Tuesday 28 Jul 2009

Before every other rhythm game there was Bemani. It can be argued that just about every other rhythm ever invented is just a variation of Bemani – it is the series that introduced pressing buttons in time with the music. So before Guitar Hero there was Dance Dance Revolution, or Dancing Stage as it seems to be called now. Like Guitar Hero, it is a variation of Bemani played with a special controller – in this case a dance mat. The dance mat simply simulates pressing buttons, but because it’s big and on the floor it feels like you’re dancing when all you’re doing is pressing big buttons with your feet in time with the music. In fact, when I play it doesn’t look like dancing at all, but you may have seen those amazing people playing DDR at your friendly neighbourhood arcade – they certainly do look like they’re dancing, and having huge amounts of fun too.

Tried and true formula – but still great

Not a whole lot has changed over the years of Dancing Stage. Hundreds of them have come out, the main difference between them being the songs that are in each. Super-fast techno: check; super-fast rave: check; some dancy pop: check; some Japanese dance stuff: check. There’s even some songs you’ve heard of – Goldfrapp and Justin Timberlake show up in the tracklisting, for example. The Goldfrapp songs come with music videos, but for the most part you’re stuck with animated avatars dancing around that make the Guitar Hero ones look like works of art. Never mind that though – you never get a chance to look at what’s going on because you’re focused on pressing the right big-button on the floor at the right time, an activity that is a lot harder than it looks.

The presentation of the game still has that arcade feel, with everything being loud and energetic. A “game” consists of three songs, and it allows you to choose any at any difficulty. It records your top score at each difficulty, and it also rewards you with points to spend at the shop, so there is some game-progression, but mostly you set your own goals or simply play for fun.

Dancing Stage Supernova 2 has songs in a range of beats-per-minute, and for each song there are five levels. Cleverly, Konami show you a little graph that indicates out of ten just how hectic a song is at each level. For example, your slow songs are still only a 5 or 6 out of 10 on the hardest level, while your crazy-fast ones can be 3 or 4 out of 10 on the easiest. They go one step further and show you why it’s rated the way it is by displaying one of those area graphs that plots five measurements on it such as jumpiness, speed and flow of notes. This helps because you might be someone who can handle slow songs with lots of notes but not a fast song with few notes. It’s clear that Konami have been making these games for a long, long time.

Workout mode

A great feature of this game is the workout mode. In it you can set up a bunch of songs (up to 6) and just go without worrying about success or failure. There are three sets already set up to get you started, so you don’t even have to choose the songs. Then you can configure it to go for a certain length of time and it will repeat the set for that time. Dancing on the mat in your lounge is a pretty good cardio workout, and it’s great that the developers realized this and added support for it. It even tells you how many calories you burnt but how it knows this is anyone’s guess.

Dancing around on a plastic mat in your living room is still a lot of fun, and Konami still do it best. The arcade machines are always going to be better because they’re made of solid plastic with blinking lights and a built-in audience, but if you need to practice before making a fool of yourself at the arcades this is a cool way to do it. You do have to have a tolerance for extremely fast dance music, the ability to move your body a little (like they say, if you can walk you can dance) and a dance mat. Other than that, it’s a game made for everyone, so get two mats while you’re at it and have some social fun.

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Contributor:	Peter

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