Review: Super Star Dance Club

It's rather simple to play. The idea is to follow the flashing displays on the screen and hit the buttons in sync with the music. Every time you do a dance move, it partially fills up a blue meter at the top of the screen. Your job is to completely fill up the blue meter before the time limit runs out. It's quite simple, but it does get difficult in the later stages, as you have to enter more and more complicated patterns within shorter amounts of time. This was true for Parappa and it's certainly true here: You need a very intimate knowledge of the Playstation controller's button layout to do well at this game. If you have to look at the controller to remember where the square button is, you're going to have trouble. And you will learn the layout by heart if you're able to complete the later levels. By the way, when it says "21 Exotic Stages!" what it really means is "7 Exotic Stages with 3 Difficulty Levels!" When it says "Addicting and Challenging Gameplay!" I am inclined to agree, although most would not. I constantly found myself playing this game the other day, until I had unlocked all the stages and collected almost 1.5 million coins.

Ah yes, the graphics. They are very Japanese and very cartoony. Lots of strange visual jokes, and more proof that drug-testing is not required to work in the Japanese video game industry. I actually like the art style, as well as the music, which sounds like something out of a 16-bit Japanese superhero game. Now the animation, here's what a lot of people complained about. It's very...simple. Your character changes to a new frame of animation every time you hit a button, which is about twice a second or so. It's very jerky, but I don't think they were going for Disney-quality stuff here. In fact, some of the characters in the backgrounds are very well-animated, so it's not an issue of whether or not they were capable of animating. I think it was more in trying to keep things in rhythm. One frame of animation per music beat. Who knows if this was really a good idea or not, but I rarely found myself missing a beat in any of the songs. Such simple animation worked in Rocky & Bullwinkle, I say it can work here too.

This game is not the next Final Fantasy, and it won't keep you entertained for hours and hours at a time. But it is fun to play every once in a while if you like dancing games. And the price is certainly right. By the way, ignore the American cover art. It has almost nothing to do with what the game is actually like. I think it was originally to be aimed at teenage girls. The main character, who has blue hair and a huge rack, talks to you between every round and calls you by name. And she is constantly saying stuff like this:

Wow! BBQ, I am the greatest dancer in the world! Everyone was paying attention to me! We made a lot of money. Let's go to the mall and use it! I got a new silver necklace with the money we made dancing, BBQ! Doesn't it make me look pretty? Now everyone will want to be my friend! The wrestlers didn't even want to wrestle, because they were all watching me dance! Time to set the floor on fire!

This game gives me that happy waku-waku boogie-tastic feeling!

Anyway, I am in the vast minority, but I think it is a fun game that's worth the small price. It's simple, but still challenging, and it was unfairly trashed by the masses. I really wish everyone would stop treating this game like it's supposed to be Metal Gear Solid 3. Who cares what THEY say! I like to set the floor on fire! Besides...this game has dancing zombies in it! Anything with dancing zombies in it is cool by me!