The Dance Dance Revolution Series

To be honest, this week I was going to review a completely different game. The reason I chose Dance Dance Revolution (or DDR for short) is because I’ve been trying to lose weight and gain some leg muscle, so I found myself playing DDR everyday. It then occurred to me that DDR is classified as a retro game, since it’s 10 year anniversary was in 2008, and because the game is originally for PS2, which is a now retired system. 

One of the many dance pads out there for players to use.

DDR was introduced in Japan by the game companies Konami (known for making Castlevania, Frogger, and Contra) in 1998, and was later introduced to North America and Europe in 1999. Dance Dance Revolution was actually called Dancing Stage for a short amount of time in Europe. The game became so popular that you can actually find DDR arcade machines in many different countries, and in popular gaming spots like Gameworks and Dave & Busters in the US. There are also DDR tournaments, where your DDR skills could get you a trophy and prize money. The reason that Dance Dance Revolution jumped to popularity was because at the time the idea was original, giving you a good workout while dancing to some awesome music. (Don’t like using your body to play? No problem! The game allows you to use a normal controller to play the game as well.) Konami’s music division, Bemani, also helped develop the game by creating original music with some of Konami’s in-house artists, while still making room for licensed music from different genres. 

Konami has released tons of different DDR game titles and editions, but while there’s so many different games to choose from, Konami made everyone’s life a little easier by doing one simple thing: keeping the menu layouts the same. From the oldest to the newest DDR games, the DDR menu keeps its simple layout for players. The controls and difficulties stay close to the same as well (although some DDR games don’t have beginner mode), making it easy for players to navigate through the different DDR games. For my review, I’m going to be using the menu from Dance Dance Revolution MAX 2 for my explanations, since it was my first DDR game! (I apologize for blurry photos, I don’t have the right gear to record gameplay yet so I have to use my phone. Bear with me!)

            

So let’s break down the menu a bit. We’ll start with the games Game Mode. In Game Mode, you first choose how you want to play: single player, with a friend on versus, or with two pads (I’ve seen people play double mode before, that nonsense is hard and I applaud anyone that can do it). Since I’m playing alone, I went with single player. Once that’s done, you then choose your difficulty: beginner (the mode name speaks for itself), light (for players who are better than beginner mode but aren’t quite ready for harder modes), standard (for more advanced players), or heavy (pro level dancing). Since the dance pad can slip around sometimes from all of the movement of dancing, I tend to play on light mode when I’m at home so I don’t twist my ankle while trying to keep up with the song I’m playing and where my dance pad is sliding off to. In the arcade versions of DDR,  the dance pads are large and metal, with bars behind you so you have something to hold onto while your legs go crazy. It’s much easier to play on the arcade versions of DDR than the home versions. 

     

So now we’re ready to pick a song, and there’s many different songs and genres to pick from! There are songs ranging from disco to techno, and some slow songs for you to cool down to when you’re warming up or starting to get too tired from playing so much. “Hold up, I’m not exactly sure how to play, or what’s going on on my screen.” The controls are actually quite simple: when playing with the dance pad, you place your foot on the correct arrows when they reach the top of your screen. There will be times where you’ll have to step on two arrows at the same time, so keep an eye out for that! The arrows that are green and have a trail following behind them are arrows that you keep your foot on. For example, if a long green up arrow is coming up, you step on the up arrow at the right time and hold your foot there until the green note is gone. So one foot could be holding a note while the other is still stepping on the other 3 arrows. (For you beginners that are freaking out over this, don’t worry! These notes are easier to deal with on the light and beginner modes of the game, so you won’t be expected to do anything crazy). At the bottom of your screen, you have the points that you’re earning with each step displayed for you, while at the top you have a green bar that shows you how well you’re doing. When the bar is green, you’re doing just fine. If it’s small and red, you need to start doing better or else you’re about to lose. If the bar is full and colorful, you’re on a roll and doing fantastic! 

After you’ve passed the song you’re playing, you get graded! I got a D, because taking pictures and playing DDR at the same time is really hard. If you get a new high score on a song, your grade is then displayed next to the songs title on the song select screen for everyone to see! If you’re not happy with your grade, practice and aim for a better grade! That pretty much covers Game Mode, so let’s take a quick look at what else DDR has to offer.

            

Workout Mode: In this mode, you get to make a workout plan for yourself! After entering your current weight and the weight you want to become, the game then brings you to song select, and after a song is played the game will tell you how many carbs you burned off and how long you’ve been playing. I’ll be using this mode for my workouts, since the game will save your progress and show you how much you’ve lost!

Lesson Mode: This is what mode I’d recommend to all brand new DDR players. The game will take you through a step-by-step lesson plan on how to play the game, and how to improve your dancing skills so you can increase what difficulty you play on!

Training Mode: Having trouble with a song? Maybe you’re having trouble with a just a certain part of a song? Training Mode allows you to pick a song and practice through different segments of it so you can finally get through the song with no trouble! 

Edit Mode: In this mode, you can take a song that you like and edit it! Add in your own notes, so that you have a beatmap that you can call your own! (I’d suggest using the normal controller for this part, it takes awhile to get your song just as you’d like it, and using your feet for the job will just make it take much longer).

