D is for....

Dancing Stage Mario Mix

GameCube

I’ll be completely honest and admit that I enjoyed this probably more than I should have. It wasn’t difficult or very strenuous but was a good laugh and I can imagine that in two player mode would actually be quite funny.

The game consists of using the dance mat to dance to themes from Nintendo games such as Super Mario World, Mario Kart 64, and Mario Party 5 amongst many others. Unlike Donkey Konga there are no proper pop/rock songs to dance along to which is a bit of a shame. There are also mini games between the songs where you use the mat to hit Goombas as evidenced in the mini game 'Whack a Goomba'. I managed to play two of the mini games within the 15 minute time limit.

The storyline is your standard Mario storyline, this time about Waluigi releasing the four music keys which is your excuse to dance along to the challenges. It’s nice to see Waluigi finally get some recognition as a bad guy, just a shame it had to be in a dance game and not a proper Mario game.

Within the 15 minutes: Start of world two.

Will I play it again? Yes, was quite an enjoyable game.

Dick Tracy

Master System

I think that the best I can say about this game is that it’s marginally better than the film from many years ago. Only marginally better as this game is still quite bad.

The most annoying thing about this game is the use of space. Despite there being bad guys placed all around the level you can only walk left and right along a strip of pavement at the bottom of the screen. You can shoot the enemies at the top of the screen by pointing upwards and using a machine gun style weapon but the option to be able to do that or walk up to kill them would have been nice.

Another annoying thing is that the levels pretty much are exactly the same in the fact that i’m pretty convinced that level 2.3 was almost exactly the same as level 1.1. The only time anything really changed was where on one of the levels Mr Tracy was holding onto the side of a car instead of walking. Apart from that the time that I spent playing the game was boring and repetitive, not good.

Within the 15 minutes: Level 2.3

Will I play it again? Possibly not.

Die Hard Vendetta

GameCube

I’ll admit that in all honesty I was expecting this game to be a bit cack. It’s a game that you keep seeing over and over for a couple of quid never selling. Well over and over I did keep seeing it until eventually I picked it up from a charity shop for £2 and finally I for this list I decided to give it a shot.

What I found was that it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be. At time of release it was tied into the first three films with one of the characters being Piet Gruber (the son of Hans Gruber from the first film) with the fourth film apparently contradicting things in the game, what these are I don’t know as I’ve not seen the fourth film.

Of what I played the game seems to be your standard FPS with certain requirements to meet to complete the mission which include rescuing hostages, following a blood trail to find a shot bad guy amongst others. The only problem that found with the game so far was that the controls to line up to shoot were very flaky and sensitive which really was a right pain but luckily you can the aim set to auto which was definitely a lot better.

Within the 15 minutes: Working through the second mission.

Will I play it again? Like Donkey Konga I will at some point.

Disney’s Talespin

Megadrive

You may remember Tale Spin as a cartoon from the very early 90’s which featured Baloo from The Jungle Book as a pilot of an air cargo freight business. Well this is the game that was made based on the cartoon.

In the game you control Baloo or his navigator Kit and have to collect a minimum of ten cargo boxes before being able to complete the level and take on an end of level boss and that’s about it. The levels are designed quite well and whilst minimal do offer some puzzles and quite a bit of exploration. In 15 minutes I had only managed to get to the second level boss as I spent quite a bit of time searching for cargo crates on the second level.

You get a decent size energy bar but the enemies can be quite tough and there can be a fair number of enemies on the screen at any one time which can make running past seem quite a good idea. The bosses especially can be quite tough to beat and I was using a few lives on the second level boss when the 15 minute time limit ran out.

Within the 15 minutes: Trying to kill the second level boss.

Will I play it again? Yes as has a little more than the standard platformer from what I saw.

Donkey Konga

GameCube

Unlike Dancing Stage Mario Mix this game does have proper pop songs which are instantly recognisable along with theme tunes from the likes of Mario and Zelda.

The songs that I played on the Pal version were Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen, Wild Thing by The Troggs, The Impression That I Get by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, 99 Red Balloons by Nena and the Mario theme. All in my opinion good and fun songs which is the way it should be on a game like this which I did find to be fun.

When playing I went for Street Performance where you could play any song of your choosing and as you worked through the song you earned coins to be spent in the shop. To complete a song you have four colours to hit to, red, yellow, purple and blue. Red and yellow were left bongo and right bongo, purple was both at the same time and blue was to clap into the middle of the bongo which added another dimension. The game was good fun and worth picking up on the cheap.

Within the 15 minutes: Had completed two songs and had played three others.

Will I play it again? Yes at some point.