Dance Dance Retrospective: X3 vs. 2ndMIX

Previously on the SDP, there was the 2010 DanceDanceRevolution. And it sucked. Well, inasmuch as a DDR game can suck. But earlier from that same year, there was a new arcade edition, DanceDanceRevolution X2. And it was good. But it would turn out that X2 was the last arcade DDR game, to date, to have been sold outside of Asia. But it wasn't the end of the series, for a year and a half later, Konami released DanceDanceRevolution X3 vs. 2ndMIX (JP: 16 November 2011, AS: 16 December 2011). I also have yet to play this edition in person, even during my latest trip to Japan back in March. But even though Konami did not sell X3 in North America or Europe, they did release a new home game suspiciously similar to it: DanceDanceRevolution II for the Wii (NA: 11 October 2011, EU: 16 November 2011).

X3 features a blue-and-white colour scheme, and many of the features from X2. Two new features are exclusive to eAmusement/PASELI users: they can view both machine and eAmusement high scores on the music menu, and, similar to X2's Marathon Mode option, pay per song in Quick Play Mode. As hinted at in its full title, X3 also includes a HD remake of Dance Dance Revolution 2ndMIX. It is entered through a button prompt on X3's title screen, just like the 2ndMIX mode from 3rdMIX. The songs from 2ndMIX Mode were eventually added to the main game in a later update. As to why they chose this entry to remake, I'm curious. Perhaps the first game had too little content, and the more popular 3rdMIX had too much content. And yes, you still have to enter a hidden panel code for the Maniac level.

2ndMIX Mode's menu screen in DDR X3.

DDR II, meanwhile, shares with X3 some songs, UI elements, and of course the core gameplay, but in other ways differs from it as well as the Wii DDR games before it. There are no alternate modes that use the Wii Remote, Nunchuck, or Balance Board, but they did bring back the Double mode from the core series. Also, the majority of songs come in two flavours: the traditional 1-to-2-minute edits, and the full-length versions. And this isn't like in 5thMIX or DDR X where only a scant handful of songs were long versions; this is done for all the licenced songs, and most of the Konami originals which weren't already from previous games. The unlock system also seems to have borrowed a page from the PS2 days. Unstead of a separate single-player campaign, you unlock new content by playing in the free-play mode and earning points. The "Replicant-D-Action" system also makes an appearance, but it's been simplified greatly from its appearance in X2. All you have to do is clear any three songs, and the Replicant-D-Action folder will become available. When you play any song therein, the folder disappears until you play another three songs, and so on.

Double mode in DDR II. A mainstay for most of the series finally makes its Wii debut.

DDR X3 features 515 songs, plus 30 songs in 2ndMIX Mode, and DDR II features 83 songs. In X3, you've got your usual stable of J-pop licences and Konami originals, including ones from DDR 2010, seeing as how that game was never released in Japan (lucky buggers). However I will admit that, apart from the boss songs, the "notable songs" section will be shorter this time around than the ones for previous games. Not including the revivals for 2ndMIX mode, there are only six new licenced songs, all of them Japanese, and they culled most of the licences left over from X and X2, just to add insult to injury (or is it the other way around?). And I've long since stopped keeping up-to-date with the other Bemani games -- which, I remind you, aren't made available outside of Asia -- so there's nothing in the selection of crossover songs that catch my eye. But maybe it's just me; if you absolutely must have material from jubeat Copious or Reflec Beat Collette, then go nuts, I guess.

As for DDR II, I feel a little conflicted. First, the bad news. There are two -- count 'em, two -- Justin Bieber songs in DDR II. And one by Miley Cyrus. And one by Selena Gomez. And one by Willow Smith -- you know, that "Whip My Hair" fellow. And two songs with Bruno Mars, who isn't nearly as embarrassing. Yeah, you can tell Konami of America courted the teen-pop crowd this time around. But it's not like those are bad songs to dance to; not like those boring slow songs from the last game. So now, the good news. Since (the 2010) X2 was never given a proper home port, the Konami originals (mainly Bemani crossovers) that weren't already included for the (the 2009) X2 and Hottest Party 3 have been revived for DDR II, including such assumed classics as "smooooch", "Gold Rush", and "Mei". Other notable songs include:

• "Connect", as made famous by Claris. (X3 only) The theme song from the anime series Puella Magi Madoka Magica. For some reason, X3 uses a cover version of this song, as well as with...
• "Heavy Rotation", as made famous by AKB48. (X3 only) Why Konami would need someone to cover one of the biggest names in J-Pop, I couldn't tell ya.
• "Say a Prayer" by Des-Row & Maxi Priest, and "Still Unbreakable" by Des-Row and Vanilla Ice. (II only) Unremarkable songs, but it's neat that they're collaborations between Bemani and non-Bemani artists.

Certain songs were made available later on for machines connected to the Internet, a form of DLC if you will, as tie-ins with certain events.

• Daily Special: Added five songs from other Bemani games. During the event, different ones were unlocked on each day of the week.
• Append Travel: Added four songs from jubeat Copius Append, another Bemani music game. Also let players earn Append Points to spend on items, however this feature expired in September 2012.
• Konami Arcade Championship 2012: Added seven songs. Five of them are remixes of Konami originals from 2ndMIX.
• Tsugidoka!: Added four songs from other Bemani games.
• Extra Tour: Gradually introduced the Evolved songs as selectable Extra Stages.

The new round of boss songs are:

• "Amalgamation" by Mystic Moon. (X3 only) A fairly high-speed (170 BPM) trance/techno song. Originally the Extra Stage on X3; replaced by "Unbelievable (Sparky Remix)" in an update.
• "Unbelievable (Sparky Remix)" by jun feat. Sarah Jane. (X3 and II) A happy-hardcore song in the vein of "Silver☆Dream" and "Kimono Princess". Originally the Encore Extra Stage in X3; later replaced by "Nephilim Delta" and demoted to Extra Stage in an update.
• "Nephilim Delta" by L.E.D-G. (X3 only) A darker-sounding gabba-techno song, its high-speed (220 BPM) eight-note runs play like an even more turned-up "Afronova" or "Arabiatta".
• "Silver☆Dream" by jun. (X3 only) A revival from Hottest Party 2.

Other boss songs include:

• X3 revived the "Tokyo Evolved", "Osaka Evolved", and "New York Evolved" series from Hottest Party, Hottest Party 2, and New Moves/Hottest Party 4 respectively, as part of the "Extra Tour" update. 
• DDR II revived "deltaMAX" and "888" from Universe 3, and the other boss songs from X2. 
• "PARANOiA Revolution" by Climax of Maxx 360, and "Trip Machine Evolution" by DE-JAVU. (X3 only) The latest remixes of these fan-favourite songs from the first game. These are playable in 2ndMIX Mode, as Extra Stages, and certain nonstop courses. 
• "Love Is the Power (Re:Born)" by NM. A remix of the end-credits songs from 2ndMIX. It's not a particularly hard song (only level 10 on Expert), but when played as an Encore Extra Stage, you have to get all Perfect marks or better; so much as one Great kicks you out of the song. 
• "London Evolved" by TAG Underground. (X3 and II) The new set of Evolved songs, bearing three variations, this one is more trance-like, specifically reminiscent of "Roppongi Evolved" from X2. 
• "Tohoku Evolved" by 2.1MB Underground. (X3 only) Yet another Evolved song, specifically a remix of "London Evolved". Technically there is only one version of "Tohoku Evolved", except that the last note is a randomised corner-jump. This song breaks the DDR speed record, with a certain passage reaching a whopping 1,020 BPM. A tribute to the victims of the natural disasters which hit north-eastern Japan earlier in 2011, this version incorporates voice samples such as "Our thoughts and prayers are with you". 

