Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis (Nintendo DS) Review

The old Donkey Kong arcade games involved the player controlling Mario (or Jumpman, depending on which version you played) and having to overcome various obstacles in order to reach the summit of each stage on offer and defeat the hairy beast to rescue the lovely Pauline. This idea is still in place, with Donkey Kong once again kidnapping poor Pauline and leaving Mario with no choice but to go on yet another mission. However, this time round Nintendo has created a game that reeks strongly of Lemmings, which is definitely a good thing. You see it is the day of the official opening of the Super Mini Mario World theme park, dedicated to the toys featured in the first Mario vs. DK on the GBA and the way Mario must reclaim the damsel in distress is by guiding many Mini Mario toys through various stages, chasing DK along the way.

Each stage starts with a quick overview pan-shot of the area and then leaves you in control of a few dormant Mini Mario toys. Rather than working like its GBA predecessor and just directly controlling Mario, you must now tap on each Mini Mario to make them start moving, then tap again to stop them. To change the direction of walking, simply stroke the stylus across them in the appropriate way, or slide upwards to make them jump. Your aim is to first of all get the Mario toys to the final goal, but to also avoid any dangers and achieve the task in the quickest time possible, whilst also ensuring all extras dotted around each stage are collected and the Mario toys enter the goal in quick succession to obtain a bigger bonus score and thus a coveted gold medal for that level.

Those dangers, though, come in the form of mechanical Donkey Kong characters, Piranha Plants spewing forth fireballs, various spring boards and a maze of different coloured barriers that are each activated and raised by a switch that then lowers another coloured barrier at the same time – all of which make the main task quite treacherous at times. And, to make the game even trickier, there are points awarded for keeping a least one of the toys moving at all times, leaving you to have to quickly scroll around a stage at such a fast rate to watch everything that is going on that it can get very hectic further into the game (in a good way, though). But everything is so much fun, with toys being able to climb atop some enemies and ride across spike-laden floors, floors and walls can be repositioned around a level to block off bad guys or projectiles, then hastily moved again to prevent the toys falling to their doom. As for the boss stages, you must fire Mini Mario toys at the big ape as he dances around the top of the screen with increasing speed as the game goes on. The formula works quite nicely as well, with the stylus moving a cannon around, for instance, and then a simple tap on its centre fires off toys. With eight worlds on offer, each broken down into separate stages and a boss battle, the main game can be blown through in little over five or six hours, depending on how long you can sit through in one go.

With eight worlds on offer, each broken down into separate stages and a boss battle, the main game can be blown through in little over five or six hours, depending on how long you can sit through in one go. However, it is the clever use of medal obtaining that will bring gamers back to play through certain levels again to achieve perfection and the elusive gold medal. On top of that, you are able to use the game's level creation tool to craft your own devious stages with ease either to play on or share with others (wirelessly or via the online Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection). Grabbing new levels from others really does extend the experience considerably! All-in-all this, even with its differences, this sequel proves to definitely be the superior game.