This binary interaction is short, sharp and precise. You interact with Rhythm Paradise almost exclusively by tapping the A button, with just the occasional squeeze of the trigger to add variety. Its parade of diverse musical stages may have the wild-eyed flippancy one might expect from the offbeat creators of WarioWare, but beneath the lunacy is an unforgiving rhythm action game.Ĭomplete a stage with only one or two failures and you'll earn a medal, used to unlock bonus content, from songs to toys to endless challenges.

If the mini-game collection has become synonymous with the insubstantial, then Rhythm Paradise very much plays to the beat of its own drum. But Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise is no weary swansong. No platform attracted so many mini-game collections as Nintendo's Wii, a trend that became an identity, became a fate: shallow, disposable.įitting, then that a Sakamoto-produced mini-game collection should mark the end of this console's life, as the Wii makes way for its successor later this year. a rudely creative reduction of the medium's core mechanics to first-principle micro-games, each one five seconds long and with a single word of barked instruction - that kicked up a tidal wave of me-too imitators.

Did Nintendo's Wii drown under the weight of its mini-games? If that's true, then the unwitting architect of its destruction was Yoshio Sakamoto, creator of the Metroid series and Nintendo's Dark Mario to the primary-coloured innocence of its better-known star designer, Shigeru Miyamoto.

Rhythm heaven interview japanese