Come to think of it, "Tohoku Evolved" would have been a poignant send-off to the Dance Dance Revolution series. Scratch that... it should have been the series' send-off. We've got only two more entries to go on Dance Dance Retrospective, and I have a bad feeling about them.

Dance Dance Retrospective: DDR 2010

Previously on Dance Dance Retrospective, there were DDR X2 for the PlayStation 2, and DDR Hottest Party 3 for the Wii. I thought little of them at the time, and still do, but their announcement earlier in 2009 came with promises of more advanced titles for the PS3 and XBox 360. Those, of course, never came to be... at least that year. But the following year, the seventh-generation consoles were finally (not including the Universe trilogy for XBox 360) graced with Dance Dance Revolution games to call their own: the simply-titled DanceDanceRevolution, which released first for the PS3 and Wii, with an XBox 360 port following shortly after.

And it sucked.

...

I assume. Yeah, as with the previous entries, I've yet to play this one, because it's not doing a heck of a whole lot to interest me. First of all, let's start with the title: no number, no subtitle, just "DanceDanceRevolution". I'd like to state for the record that I hate when people recycle a title with little to no changes when making a sequel to some form of media. I hate this practise so much that I might even write a top-ten list on the subject. To be fair, it is just one word in CamelCaps this time around, unlike the 1998 arcade game, its home port for Japan, and the 2001 home game which used a somewhat different engine. And yes, I guess they did it to ring in a new console generation... Oh wait, there was the DDR Universe series! ...Oh wait, that was an XBox 360 exclusive. Never mind. Meanwhile, over in Europe, the game was blessed with the subtitle "New Moves" on the PS3 and 360, and "Hottest Party 4" on the Wii. And I'm like, why couldn't you have done that over here!? *sigh* As it stands, I shall collectively refer to the new games as DDR 2010.

So enough about the title, what's the game itself like? Well, speaking at least for the "New Moves" versions, the interface colour scheme is dominated by reds and blacks, and the music-select screen brigns back the 5thMIX-through-SuperNOVA2 "music wheel" layout. Oh, and the rating scale is once again brought back to the old 1-to-10 standard. But not well, mind you. For example, the Basic chart for "Let's Get Away" is ranked a 4, but it's really more like a 2, 3 tops. After playing second-banana to the Guitar Hero / Rock Band duumvirate for some years, DDR 2010 attempts to incorporate some features from those games. "Groove Chains", or short sequences of notes that offer bonus points when completed without error, and "Groove Trigger", which you can activate at full health to get bonus points, both borrow elements of the Star Power/Overdrive systems from those rival games. In theory, I do admire these embellishments as attempts to liven up gameplay which has for the most part remained stale since 2001 (when they invented Freeze Arrows). But the execution leaves something to be desired. To use Groove Trigger, for example, you have to press Up and Up-Right or Up-Left immediately after, or flick the right analog stick on a separate controller. And the game still tallies the bonus points earned from these gimmicks separately from your base score (out of 1 million), so in the end it's kind of pointless.

Club Mode in the PS3 version.

DDR 2010 game lacks a Nonstop course mode in the traditional sense, but the PS3 and 360 versions do feature a Club Mode, which has you playing a random selection of 4 to 20 songs without breaks, and is the primary method of unlocking new songs. The only problem, at least for experienced players, is that it always starts you out on Beginner-level charts. The "Hands and Feet" mode from the later PS2 entries has been reincarnated as "Step and Move", which uses the dance pad along with the Move camera and wand (PS3 only). This time around, there are targets on all four corners of the screen, and you use your wand to trigger them for the appropriate note markers. From what I've seen of this mode, it has an unfortunate tendency of forcing you to twist your upper body at odd angles to hit the right markers, as if you were playing high-speed Twister with no tactile feedback. And you know that 8-panel mode that was teased in the 2009 trailer? Yeah, it's still in this game -- the new dance pads finally have eight panels, after all -- but like the Shock Arrows in DDR X, they're only used for a scant handful of Challenge-level charts. Meanwhile, the Wii version has carried over the Balance Board-supported Choreography Mode from Hottest Party 3.

Choreography Mode in the Wii version.

But if you were to ask me, and by reading this blog you implicitly did so, the make-or-break feature for any music game is, duh, the music. And it is in this arena that DDR 2010 sucks a fat one. Of the licenced songs chosen for this game, which would I characterise the whole thing with? "Hey, Soul Sister" by Train. "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz. "Battlefield" by Jordin Sparks. And "Need You Now" by Lady Antebellum. You see the problem, don't you? If you're not familair with those songs, I'll give it to you straight: they're too slow and dull for a dancing game! Oh, and you read that last one right: there's now a country-western song in a Dance Dance Revolution game. A really good country-western song mind you, but not something I'd want to dance to. Okay, to be fair, there have been slow songs in the older games which I didn't mind, but those were Konami originals for the most part. And there are more... active choices in this game -- I guess I'd highlight "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga, "crushcrushcrush" by Paramore, "Rio" by Duran Duran, and "Venus" by Bananarama -- but the damage was done by the lower end of the quality spectrum.

As for the Konami originals, well, I guess they're okay; they're pretty much going through the same motions by now. For the bosses, there's another level-10 happy-hardcore song, and another "Evolved" song. Also "MAX 300" again. Oh right, I forgot to mention, there are 5 revival songs in this game, the other four being "Afronova" from 3rdMIX, "Sweet Sweet Magic" and "Tsugaru" from MAX2, and "Hana Ranman (Flowers)" from SuperNOVA. Plus, there are even more songs available as downloadable content: 30 songs across 6 packs, all revivals spanning the classic through the SuperNOVA eras. This arguably makes for the most interesting material in the game, but if that's so, it's pretty sad when you think about it. For one, you have to pay extra for the best content, and two, the best content is stuff you've already seen before. So is the 2010 DanceDanceRevolution the worst game in the series? It'd be hard to say that for certain, what with all those pint-sized spin-off releases Japan got back in the day, but at least among the full-budget, worldwide (at least for more than one region) releases, it'd be easier to make that accusation. And for what we were promised in 2009, it's easily the most disappointing.

Next episode is on both an arcade and a home game... I do hope this next installment of Dance Dance Retrospective will bring something more interesting to the table.

Dance Dance Retrospective: Class of 2009

It's almost as if Konami was afraid to make the jump into the seventh console generation as far as Dance Dance Revolution was concerned. Sure, there was the Universe series on XBox 360 and Hottest Party on Wii, but the core series remained solely in the domain of the PlayStation 2, even after its successor console came onto the market. That was all set to change in 2009, when they released a trailer trumpeting a new DDR entry for all the consoles that mattered at the time. With features such as Balance Board support for the Wii, and eight-panel modes for PlayStation 3 and 360, it was set to inject some much-needed fresh blood into our franchise.

Except... it never happened.

Sort of.

2009 did indeed see new DDR titles, namely DanceDanceRevolution X2 for the PS2 and DanceDanceRevolution Hottest Party 3 for the Wii, both released in North America on 27 October 2009. But its PS3 and 360 counterparts took their sweet time until eventually they were unofficially declared as cancelled. Well actually, they did come out in some form later on, but that's another story. But at the time, the games we did get felt like the opening act for a main event which never showed up. So now that time has passed, let's analyse the games on their own merits.