Options, Records & Information: These are to use for your convenience, so at any time you can edit your games settings, check your highscores, and look up any information about the game you may need. A lot of the stuff in Information is legal rights and such, so you may click it once or never. It doesn’t effect your game at all.

Overall, the Dance Dance revolution games are for people of all ages. The game helps improve rhythmic timing and stamina all while having fun dancing around. As for weight loss, players have reported losing 10-50 pounds by playing DDR. One woman lost 95 pounds just by playing DDR everyday as a workout. There are so many different versions of Dance Dance Revolution (including a Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario version), so you always have plenty of uplifting and upbeat songs to dance to. The games are cheap and easy to find on sites like Amazon or Ebay, and the pads aren’t pricey either. If you’re looking for a great way to let loose, have fun with friends and family, or to get a good workout, then I recommend you look into buying games from the Dance Dance Revolution series.

By the way, I’m giving away some prizes on our Facebook page!
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Giveaway time!

Do you want to win a free Gameboy Color, Gameboy/Gameboy Color game, and a Pikachu figure form the 1990’s?
OF COURSE YOU FLIPPIN’ DO.
We did it! We finally hit 1,000 views on systemshuffle.com! As a thank you to everyone for the constant support, I’m doing a giveaway!

On October 19th, 2013, I’ll be randomly drawing a winner who will receive these prizes: A turquoise Gameboy Color, A Pikachu figure from the 1990’s, and a mystery Gameboy/Gameboy Color game! 
Click here to learn how to enter!

 

Sonic Heroes

At the end of the year 2003, Sega released a brand new Sonic the Hedgehog game for GameCube, Playstation 2, Xbox and PC. Japan got the first taste of this newly released game on December 30, 2003 while America was given the game on January 5th, 2004. Europe then received the game a month and a day later, and while everyone was excited to play Sonic Heroes, little did the world know how much a mess this new game would be.

I remember it being sort of a rainy day outside when my little brother Miles and I went to Gamestop to pick up the new Sonic game, and while at the time I didn’t think anything of the weather, I now think the world was trying to tell me something. My brother and I would always look at the manual and case of any new game we bought, so I recall looking at the back of the Sonic Heroes case and thinking how awesome this game was going to be. “They brought back old characters from Sonic Adventure and the Chaotix team?! You can play as 3 at a time?! New levels, new music, I can’t wait to get home! Maybe this game will have a Chao Garden!!” (Needless to say, I was very disappointed when I discovered that there was no Chao Garden.) I don’t remember much about when I played Sonic Heroes as a kid though. In fact, all I remember is getting really angry (which is strange, since I’m not an angry gamer). So recently, almost 10 years after Sonic Heroes came out, I was talking with my boyfriend Mark about how much he and other players hated Sonic Heroes. I didn’t understand why, and it bugged me that I couldn’t say if I hated Sonic Heroes or loved it. Not knowing bothered me so much that I picked it up for this weeks review.

There are 4 different teams to play as, meaning that there are 4 different storylines to play through. Each team consists of 3 characters, each having their own special trait. One character will have a flying trait that allows them to fly to high places and shoot down flying enemies. Another character will have the running trait, so when they’re selected your team moves much quicker. (WARNING: When going through loops and different parts of levels with the speed trait, be careful! The game can be very glitchy at times, and will send you right through the stage if you’re going too fast or if you move your joystick the wrong way.) The final trait is the power trait that allows the 3rd team mate to smash through obstacles along the way. The power trait is very over-powered (no pun intended), since the character with this trait can kill enemies much faster and easier than the flying and speed character.

I decided to start with the Sonic team, since it’s first in line. The storyline takes place a few months after the Sonic Adventure 2: battle plot, where we find Sonic running through a canyon of some sort. His best friends, Tails and Knuckles, fly down next to him in Tails’ plane to give him urgent news: Robotnick, their worst enemy, has returned! Robotnick sent Sonic and his friends a letter explaining that he has finally created the ultimate weapon, and that in 3 days, he will take over the world and he invited Sonic and his friends to try and stop him. After reading the letter, Sonic gets excited and goes “Sounds like an invitation!” Wait, hold on, pause. I don’t know about you guys, but if I had a device that I was completely sure could destroy the world, I wouldn’t invite the one guy who has foiled ALL of my past attempts at ruling the world to try and stop me, since odds are that HE’S GOING TO STOP ME.

While you can switch between characters at any second, you can only be one character at a time. Each different character also has their over team fighting stance. For example, when you play as the speed traited character, your other two team mates will follow directly behind you. If you’re the power traited character, each teammate will stand on either side of you, and when you’re the flying traited character your teammates hold onto you from below you. These different stances can make it easier for you to get rings throughout the game. 

