Wii: Armin Van Buuren: IN THE MIX

I’ve been spinning Trance and other Electronic music since 2007-ish, and I am just like any other Trance music enthusiast when I say Armin Van Buuren is one of the best of all time. I mean he’s hardworking (with his weekly radio show since 2001, and countless singles and albums), and also as a performing DJ. However, when I heard about a game that’s being endorsed by and collaborated with Armin himself even I was a bit skeptical. It also doesn’t help that it’s coming from a company I never heard of.

Foreign Media Games announced the production of “In The Mix: Featuring Armin van Buuren” back in 2009, and I recently found a video of the career mode on youtube. You can find here!

Gameplay-wise I don’t see this becoming popular with all of you Guitar Hero/Rock Band fanboys (again… lrn ur roots), but if you’re interested in how DJing is done you might wanna check it out. (Not like that DJ Hero shit, or Beatmania's term for “DJing”) Even though the producer of the game has said that they didn’t want to compete with DJ Hero or anything like that you know it’s mostly gonna be looked at in comparison anyways (which it already is).

DJ-wise I don’t have many qualms with this game. The known songlist so far has a LOT of Armin Van Buuren tracks along with other artists like Arnej, M6, Vincent De Moor, John O’ Callaghan, and plenty others, and along with the songlist I have a feeling you can re-create his famous remixed blends/mash-ups. However, nothing has been said about any DLC (Which would be nice nudge-nudge wink-wink).

In Career mode you start off underground until a talent scout introduces you to larger clubs and venues and eventually leading up to a record label of your own and top notch contacts. You have to get enough money to buy better equipment like better headphones to make your beatmatching easier, all the way down to the decks and mixer… And yes depending on the mixer you get you can have more channels (EQ settings) to mess with and do your own stuff, or maybe even add more decks for even more different ways to blend or transition.

But of course it’s not just the music that gets the club pumping. Sometimes you have to move your arms around to get the crowd pumped for the crescendo you’re building, so using the wii motion controls you do just that, but of course the higher you get in your career the more demanding everything will become.

All in all, I can’t wait for this game. Many people will say otherwise, but with the way music is headed now it won’t be long before you hear some of these songs when you go out, so it’s at least worth a check when it’s released.
Still… A part of my brain just has to say… Armin… Why didn’t you just let them use more of your music in the Beatmania series? I'm tired of always playing "The Sound of Goodbye (Tribal Feel Mix)" just to get my dose of AvB in game.
The game is scheduled for release sometime this year (Amazon says June 26^th), and you bet I’m going to do a review when it is. Regardless of how the game turns out he will still be #1.