We shall start with DDR X2. Not to be confused with the future arcade edition of the same name (again, another story), the 2009 X2 is essentially a direct sequel to DDR X, inasmuch as a rhythm game with no plot can have a direct sequel. Its interface is a re-skinned version of X's, focusing on violet and gold colours and funky city motifs. The new single-player modes are Dice Master Mode, a pseudo-board-game interface for playing missions and unlocking new content, and Request Mode, a simpler affair more like the Mission Mode in Extreme. I couldn't tell you more about these modes because I never bothered to play this game -- I know, shocking. Maybe it's the music setlist: with a total of 62 songs split between licences, new Konami originals, leftover Konami originals from X, and a smattering of revival songs which no one cared about. Seriously, "Tierra Buena"!? Oh, and the Groove Radar Specials from SuperNOVA2.

Meanwhile, Hottest Party 3 made significant changes in both design and gameplay, compared to its own predecessor. HP3 is the first DDR game to use a "Cover Flow" layout (popularised by iTunes) in its music select screen, displaying album artwork in a 3D-ish line. And in addition to the traditional dance-pad gameplay, there's a separate mode where you use the Wii Balance Board, swinging your centre of balance to hit notes. I've never owned a Balance Board, so again I couldn't be bothered to try this game. The song list is also 62 large and shares many of the tracks from X2, but instead of pre-existing Konami originals, they threw in new licenced songs not found in X2, thus trapping fans (myself excluded) in a proverbial rock-and-a-hard-place quandary. And a (not so) Fun Fact: the Japanese version of HP3, Dance Dance Revolution Music Fit, is as of this post the last home DDR game made for Japan.

I know what you're thinking (and if I'm wrong, allow me to put words in your mouth): "Kevin not buying the new Dance Dance Revolution game? What has this world come to?" Well, I've grown a lot more cynical for one thing, especially since SuperNOVA came about and Konami decided to stop innovating. (As a matter of fact, SuperNOVA2 was the first game in a while which I didn't pick up within the first few days of its release, if you want to split hairs.) But it's not just the unchanging experience which turned me off. Content is nine-tenths of the law when it comes to music game sequels, and neither did I feel a connection in this area. Whereas the licenced songs in X were in short supply and generally the products of lesser-known artists, X2 and HP3 reversed this trend by shifting the focus onto top-40 hits from the past year or two. Acts like Ne-Yo, Pitbull, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna are represented in both games. However, this approach sometimes lends itself to picking less-than-danceable selections. Seriously Konami, I like Coldplay's "Viva La Vida", but it doesn't have the kind of energy that I could step to.

Also, I'd like to discuss a certain trend which really became noticeable around this time: the edited versions of licenced songs appearing in DDR games, mostly the American and European home versions, are generally bollocks. As you might know by now, most songs in DDR run for about a minute and a half, less than half of their original runtimes. A good editor would excise verses and choruses to get to the target length, and leave no indication that anything was cut unless you were familiar with the full version. However, the approach Konami has taken as of late is to just run the song from the beginning and just fade out whenever it felt "right", usually in the middle of the second verse. Does the song have any profanities, even mild ones? Just skip over the offending verse and use the next one, they would say, no need to track down the clean version. And then there's Vanilla Ice's sarcastic-quotes magnum-opus end-sarcastic-quotes "Ice Ice Baby", which possibly has the worst edit out of all licenced songs in DDR. For some reason they used only the first verse, avoided the chorus whenever possible, and ended with thirty seconds of a lyricless outro. See for yourself:

And it gets even worse: X2 and HP3 also introduce* remakes of some classic Konami originals, such as "Brilliant 2U", "Keep On Movin'", and "Dynamite Rave". And by "remakes", I mean they cheapened up the production, wrote new lyrics, and got their in-house singers du jour to give a half-hearted performance. Now, I'm not equating the original versions with the best records out right now, but they did have their own nostalgic charm because that '90s-flavoured camp is what I grew up with as a DDR player. And being offered something that's presented as one of those old favourites but turns out to be something completely different is disappointing, like when you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca cherry cola. And even worse worse (didn't know how to phrase that), they had the ballsy temerity to make new stepcharts for them as well. Again, charts like "Dynamite Rave" expert had a familiar hardness to them, and when they get replaced with something easier and more generic, well, allow me to redirect you to my previous comparison. Yeah, they might've had to remake these songs because of rights issues involving the original recordings... somehow... but knowing that doesn't lessen the hurt for us consumers.

Konami, I am disappoint. Oh well, looks like it's up to the arcade series to karmically balance out this franchise. Find out if they make it happen, next time on Dance Dance Retrospective!

*NB: These remakes first appeared in the Japanese version of Hottest Party 2. That is except for "Dynamite Rave", which was used in the arcade version of DDR X , but with the old stepcharts untouched.

Dance Dance Retrospective: Hottest Party

It's no secret... that is, secretly-held opinion... that the Dance Dance Revolution franchise got stuck in a rut by not presenting innovative mechanics often enough.  I for one place the turning point right around SuperNOVA.  But where the franchise floundered in the arcades and on the PlayStation 2, its star rose on a new platform: the Nintendo Wii.  In 2007, Konami produced a spin-off entry entitled Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party, and molded into the formula several welcome changes which instilled a renewed sense of fun even into jaded fans like myself.  In fact, it was so well-received that Konami saw fit to bestow upon us a total of five games bearing the Hottest Party nameplate (depending on which region you live in).  But were the games themselves anything to write home about?  Let's find out.

Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party (2007)

First off, anyone remember the last time Konami attempted to put a DDR game on a Nintendo console?  Yeah, DDR Mario Mix (GameCube, 2005).  You can go ahead and forget about that one.  Except the fact that the dance pads they made for that are also used by Hottest Party.  Unless you've got one of the newer models that left out the GameCube ports, in which case sorry, but there's kind of no way to play this.

Four players and Hand Markers.  (From Hottest Party.)

As for everyone else, you'll be pleased to know that Hottest Party uses the Wii's exclusive features to great effect.  You can play with the regular four-panel setup, or you can turn on optional Hand Markers, notes in which you must shake the Wii Remote or Nunchuck to catch.  In effect, this is the next evolution of the six-panel mode from the DDR Solo series, or more recently, the EyeToy-powered Hands and Feet mode from the PlayStation 2 games.  In addition, you can also turn on optional Gimmick notes, which do anything from expanding into more notes to penalizing you for hitting them.  And while a new roster of characters has replaced old standbys like Disco, Rage, and Emi, you can also use your Mii characters in-game.  Yeah, that isn't creepy at all, I said in sarcasm mode.

The music selection, on the other hand, might not fulfill the excitement you built up for yourself in reading the above paragraph.  Whilst they did licence a decent array of hit songs from recent and past eras, they're all covers done by some of Konami's in-house bands.  Their results are generally nothing to be proud of, although at least they tried reworking stuff like Janet Jackson and Nelly's "Call On Me" and JoJo's "Too Little Too Late" to be more danceable.  Strangely, not even Konami's own songs are immune, as franchise classics like "B4U" and "Break Down!!" also got the cover treatment, and call it a case of "They Changed It, Now It Sucks", but... they suck.  I mean, seriously, I know the lyrics don't really matter, but at least get them right!  At least the brand-new songs are halfway decent, primarily the ones coming from the usual suspects like Naoki, DJ Taka, and Jun.

