Rhythm Heaven isn’t Nintendo’s biggest franchise. Not by a long shot. There have only been four games before this one — and one of them never made it out of Japan. The last entry came out over a decade ago.
But here’s the thing: every single one has been great. That’s a better track record than Mario, Zelda, or just about anything else Nintendo makes. Rhythm Heaven Groove on the Switch keeps that streak alive.
Think of it as WarioWare but music-focused. Short, bizarre minigames, all of them testing your sense of rhythm. One stage has you controlling a car’s gas and brakes. Another has a crab throwing macarons. Simple stuff — usually just one or two buttons — but keeping the beat is harder than it looks.
The key ingredients haven’t changed. Catchy music from Japanese singer-songwriter Tsunku. Weird but charming scenarios. You’ll chop vegetables, help frogs jump, and mash cans. I’ve had the car level’s beeping track stuck in my head all day.
Groove doesn’t reinvent the formula. You unlock levels, they get harder, and every four stages you hit a remix that blends them all together. Those remixes can get brutal — switching between actions while the beat keeps changing.
There’s one real problem: playing on a TV introduces input lag. The game lets you calibrate, but I couldn’t fix it. In handheld mode, it works perfectly. Hopefully that gets patched.
Otherwise, this is another gem. I think of these games like albums. Groove is a familiar but fresh release from one of my favorite bands.
