New Super Mario Bros. Wii Coin World

Release: 2009 (Japan) - Capcom
All images via the official site.

Did you know that there is/was a New Super Mario Bros. Wii-themed arcade game in Japan? Well there is! It's a pseudo-gambling game for up to four players full of minigames, slot machines, and roulette wheels.

Here's how it works...

The start and primary portion of the game is a digital slot machine. You play by popping in tokens and hoping you get lucky by stopping the slots on something good. Depending on what you get, you could win a few more tokens in-game, trigger an enemy and/or power-up to appear in a minor event, or start a full-fledged minigame.

Once you get past the luck of the slots, most (but not all) of the minigames are based on skill and tricky timing. Don't expect the fluid controls of a normal Mario game with the unwieldy arcade joystick though; these games tend to give you only limited control over Mario, for example, only controlling his jumps, moving platforms up and down, or shooting fireballs. As pictured above, some of the minigames can be played with up to three other players, and their actions may affect how the game plays out on your part of the screen.

"Mario Satellite - Mario Jackpot Challenge"

The ultimate goal of the game is enter "Jackpot Step Challenges" by getting lucky on the slots. These challenges are minigames with the opportunity to collect keys. If you're able to collect five of either the Mario keys or Peach keys, you can enter the Jackpot Challenge. This is a battle against Bowser, which seems to be basically just mashing the fireball button and hoping the giant roulette wheel in the center lands on the jackpot.

Another simple timing-based minigame

Presumably, if you're able to beat the odds and have enough skill when it counts, you'll be able to keep your game going long enough with real life tokens and in-game tokens to net one of the two jackpots, maybe even getting you a big enough payout of tokens to make the investment worth it.

And that's about all there is to New Super Mario Bros. Wii Coin World. For more images and videos, check out the official website or search on Youtube for "New スーパーマリオブラザーズ Wii コインワールド".

For more Mario stuff that's only in Japan, check out Super Mario Bros. Special, the terrible PC version of Super Mario Bros..

FTW: Incredible Rhythmic Mario Platforming Hack on a Dance Machine (And More!)

I've written before about the ingenuity of the tenacious group of remaining dance game players and about the incredible ways they've been able to mod the In The Groove 2 (ITG) arcade machines with "gimmick charts". Last time, there was a song with a secret code which would display the message "Player # took their shirt off!" to the song "Take Your Shirt Off", as well as a playable version of Rally-X. Before that was a song from Rhythm Heaven made playable on a dance machine.

Now, for DivinElegy's 3rd Annual Gimmick Competition, the latest and greatest original gimmick charts are coming in. One of them is Steve Reen's "Long Invulnerability", a musical Mario platforming experience akin to Bit.Trip Runner and inspired by the music levels in Rayman Legends. In it, you have to use the arrows on the dance pad to jump and grab coins, hit blocks, avoid obstacles, smash through walls, and kill enemies, all to the beat of the music. At the end, you're scored according to how many coins and enemies you got. It's amazing enough that this kind of thing was able to be made in the first place, but more amazing still how well the music goes with the gameplay. It could've been just a proof of concept, but it's not. Check this thing out:

While we're at it, here are a few more games within a dance game...
Mega Man Rhythm Minigames
Space Shooter Minus the Shooting
Mash Arrows to Make Sonic Jump Game and Watch Manhole with Ponies
Thanks to reader "Bran" for suggesting this post! 

Update:
Something that reminds me of Rez but isn't really the same at all

In The Groove - What's Up at D.O.W.N.S.

Chances are that you've heard of Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), but unfortunately, you, like many, may not have heard of the similar In The Groove (ITG). It's understandable. Dance games aren't exactly the hip and new thing they once were, and even when they were new, arcades were declining in popularity. Furthermore, DDR had many more games in the series than ITG which only has two arcade games and one for PS2. But In The Groove has something that DDR doesn't have that has given it the staying power to keep a strong community long after the series ceased production and was bought out by Konami. That something is mod-ability. 

Since In The Groove is based on the free and open source StepMania, once you have access to the arcade machine, it isn't hard to modify it exactly how you want. Most importantly, this means that it is possible to add custom songs and step charts. ITG already offered more challenging songs than DDR, but with the addition of thousands of fan-made charts, the difficulty has continued to increase over the years as players keep improving. Getting 100% on a song is even harder than most rhythm games since each step is graded based on timing. To perfect a song, you need to hit every arrow with perfect timing, as opposed to Guitar Hero, where all you need to do is hit every note. 

It leaves a lot of room for improvement and for competition, which is why there are several major tournaments every year. At the end of 2012, there was "Bearpocalypse", an invite-only tournament where the best of the best competed to get the best scores they could on certain songs within a certain time period. Just this past weekend was the less serious, but still incredibly difficult, D.O.W.N.S.. 

Players came from far and wide to compete in D.O.W.N.S..

D.O.W.N.S. is unique in that all the stepcharts in the competition are composed specifically for the event by the participants. Anyone who entered early enough was able to submit up to three songs and charts, with very few limitations. This lack of limitations means that the charts are often hard, stupidly hard, or just plain stupid, but there are always a few that include gimmicks and mods that totally turn the game on its head, similar to the Rhythm Heaven adaptation I posted about last September. Charts of that sort from this third iteration of D.O.W.N.S. included  "Racecar", which had players pressing the direction of turns as an 8-bit racecar made its way around a track; one with a misleading title and preview track that was actually a totally different song with a chart consisting of very fast left and right arrows for the whole song; Weird Al's "Polkamon", with Pokemon distractingly appearing all over the screen; and "Take Your Shirt Off", which had a code programmed in that would flip the arrows and display a message when input at the beginning of the song. In fact, there were over eighty charts written for this year's tournament which were made available a couple months in advance so players could practice them.
Amazingly, this year's D.O.W.N.S. brought in players from far out of state and even out of country. Forty-some people participated and far more came to watch, along with the confused mall patrons who stopped to marvel at the spectacle. Clearly, In The Groove maintains a competitive and fun-loving community that continues to evolve with the players' skill levels and their creative ideas. Dance games may be out of the eye of mainstream gamers, but the genre is far from dead.