I know I told you to forget about Mario Mix, but I'm bringing it up one more time to illustrate one more point.  Mario Mix was easy; the hardest charts in that game would be lucky to be classified as Standard-level charts in the main series.  Hottest Party does not have this problem; it utilizes the same scale of difficulty as the Max and SuperNOVA games.  If you see a chart ranked at level 10, they MEAN level 10.  Fittingly, Hottest Party introduces a new paradigm for the "boss" songs, which eventually got carried over to the rest of the series:

• A fast Happy-Hardcore song with relatively straightforward charts, usually performed by Jun.  In Hottest Party it is "Super Samurai".
• Something known as an "Evolved" song, having plenty of tempo changes and multiple randomly-chosen versions.  In Hottest Party it is "Tokyo Evolved" by Naoki Underground.
• In addition, the Japanese version of Hottest Party boasts a third boss song, "Pluto the First" by White Wall.  As the title suggests, this is another remix of "Pluto" from SuperNOVA2, and has more in common with the original than "Pluto Relinquish".  This was eventually ported abroad in Hottest Party 3 / X2.

Even more (easier to define) Hand Markers.  (From Hottest Party 2.)

Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 2 (2008)

Also known as Dance Dance Revolution: Furu-furu Party in Japan.  Again, many of the licenced songs are covers, although they did get some original versions here and there.  The features and style are similar to the original, so you feel like giving the Hottest Party series a try, you could do well with either one or the other.  Preferably this one.  The new boss songs are:

• "Silver Wing" by Jun.  The happy-hardcore song.
• "Osaka Evolved" by Naoki Underground.  The Evolved song.

Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 3 (2009)

Also known as Dance Dance Revolution: Music Fit in Japan.  Unlike the previous two entries, all the licenced songs in HP3 are the original recordings, with an emphasis on top-40 hits form 2008  A tie-in with the PS2 game Dance Dance Revolution X2 (not to be confused with the arcade game of the same name); more on DDR HP3 will follow in the article for that game.

DanceDanceRevolution (2010)

Also known as Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 4 in Europe.  Added a Choreography Mode which used the Wii Balance Board and remotes, perhaps to compete with the likes of Ubisoft's Just Dance series.  A tie-in with the game of the same name for PlayStation 3 and XBox 360; more on DDR 2010 will follow in the article for those games.

DanceDanceRevolution II (2011)

Also known as Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 5 in Europe.  The final DDR title released for the Wii, DDR II eschewed the functions and modes brought on by the previous Wii-exclusive entries, in order to bring itself more in line with the arcade/PlayStation paradigm.  Fitting, as this was a tie-in with the arcade game Dance Dance Revolution X3 vs. 2ndMIX.  More on DDR II will follow in the article for that game.

So yeah, there's lots I didn't want to spoil before I spoke about some other games, for being too similar to them.  That only stands as a testament to how much the Hottest Party series was accepted by new and hardcore fans alike.  So now that I've got that out of the way, it's time to revisit the arcade series for a little anniversary party, next time on Dance Dance Retrospective.

Game Review: Ghost Squad

Ghost Squad

• Publisher: Sega
• Developer: Sega AM2 / Aritificial Mind & Movement (Wii)
• Release:
• Arcade, 2004
• Wii, 20 November 2007
• Genre: 3D Action (Rail shooter)
• Players: 1-2 (Arcade), 1-4 (Wii)
• Save: 1 block (Wii)
• Rarity/Cost: Common, US$10-20 (Wii)

Anyone remember Target: Terror, that arcade light-gun shooter by Raw Thrills? No? Good on ya. Pretty much the only thing it contributed to its genre is that it's possible for one of these games to last longer than twenty minutes, although in doing so stripping out all the fun, charm, and gravitas (whatever gravitas remained in this genre) brought upon by its Japanese competitors. One of those competitors was Ghost Squad by Sega AM2, which not only started showing up in arcades around the same time as Target: Terror, but years later got a home port on the Nintendo Wii -- wouldn't you know, also around the same time as Target: Terror. So, what does Ghost Squad do right over its American rival? More importantly, does it do anything right?

I'll start with the plot, inasmuch as an arcade game meant to get players on and off the hot seat as fast as possible can have a plot. Unlike Target: Terror, where your only motivation is that your targets are terrorists and that's bad, the antagonist force in Ghost Squad has a name: the Indigo Wolves. Their rap sheet includes kidnapping the President of the United States -- twice, in two of the game's three missions -- and the president of an arms company. Because... evil. And so a non-governmental force called the M.O.P. dispatches squads of ghosts (not literally, I just wanted to make a pun from the title) to dispatch the Indigo Wolves' threats. As such, there's a fair bit of immersion to be gained from taking orders from a remote commander and "leading" computer-controlled team members, even if they bear no impact whatsoever on your game. So does the arcade version's controller, a big hulking thing which I think is modelled after an MP5. (Then again, it gets hard to keep holding the darn thing up during extended play, so forget about it.) But the immersion is quickly lost when you realise its characters have no characterisation to speak of, or for that matter, when you bear witness to the goofy voice-acting. So maybe Ghost Squad's story isn't so great, but more importantly, does it play any good?

Alternate fire modes may help you out.

It should; this isn't Sega AM2's first ride in the light-gun rodeo, so a lot of Ghost Squad's mechanics had become familiar by the time it was made. You shoot terrorist characters who will occasionally attempt to shoot at you, you don't shoot hostages or other unarmed persons under penalty of losing health points, and you change your magazine simply by pointing your gun (Wii Remote) off of the screen. No pulling the trigger (pressing B) or shaking the gun (Remote) necessary. Huh, that's new. Not exactly; Sega AM2's earlier shooter Confidential Mission (Arcade/Dreamcast, 2001) also handled reloading in this manner. But it's nice to see it implemented here on the Wii as well, since having to shake the gun (Remote) tends to mess up your aim, if not your focus, in a way that simply flicking your sights off to the side does not. In an actually new feature (for the arcade scene, at least), you can select your weapon type when starting a game, and most weapons feature alternate fire modes (single-shot, burst fire, full-auto, etc.) which you can toggle by flicking a switch above the trigger (pressing Left/Right on the Control Pad).

This game is short. There are only three levels, and very short ones at that -- I'm talking at least five minutes apiece -- and not even a final boss after it all to tie up the story, such as it is. That's not to say Ghost Squad doesn't have its ways of hooking you in for repeated play-throughs. By collecting experience points (in the Wii version only, I'm afraid), alternate paths will be unlocked for you to choose between during repeated visits, as will new weapons for you to try out. In addition, you'll be tasked with completing special objectives (again, also built upon from Confidential Mission), mainly in the vein of using your gun's (Wii Remote's) Action (A) button to defuse bombs, restrain hostages or fight in hand-to-hand combat, or simple sniping and protection segments. Mess these up, and you're still allowed to continue, maybe with a blow to your life meter. But completing these tasks, in addition to landing head shots or other special hits, fills up a separate "GS Meter". Filling this up gives you extra ammo for your alternate fire modes, thus providing a tangible... not really, more like "direct"... at least non-score-related reward for skillful play.

Tasks like defusing bombs are done with the Action (A) button.

In a genre which has become as formulaic as the arcade light-gun shooter, innovation is nine-tenths of the law, and Ghost Squad boasts enough exclusive features to help it stand above the crowd, even to this very day. Even better, these memorable traits have survived passage to the Wii, and then some. But this genre has often suffered from a lack of substance, and Ghost Squad is sadly no exception. It takes a lot more effort in this regard to make an arcade game suitable for the home experience, but given its progression of unlockables (including the goofy Ninja and Paradise modes), it's certainly worth more than one spin. Just wake me when you can pack in more than three levels.

Positives:
+ Sharp controls.
+ Many unlockable paths and weapons.
+ Silly additional modes are good for a laugh.

