs.
In what is presumably an effort to make the game more appealing to youngsters, the game doesn't record a numerical score, and it only records your ranking in a records option that's buried in the settings, which is annoying. The game also requires you to unlock the hardest setting (of three), which you can get after beating all the songs on the medium difficulty. This is actually not trivial at all, which is good for a DDR vet like me but makes me wonder how many kids who played this actually ever unlocked it. Another little quirk about the game is that when you fail at a song, instead of taunting you like most of the other games in the series, you're presented with a visual of a letter from a Disney character telling you how many notes you had left and encouraging you to try again, haha. We're all winners here, folks!
The game features a versus mode, and this is a bit unique in that the character you choose affects the gameplay. Each character has his/her own special attacks (such as causing your opponent's steps to go more slowly or more quickly, or adding more steps), that trigger once you fill up a meter. Nothing too revolutionary, but good for a change of pace.
This was an interesting bit of DDR history, but it's definitely not going to be my go-to DDR game. I suppose kids or diehard fans of Disney will get a kick out of seeing their favorite characters, but otherwise everyone else can safely skip this one.
Check out this small world of Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Mix links:
- FAQ at GameFAQs
- Entry at Wikipedia