But while playing Rhythm Heaven one often finds it surprisingly tricky to flick the screen and even tap along to the beat in order to achieve the right timing. Generally speaking in my opinion, the player is usually wrong. The problem with music games in general is there often is a discrepancy where a player believes his timing is correct while the game seems to disagree. It is a beat game where you either tap the screen or flick your stylus over the screen along with the rhythm of the game - perhaps, not a great surprise. Rhythm Heaven is not exactly a music-game, though there are oodles of J-Pop inspired tunes to wet the musical pallet. The large number of games along with its breadth of content provides ample reason to keep the game cart in the Nintendo DS long after the main missions are complete. Rhythm Heaven is a collection of thirty core mini-games, twenty extra mini-games, and the regular WarioWare extras including fun interactive toys, guitar “lessons” in the form of scales and chords, and unlockable content. With the recent success of mini-game developer Nintendo R&D1’s WarioWare franchise, the studio has hired designer Yoshio Sakamoto designer of the successful Rhythm Tengoku game for the Gameboy Advance from Japan to come over to Western shores to develop Rhythm Heaven. Looking at the handheld today, we can see that the “evolution” of this design ultimately finds developers circling back toward the mini-game format. As more sophisticated gaming experiences began appearing in line with its sister home console, the handheld became a viable platform for extended escapism.

When the Gameboy was first released, its library was predominantly made up of various puzzle games and mini-games.

Rhythm heaven warioware