Negatives:
- Only three stages.
- Poor voice acting.

- An insubstantial story.

Control: 5 hostages out of 5
Design: 4 hostages out of 5
Graphics: 3 hostages out of 5
Audio: 1 hostages out of 5
Value: 2 hostages out of 5
The Call: 70% (C+)

Dance Dance Retrospective: The Spin-Offs

When a franchise reaches a certain level of popularity, like Dance Dance Revolution did in Japan at the turn of the millenium, its creators will expand on its popularity beyond the canon entries.  And you know what that means: spin-off games.  Fandom must work differently in Japan.  How else could you explain that there were so many DDR titles released within the span of only a couple of years?  (Seriously, it makes Guitar Hero look like Mega Man Legends in that regard.)  And yet despite only packing a dozen or two songs each, they sold most of them for 5,000 yen* a pop?  I've brought up the 2ndMIX Club Version games and the Solo games in previous entries, and I have let slip that even these games pioneered certain tweaks which would become commonplace in the core series.  So let's explore the rest of the... rest, and see if they have anything worthwhile to contribute.  Please bear in mind that very, very few of these were released outside of Japan and as such, I've never seen any of them in person.  I gathered much of my research on these topics from the website DDRer's Stomping Ground, so if you can read Japanese or have a translator handy, I invite you to read up for yourself.

*5000 JPY = 47.52 USD in Jan. 2000

Until 2008, the Dance Dance Revolution series was known by the name "Dancing Stage" in Europe.  I don’t know, maybe repeating the word "Dance" in the title was too Japanese.  But for some reason, Konami used the Dancing Stage name for a couple of small-name releases in Japan, too. Dancing Stage featuring Disney’s Rave is, as you might expect, a tie-in with Disney, and as such features arrangements of songs from their films and theme parks.  The game also features covers of other licenced songs as well, and not very good covers if I say so myself.  But it did include the "Dance Magic" mode, an extention of versus play where both players can "attack" their opponents with modifiers in the hopes of messing them up.  For 2006's SuperNOVA, this feature was brought into canon as Battle mode.  Oddly, Disney's Rave was one of the few spin-offs that got published in America, as Dance Dance Revolution Disney Mix (PlayStation, 2001).  It replaced some of the licenced songs with Konami originals from the core series, including the mighty "B4U", of all things, and added the Single Maniac difficulty missing in the original.

But say Disney isn’t your thing, maybe you need your licenced games to be a bit more… Japanese in flavour.  They’ve got you guys covered too, with the subsequent releases of  Dancing Stage featuring True Kiss Destination, in 1999, and Dancing Stage featuring Dreams Come True in 2000. Both games feature tracks from their respective J-pop bands, but with only about a dozen songs each, I’d just barely recommend them for fans only.  The same goes with Dance Dance Revolution Oha-Sta, which was a tie-in with the childrens' variety show Oha-Sta (short for "Ohayo Studio", or "Good-morning Studio").  DDR Oha-Sta is yet another game based on the 3rdMIX engine and boasts the standard Basic, Another, and Maniac levels, but as expected from its target demographic, the charts are easier than most of their core series peers.  Taking this concept further is Dance Dance Revolution Kids.  The songs here include TV and anime theme songs, including those from Pokemon and Digimon Adventure.  So, in case you've been dreaming of some sort of Pokemon/Digimon crossover, then sorry, this is the closest you're going to get.

By this point, nearly all the home DDR releases were made for the PlayStation. But that changed with the release of DDR GB for the Game Boy Color.  One wouldn’t think the Game Boy Color was a natural choice to serve as a home for DDR.  Think about it: the 8-bit sound processor is forced to beat the songs beyond recognition, and the traditional dance pad is not an option.  But apparently portable gaming is a bigger deal in Japan than I could've imagined, because somehow it caught on.  Japan got a total of five games for the DDR GB series, including ports of Disney's Rave and Oha-Sta.  And what's more, they even made a dedicated DDR controller that plugged into the GBC's headphone port.  For the longest time, the only other releases for Nintendo platforms were Dance Dance Revolution: Disney's Dancing Museum (Nintendo 64, 2001, Japan only), and Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix (Gamecube, 2005).

You may have noticed that many of these games were released around the turn of the millenium.  For better or worse, these habits died out around 2002, the year when games like Dance Dance Revolution Extreme and Beatmania the Final more or less swept away the old generation.  But the spinoff games never stopped, far from it.  There's the Ultramix and Universe series, which I've mentioned before, and licenced titles like DDR Disney Channel Edition and DDR High School Musical in America, and DDR Winx Club in Europe.  To think I've come this far and I haven't even made a passing reference to the Hottest Party series on Wii...  That's because it deserves its own entry, next time on Dance Dance Retrospective.

Game Review: Target Terror

Target Terror

• Publisher: Raw Thrills (Arcade), Konami (Wii)
• Developer: Raw Thrills (Arcade), Leviathan (Wii)
• Release:
• Arcade, May 2004
• Wii, 22 April 2008
• Genre: Light-Gun Shooter
• Players: 1-2
• Rarity/Cost: Moderate, US$10-20

Here we go again... it's time once again to bring up Raw Thrills.  In the way I see the world, these guys take me back to the mid-90s, a time when two distinct art styles were fighting for control of the arcade game world: 3D-style polygons, pioneered by companies including Sega (Virtua Fighter, Virtua Cop) and Namco (Tekken, Time Crisis), and 2D digitised-actor art pioneered by Midway (Mortal Kombat, Area 51).  I gravitated towards the former, if only because at the time I was too young for the blood and gore coincidentally trumpeted by the latter camp, but before long my preferences sticked.  Now, fast-forward a decade, and combine that with how Raw Thrills' inferior racing title more or less overtook Sega's Initial D Arcade Stage series, and my opinion on the company soured pretty quickly.  And the moral of this story is...?  I will not buy American if I don't want to, whether the subject is video games, animation, cars, or pornography.  Or all four at once.  ...Which would be a fan-game based on Transformers: Kiss Players, so forget about it.


The graphics style is years behind the times,
but maybe that's just me.

But I brought up Raw Thrills again not just to make that joke, but to review their other claim to fame: the light-gun shooter Target Terror.  Also known in more sensitive settings by its Japanese title Target Force, it first released for arcades in 2004, and in 2008 got a port for the Wii courtesy of Konami.  This title serves as a spiritual successor to the nigh-identical Area 51 and Maximum Force by Midway, in that the graphics engine utilises chroma-keyed footage of actors as characters, put on top of a pre-rendered CG background.  I'll try to leave this aesthetic approach to personal taste, but it just doesn't work for me, even on a gameplay level - that's right, I'm going so far as to blame it for my difficulty in hitting targets correctly.  And yet this low-tech approach still doesn't save the game from occasional slow-down, if only on the Wii port.  But given that these backgrounds are on the technical level of those lame FMVs from PSone-era games, I was pleasantly surprised that there are breakable objects here and there, mostly in the form of windows.  Regarding the "actors", if I may be permitted to put on my film-critic hat for the moment...  You know what, I won't even bother, because their acting sucks no matter how you look at it, especially in the case of the blonde news anchor who kicks off each level.  Furthermore, the Wii version also lets you adjust the level of graphic violence, with the lowest setting replacing the blood with green paint, the characters' death animations getting cut off, and even explosive fuel barrels get replaced with equally explosive paint barrels.  Taking that with the rest of the game's presentation, it's almost the game is going for self-parody (knowing what they did with The Fast and The Furious, that wouldn't be out of the question), but that doesn't make it any less painful to sit through.  I'm a pragmatist, peoples.

