Reviewed by CL on 3/1/2006
With the recent increase in home console power and popularity, many of the traditional arcade games have begun to become extinct. Gamers could get just as good (if not better) gaming experience in their own living room as they could in the arcades. To combat this, many arcade games started to depart from the standard control scheme and adapt esoteric and innovative methods which were difficult or impossible for gamers to acquire at home (i.e. fancy light guns, bike pedals, etc.) in an effort to lure players back to the arcades. One of the most successful of these games was the Dance Dance Revolution series.
If you’re not familiar with the series, the premise of the game is surprisingly simple. Instead of using a standard controller to play, you use a dance pad with 4 arrows (up, down, left, right). During a song, there are on-screen arrows which float from the bottom of the screen to the top. When an arrow reaches the top, the goal is to step on the corresponding arrow. If you’re doing it right, it actually looks like your dancing and makes for some surprisingly addictive gameplay. At first, the game feels pretty awkward as you try to get a feel for how to coordinate moving your feet with the arrows on the screen but once you practice some, it becomes second nature. Many people have referred to this as the modern day equivalent of rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time. Once you get used to it, it’s somewhat akin to sight reading music. The game is also notoriously hard. There are three different difficulty levels for each song and only the easy mode is passable when you first encounter a song (unless you’re a DDR expert). The normal and hard modes definitely require a lot of practice if you have any hope of passing a song. Luckily, the game has a training feature where you can slow down the music and add other features to help you learn a song.
The game is tons of fun to play and there are so many different modes to enjoy. One of the main benefits is that it simply gets you off the couch and forces you to actually exercise to play the game. There have been plenty of times where you’ll been playing for a while and then realize that you’re sweating, your legs are sore from jumping around so much, and you can’t remember the last time you had so much fun playing a videogame.
