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Bust a Move 2: Dance Tengoku Mix (PS) Status: Playing I started playing this game on Sunday 8 July, 2018
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.
July 9, 2018 03:56:42 PM
I'm currently on vacation and I've been going through stuff I had "in storage". My old (original) Playstation was among the things I've pulled out and plan to get back into "circulation". Fortunately, it worked, and I spend a nice 30-45 minutes playing this game with my son - who was not familiar with this style of music/dance game. It took a few seconds to remember how it all worked and I now wonder what happened to this "branch" of the evolutionary road in game design. This game is a weird hybrid of sorts - it's a rhythm/action game that also feels like a fighting game although there's no combat. Here's how it works (this is partly as I recall, since I didn't play it that long!) a. The game has a bunch of characters, each of which have different dance moves (and a song and a stage). The dance moves change if you pick different characters and might even vary in their difficulty to pull off. b. Each match has a set length (the song) during which you'll get to do a certain number of moves. There are moments where you have moves, but not your opponent (solos!) and vice versa. c. Moves are a sequence of button presses illustrated in the screen (e.g. up,up,down,left). Each move ends with a separate button press (e.g. X or O). The final button press has to be on beat - the prior presses don't have to be. [This is what feels like a fighting game - these are combo moves!] d. If you get a sequence right, the next sequence is "upgraded" - get all the sequences right and you "fever" (AFAI remember, that's the "best"). e. If you get it wrong, you start over (or from a previous sequence). Obviously you won't get the highest rating. There are ways to attack your opponent, but I don't recall what they are. I DO recall that there are SECRET sequences you can do to unlock even higher combo levels and better scores. Anyways, the game still holds up incredibly well - even the gameplay feels fresh and different from other stuff out there now. Weird, huh? Also, I think it's a reasonably early game such that "O" is the default for "ok/accept" rather than "X" (then "cancel/back"). Story goes that US/Western devs ignored (didn't know?) the recommended default and used "X" instead - pissing off Japanese devs who then had to change when some Western games became really popular and cemented the "wrong" standard. It's been "X" as default for ok/accept ever since.

Bust a Move 2: Dance Tengoku Mix (PS)