As for how it is played, it's got many of your light-gun game cliches: shooting outside the screen to reload, shooting hostages takes away one life, yada yada.  And it can't even do that well: the enemies are arranged with little to no regard to logic or the flow of motion, and there is no indication as to when they will land a direct hit on you either.  Woe betide you when someone hits you with a melee attack after leaving you no time to react, which is an inevitability, trust me.  Alternate weapons are available to pick up as well, but of these, only the machine gun, shotgun, and explosive weapons are what I'd call useful.  The shocker and freeze ray are, in practise, nothing more than pistols with slower firing rates, and the flamethrower's fire takes a little while to hit the target; unfortunately, you don't always have "a little while".

Yet despite it all, it does do at least a few things I like.  You are able to reload your guns not only by pressing B while pointing off-screen, but also by shaking the Wii Remote. I will admit it is a nice touch, since it helps keep your focus on the action.  Also, there is the Justice Mode, wherein the player can use two guns/Wii Remotes at once.  Assuming you can get over the coordination issues inherent with throwing your non-dominant hand into the mix, it's generally a big help.  Come to think of it, this came out for the arcades right around the time Halo 2 came and made dual-wielding cool.  Considering that, plus the game's title and setting apparently designed to tap into post-9/11 paranoia...  Yup, they're trendwhores.

"Justice Mode" supports two controllers in a one-player game.

Further to its credit, Target Terror is longer than most light-gun games, something which the genre has always struggled with., but that's beside the point.  In total, there are ten levels, each broken up into two sections, for an running time of about one hour.  That's not long in the grand scheme of things, but considering I can clear the arcade modes of the Time Crisis games in about 20 minutes each, I have no choice but to call that improvement.  Now that I mention Time Crisis (a far better series, might I add), the Wii port shares the same continue system: you have a set number of continues to finish the game with (30 in this case, and even on the easy level, you'll need 'em all), but running out will give you more continues the next time you start a new game.

There are bonus games which you can access by completing certain tasks in-level, mainly of the destroying-objects sort. (NB: I cannot confirm their existence in the arcade version.) Oddly, these minigames start immediately after you clear the special objective, rather than waiting for the end of the stage.  I suppose that would dodge the problem of the game ending before the level end could be reached, but as it is, it still unsettlingly breaks the flow of the game, for what that's worth.  And the games themselves heap on the cheese even more than the rest of the game, should that even be possible.  There's one where you shoot terrorists as they try to push tied-up bikini girls into a vat of glowing green acid, and another where you take aim at terrorists in golf carts, an homage to another arcade mainstay, the Golden Tee golf series.  You get extra points from these minigames, but that's it.  In fact, that serves as a metaphor for the game as a whole - when you consider the presence of other, better shooters, they render Target Terror silly and pointless.

Control: 1 terrorist out of 5
Design: 2 terrorist out of 5
Graphics: 1 terrorist out of 5
Audio: 1 terrorist out of 5
The Call: 35% (F)

Game Review: Cruis'n

Cruis'n

• Publisher: Midway
• Developer: Midway San Diego
• Release Date: 27 November 2007
• System: Wii
• Genre: Racing
• Players: 1-2
• Rarity/Cost: Moderate, US$10-20

(This review was updated on 28 November 2017.)

I have in the past regaled you with a tale about the rise and fall of the Initial D Arcade Stage series of coin-op racing games.  The short of it was, the way i saw it, that its death was catalysed by a rival title, The Fast and the Furious, a far more basic experience.  Welp, after two arcade sequels (Super Bikes in 2006 and Drift in 2007), the game made its first home appearance for the Wii, swapping out its movie licence for another familiar name: Cruis'n.  For gamers of a newer generation, I may need to introduce you to Cruis'n USA.  This 1994 arcade game was a joint project between Midway and Nintendo, and ran on hardware which was intended to form the basis of the Nintendo 64 console later on. Even though that didn’t exactly come to pass, the game was nonetheless a launch-window title for the N64.  But was it any good?  Well, with its linear track design and rubberband AI, it was certainly far better in its day.  And the same is true of our current subject, but unfortunately its day had passed long before it even came out.

Cruis’n features twelve tracks and twelve playable cars, classic and modern alike. Models like the Nissan Skyline and Pontiac GTO were used to great effect in the films, so at least they got that part right. Most of these cars will need to be unlocked; the courses by playing through a single-player career, and the cars by accumulating winnings from your races. However, the later cars, while having stronger base stats, are merely generic reproductions of luxury and exotic cars, and by the time you unlock them, you’ll have put so many upgrades into one of the starter cars that you’ll have no reason to start fresh with another model. See, every time you start a race, you can add an upgrade to your car of choice, ranging from performance upgrades, cosmetic additions, and a nitro boost system. So you can tell why even those of us with more refined gaming palates got suckered into repeat plays in the arcades. But while this setup would've been acceptable there, by the standards of a home console game this upgrade system pales massively compared to franchises such as Need For Speed or Forza Motorsport.

The three performance-upgrade categories are engines, for acceleration, spoilers and wings, for top speed, and tires, for handling.   But they also serve double-duty as visual attachments, in the form of these massive air blowers, triple-decker wings, and shiny rims. *sigh*  I only know about cars what I learned from Gran Turismo, but I can guess that these aren’t the most effective ways to boost these acumen in the real world.  But on the other hand, real improvements like a tightly-tuned transmission or even a turbo fan wouldn’t show up on the outside of your car, and we’ve gotta express these upgrades visually somehow!   Because… extreme?  As I mentioned before, there’s also the nitrous, a one-time upgrade which gives you three fixed-length boosts every race. And then there are undercarriage lights and decals, which serve no practical purpose, but they sure look interesting! Unfortunately, you only get one decal pattern for each car, and even changing your paint/neon colour is a chore. Instead of cycling through a pre-set pattern of colours, pressing the change button picks a new colour at random, meaning you could spend a lot of time until you get the one you want. Ladies and gentlemen, they just didn’t care!  While we're on the subject of time-wasters, the loading times are pretty nasty, averaging thirty to forty-five seconds for one race. That's longer than individual loads from the 2006 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, if you can believe that!  (Trust me -- I've checked.)

The key to success is to spam double-tap dashes

A race of eight cars on generally unchallenging tracks, some lousy with straightaways. Seriously, you'll have to work up to the Hard or Extreme courses until you get to material that would provide the slightest hint of a challenge by the standards of any other racing game. Seriously, half the length of most tracks are nothing but straightaways, and even where there are curves, there’s seldom a need to brake or even let go of the accelerator in order to survive them. Sure, you’ll have to stay awake to dodge traffic, both with and against your direction, and crash into the occasional shortcut, but for the most part? Snoozeville...

I’m going to bring up the Initial D game again in order to juxtapose their approaches to track design. A good racing game, for example the Initial D or even Gran Turismo series, makes you really take the time to learn its courses inside and out. Each curve and corner has its own personality, i.e. what’s the ideal line for going through them, and what speed to enter them at. Those other games I just mentioned are stocked full of them, and it’s the experience of learning these racing lines that contributes to a memorable experience among its peers. In a good racing game, the environment comes first, and the track is designed around it.   As I mentioned in my review of such, the majority of courses in the Initial D series are one-way affairs. But they still managed to pack plenty of hairpin turns in those tracks, but more importantly, in a way that makes sense. The courses in those games are set on hillsides, and running the roads laterally along the mountain face, turning around every so often, allows the angle of the road to be as flat as possible, so as not to put so much strain on cars going uphill, or keep cars going downhill from stopping safely.

But Cruis'n seems to have it the other way around. The track designs are overly linear, so driving-game veterans will have precious few opportunities to apply what they've learned over their years of experience in good games. Heck, its spiritual successor, Cruis'n USA, had more curves than this! As a result of this linearity, each section of the course feels identical until you reach a section that has a slightly different setting than the last, only for the visual boredom to set in seconds later, and so on. And geographical verisimilitude? Forget about it! A few landmarks aren’t enough to convince me that your course is taking place in New York or San Francisco or whatever. And would it kill you to make a Philadelphia stage?

Not helping matters is the physics model, which dare I say it, is unrealistic. When you crash into another car, you might get knocked back but still maintain most of your forward acceleration a second later. Or you might get flipped into the air in a pre-defined animation. Nothing like both cars stopping dead in their tracks or anything, you know, like in the real world. Which wouldn't work in this game anyway, because wouldn't you know it, there’s no way to go backwards! See, that’s how you can tell whether a racing game takes itself seriously or not. If you’re not able to turn around and go the wrong way, not that you’d ever want to, then that is not a good sign as far as realism is concerned. Yeah, the controls are all right; since steering is handled by tilting the Wii Remote, you can get it to work with one of those Wii Wheel contraptions. Although woe betide you if you choose the "loose" steering setting.

It's tough to consistently win races at first, but you might get somewhere once you start bolting on some upgrades. Then again, maybe not, since the computer never uses nitros if you haven't yet installed them on your car, for example. With or without the help of nitro, the competition's rubberband AI is so prevalent that, while it's easy to place in the top three, getting first place has more to do with luck than skill. ...Or so it would seem. It helps if you don't hit traffic, no surprises there, or if you double-tap the throttle and perform a car flip over a rival, which apparently gives you a speed boost. Let me say that again: victory in this game depends not on traditional driving skill, but on mindlessly mashing the accelerator button. See, this is why the rest of the world thinks Americans are stupid: our racing games have less to do with substance than spectacle.

I wasn't kidding about that word "nitrous" blocking the screen every time you use a boost.

The graphics in the Cruis'n series have always been a little behind the curve, and this game is no exception. Even though the traditional pop-up from the earlier Cruis'n games is a thing of the past, there is still a bit of slowdown at the start of a race, where all eight cars are on screen at once. The problem doesn't rear its ugly head much afterwards; on the contrary, Cruis'n on the Wii adds a little motion blur effect not used in the arcade version of The Fast and the Furious. But more glaring than any technical aspects is the garish and dorky presentation. For example, when you trigger a nitro, your speed boost is accompanied by a male announcer shouting "Nitrous!" and the word "Nitrous" scrolling across the screen. Because... extreme? Even worse is the heavily-used female announcer, whose eternally seductive tone ends up becoming a turn-off. My good lady, if you're voice-acting like you're in a porn film, just make one already.

All in all, this game's attitude is phony much in the way that Holden Caufield is not, but even without the embarrassing theme, the game still isn't worth playing. The experience is less a true driving simulation and more a 3D representation of one of those old Atari racers. And even though the features which made the arcade version such a guilty pleasure are present in full force, namely the upgrade system, the actual gameplay will leave you bored long, long before you manage to fully upgrade even one of the cars, much less all of them. If that should serve as inspiration for you to switch to a more fulfilling racing experience, then by all means, succumb to those urges.

Positives:
- The ability to upgrade cars.

Negatives:
- The inconsistent, unconvincing physics.
- The boring track design.
- The severe rubberband AI.
- Over-the-top lame presentation.

Control: 3 out of 5
Design: 1 out of 5
Audiovisual: 1 out of 5
Value: 1 out of 5
The Call: 35% (F)

Game Review: Go Play Circus Star

Go Play: Circus Star

• Publisher: Majesco
• Developer: N-Fusion
• Release Date: 9 June 2009
• System: Wii
• Genre: Minigames
• Players 1-4
• Rarity/Cost: Common, US$5-20

There's a certain theme I've found to be surprisingly under-represented in video games: the circus.  The last one I can think of is Circus Charlie, made by Konami back in 1984, and even that was basically a glorified Donkey Kong.  Welp, I've found another one, but to get to it, we'll have to wade into the world of Wii shovelware.  (DUN DUN DUU~UN)  I'm talking about a world that kept Wii Play on the top of the sales charts for years, so yeah, this is gonna suck.  Enter Go Play: Circus Star, which comes from the Majesco-published, budget oriented Go Play line of titles.  Proving their priorities are kind of... differenty, the last entry in this series is about being a lumberjack.  ...A lumberjack.  And not the kind that puts on womens' clothing and hangs around in bars, either.  But they switched out the developer this time around, so let's have at it!

There are five events that play just like this one.

The structure of this game is vaguely styled after Rock Band, in that you earn fans and money from good performances, with your ultimate goal being to collect 5,000 fans.  Along the way you will be able to buy access to new acts and venues, and by doing so the potential rewards you can earn will increase exponentially.  The problem is, the act of doing so is where the trouble starts.  Of the 15 events (6 are available from the start) you can play, quite a few recycle mechanics from some of the other games.  For example, there are five events (Tightrope, Unicycle, Elephant Ride, Rola Bola, and Trapeze) that involve balancing the Wii Remote left/right or forward/back to hit targets without going too far.  On the other hand, almost all of the events give you the option of using the Wii Balance Board.  I do appreciate how well-integrated the Balance Board is in this game, even if I was unable to test it.  After all, I've got enough expensive controllers lying around the house as it is - and I think that half-broken Guitar Hero drum kit would agree with me.

The special stunts you can perform do nothing to add immersion.

Consistent good performance will fill up a meter; once it's filled up at least one time (out of three), you can press A to perform a special stunt that earns you more fans.  While these can be used strategically to interrupt the action at critical moments, you have no control over the specific maneuver being performed.  Not helping matters is that these cutscenes are rather poorly animated; combine that with the N64-quality character models and you've got a very low-rent experience.  You have the choice of six characters which you can't change after starting a profile, nor customise, and their voice acting is as dorky as... pretty much everything else in the game.  And then there's the ringmaster... like, gag me with a spoon!  He sounds like Dr. Eggman and sports the worst beard I have ever seen in a video game.  (Come to think of it, the real Dr. Eggman would be a better choice.)  Fortunately, you can turn him off, thanks to the ONLY option on the options menu!

Despite my disdain for this type of game, I'll admit I could really get into if it was, you know, better.  Specifically, I would've included a greater variety of events, drawing inspiration from circus styles around the globe.  Individual tricks could be done at any time through Ton Hawk-style button inputs.  I'd tighten up the graphics, obviously, and set up a character and outfit customisation system.  Going hand-in-hand with that would be a re-structured career mode where you could build up your character's stats through training games in-between shows.  And if I really wanted to push the envelope, I'd add some sort of manager mode where you could set up your own shows, customising the acts and themes.  Also it would be a tie-in with the Kaleido Star anime, so yeah, I'm kind of a wishful thinker.  But better to have a big imagination that doesn't go anywhere than be stuck with a game that won't even hold your attention for the span of one rental, amirite?

Control: 3 stars out of 5
Design: 1 stars out of 5
Audiovisual: 1 star out of 5
Value: 1 star out of 5
The Call: 40% (F)

Next Episode: On the topic of Kaleido Star, you can expect a review on that in the near future.  But for now, I've got to get back to Bond.  Reviews of Thunderball and You Only Live Twice are up next.

Game Review: Sonic 4 Episode I

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I

• Publisher: Sega
• Developer: Sonic Team / Dimps
• Platform/Release:
• iOS (DLC), 7 October 2010
• Wii (DLC), 11 October 2010
• PlayStation 3 (DLC), 12 October 2010
• XBox 360 (DLC), 13 October 2010
• Genre: Platformer
• Players: 1
• Cost: 
• iOS: US$7 (as of August 2011)
• Wii, PS3, 360: US$15

I may have a lot of ideas stored up in my head about what I want to review in the near future, but it can be a tough job deciding what to bring out next.  A Twitter post from the Video Game Critic website's feed helped matters this time around.  On the whole, I love this site; in fact, I would like to place an independent plug for it right now.  (I can has affiliate?)  But one tweet from whoever is running the site put me on the warpath:

"I am reviewing Sonic 4 (Xbox 360). It's a good-looking game but the people who complained about the terrible physics were 100% correct!"¹

I'm gonna have to stop you with a pre-emptive review of my own.  See, what I do on the SDP is not just re-iterate the seemingly questionable decisions made by entertainment producers, much less treat them as absolute evils like everyone else does *ahem*, but research them and explain why they did what they did.  That is what I plan to spend much of my review for as I cover Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1.  Also note that I am basing my review mostly on the iOS version, which for the most part plays identically to its console brethren, although I will note differences as I come across them.


Ever since it was announced about a year ago, every little decision has been met with scrutiny, and the reactions were mixed between those who couldn't care less, and those who did care and those took it with more than mild disapproval, who sadly seem to be the most vocal demographic on the Internet.  (Allow me to redirect you to the ending of my Twilight saga discussion.)  And we're talking about mostly cosmetic differences: Sonic's build, eye color, using the name Dr. Eggman instead of Dr. Robotnik, and the decision to use 3D character models instead of sprites.  Even though everything done since Sonic Adventure reeks of newness to me, for the most part I couldn't give a [noun].  But we'll start with the thing which I feel most strongly about people hating on: the physics.

The above video, by TsukentoX on YouTube², is one of the more civil discussions about the physics.  Let's examine the points he made:

1. If you jump or drop off a cliff without holding left or right, you'll lose all lateral momentum and drop straight down.  Not much of an issue if you play like me and hold the D-pad down most of the time.
2. When going down a hill, you can come to a complete stop by letting go of the D-pad.  Not so in the Genesis or Game Gear series.
3. Perhaps the biggest, if most well-documented foible, involves how you go up quarter- and half-pipes.  You used to be able to hold Down and roll back and forth to build up momentum, but not so here.  This time around, you have to hold Left or Right to run up the wall.

I suppose you should know the reason, or at least a possible reason, for all this.  Sonic 4 was co-developed by Sonic Team and Dimps, who did the Sonic Advance and Sonic Rush series after Sega went third-party.  And let's face it, next to their 3D console compatriates, these were some pretty darn good games!  Well, at the very least, producer Takashi Iizuka is aware of the physics matter, and explained it³.  Long story short, they based it off the Sonic Rush engine, which allows for tricks like running up walls and ceilings, thus explaining the third issue I listed.  But was the Genesis engine really ideal for everything we needed to do?  I'm (passively) ordering you to take a step back and evaluate the virtues of both engines for what they are, not by other's standards.


So, on to more positive matters.  Your price of admission nets you twelve acts across four zones, five separate boss stages, and seven Special Stages.  You'd think you could blow through this quickly, especially since the game saves after every level, and you select levels at will from a menu instead of having to go through the whole thing in one sitting like in the old days, but there's still lots to do.  Clearing a stage once unlocks its time trial, and finishing a level with 50 rings lets you get into the Special Stage.  These play out like they did in the first Sonic the Hedgehog, where you follow a rotating maze to the Chaos Emerald within, except this time you spin the maze itself around instead of controlling Sonic.  Oh, and not only do you have to steer clear of exit gates, you're on a time limit and must collect bonuses to extend your stay.  Despite the added challenge, the difficulty curve on the Special Stages is sensible; the first couple can be cleared in one go, whereas the last few will take potentially dozens of tries.  This time around, you can pause and restart as many times as you need, as long as you don't get kicked out immediately.  It might seem like a game breaker, but trust me, you'll appreciate it on the later Special Stages, if only to save the trouble of getting to them again and again.


While everyone else complains about the things that make Sonic 4 different from the Genesis trilogy, I'm more concerned with the things that are too similar.  Specificially, the level themes are repurposed from the first two games.  Splash Hill and Lost Labyrinth are Green Hill and Labyrinth (uhh... I can has effort?) from Sonic, while Casino Street, Mad Gear, and E.G.G Station are Casino Night, Metropolis, and Death Egg from Sonic 2.  Umm...  There's a difference between making people remember the good old days and just being lazy.  But not all of the throwbacks are bad; the music is done using Genesis-style synth instruments and brings back the tunefulness which made the original soundtracks so memorable.  In fact, the only thing they (intentionally) brought back from the newer era was the mid-air homing attack.  It is truly one of the better things they could've added, as it is useful for getting a quick running start.  Yeah, that's how I roll, bite me.  But look at it this way: what if Sonic 4 had been released immediately after Sonic & Knuckles?  Would it have seemed like a more natural progression then?  This has happened before: Sonic 2 added the standing spin dash to Sonic's movement arsenal, and people seemed to like that.


So please, instead of looking at Sonic 4 based on what they added to the mechanics of the Genesis trilogy, try comparing it to everything else that's come out since then.  There's no 3D camera to wrestle with, no treasure hunting, no fishing, no guns, no vehicles, and certainly no human/hedgehog relationships.  In fact, even though it's not a 3D-based game, I'd say they avoided all the pitfalls I discussed when I put the franchise in Game Rehab.  I do acknowledge its issues, minor as they come across to me, but if you're gonna completely trash the game because of them, the only Sonic game you deserve to play is the 2006 one.  Yeah, I just broke you.  Hopefully it will help you to realize that Sonic Team is good again, regardless of which direction they're headed in.


On one final note, I'm going to award separate ratings to the different versions of the game.  The PS3 and 360 versions come out on top by being the most fully-featured.  The Wii version lacks achievements or trophies (yeah, I'm a convert to the church of achievements).  While the iOS version is cheaper than all the rest (I got mine on sale for $3), using a virtual controller on the touch screen of your given device is not as precise as having a physical D-pad and buttons at your fingertips.  Also, the iOS port replaces two of the acts with ones that were cut during development of the console editions.  The 100,000-point challenge in Casino Street Act 2 is stupidly repetitive, but the mine-cart ride in Lost Labyrinth Act 2 is nice compared to other times I've played through this sort of thing.  At least there are no instant-kill traps you have a fraction of a second to react to.  (Taz-Mania says hi.  Steel yourself for a review of this mother soon.)


Control: 3 Chaos Emeralds out of 5
Design: 3 Chaos Emeralds out of 5 (PS3/X360/Wii) / 4 Chaos Emeralds out of 5 (iOS)
Graphics: 4 Chaos Emeralds out of 5
Audio: 5 Chaos Emeralds out of 5
The Call: 75% (B-)

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¹"Video Game Critic".  Twitter.  30 January 2011.  http://twitter.com/#!/videogamecritic.
²TsukentoX.  "Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I Physics".  YouTube.  13 October 2010.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyzC3Rse5Gg.
³Takashi Iizuka.  "Picking Up Speed".  Nintendo Power Holiday 2010: p.19.  Print.