         In Sonic Heroes, there were a lot of moments where fighting enemy robots could get very overwhelming, especially since the game can sometimes flood the screen with them. The solution to this problem was to level up your characters to fill up your team blast bar. “How do I level up my character to raise my team blast bar?” When you kill bad guys (or occasionally when you go through a checkpoint), colored orbs will be dropped for your characters. These orbs raise your characters level, making them more powerful while raising your team blast bar. Each character has a special colored orb: Speed has a blue orb, flying has a yellow, and power has a red colored orb. Once your team blast bar is full, you can press the Z button to use a special move the destroys all enemies near you. Note: Some of the levels in Sonic Heroes are very long (10-15 minutes depending on how fast you go), so I suggest that if you want to just get through the level as fast as possible, don’t kill enemies unless you absolutely have to. (There will be plenty of areas that won’t let you through without killing some robots blocking your path.) You’ll still get plenty of orbs along the way to use the team blast move, so don’t worry about that. If you’re going for a good grade on the level, good luck to you. There’s a time bonus at the end of the level that helps a lot, but if you’re sticking around killing robots for points, it’s going to slow you down by quite a bit.

Now I do have some little, nit-picky things to complain about with this game. For starters, the controls are extremely slippery in this game. There are lots of moments in the game where it wants you to come to a sudden stop, but since you can’t just stop on a dime, you end up slamming into a wall and sliding around until your characters decide to finally stop.  Also, unlike other Sonic games, enemies need to be hit multiple times before dying. They have a health bar, and can take up to 3-4 hits to finally destroy. This can prove to be rather obnoxious. My final complaint is the fact that the voice acting is just flat out awful. I know a lot of people complained that Sonic Team got new voice actors for Sonic, Tails, and others, but that’s not where my problem stands. It’s not that I’m not used to the new voices, it’s the fact that the new voices are wheezy, nasally and sound like they’re 4th graders having to read out loud in english class. Knuckles sounds like he’s screaming the word “Sh*t!” when he punches enemies, and when Tails flies he shouts “WHEE”, making him sound like he’s going to lose his voice from yelling. It stresses me out.

Overall, this isn’t a bad game, but it’s definitely not a game I would want to voluntarily play again. While the gameplay itself isn’t the greatest, the soundtrack is one of my favorite soundtracks from any Sonic game. I can now understand why my brother and I would get so angry over this game, especially after all the countless times we’ve fallen through stages due to a glitch, or have gotten killed due to cheap hits that the enemies got off on us. The storyline is nothing special, and is in fact extremely predictable. (Hmm, I wonder if the guy who get’s defeated in every Sonic game got defeated this time! Probably.) Sonic Heroes is available for less than $10 on Amazon for Gamecube, but unless you’re a Sonic fan who hasn’t played this, I wouldn’t buy it if I were you. Try it out at a buddies, or watch gameplay of it. Don’t put yourself through the amount of frustration this game creates.

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Super Monkey Ball 2

Super Monkey Ball 2. Is that not one of the strangest game titles you have ever heard?
“Hey man whatcha playin?”
“Oh you know, Super Monkey Ball 2.”
“Oh… What do you do?”
“Uh well, you’re a monkey… that rolls inside of a ball through mazes…”
“…But why a monkey?”
“Dude go ask Sega, I don’t know.”

I’m in love with this game, and have been since I was in my pre-teen years. I didn’t play much of the first Super Monkey Ball until years after discovering Super Monkey Ball 2, which came out for Gamecube in 2002 for North America. The Super Monkey Ball series was developed by a second-party developer of Sega’s called Amusement Entertainment, and Amusement Entertainment released the first Monkey Ball game as an arcade game. It wasn’t until 2001 that the developers decided to bring the game to home consoles. 

Super Monkey Ball 2 has plenty of different ways to be played. You have Story Mode, Challenge Mode, Practice Mode, and 12 different mini games to unlock and play. Since each mode is played differently, I’ll break everything down for you. Let’s start with the different modes and leave the mini games alone for a moment. The controls for all the modes are the same, and they’re easy to learn as well! You move your ball around with the joystick, and there’s a little map in the lower right corner that you can zoom in and out of by pressing the A button, but that’s it when it comes to controls! Your objective in all of the different modes is to go through different mazes and obstacle courses to reach the goal at the end in 60 seconds. It may not sound like a lot of time, but all of the courses are short enough to get through within the time limit. There will be levels that you’ll need to practice a bit before you can get an idea of how to beat the level (timing, different routes, ext), but with practice you’ll be a pro in no time! Now, let me explain what’s so different about the different modes you can play:

    

Story Mode

The story begins with an evil monkey named Dr. Bad-Boon appearing over an island in a blimp. He then takes a giant vacuum and sucks all of the banas out of the village all for himself, which Ai-Ai and his gang aren’t happy about. As Dr. Bad-Boon then goes to make his escape, Ai-Ai and his friends then use a magic spell to put themselves into balls and fly around the island (No, you can’t actually fly around while playing the game. Disappointing, I know.) The game then brings you to a screen with 10 different courses to play through. You can go through them in any order you please, but in order to get to the next area you have to complete all 10 courses. There are no bosses in this game, and there aren’t lives either so you get an infinite amount of chances. There are also play points that you can earn. The more you play, the more points you earn! You can then trade in these points to unlock more lives for challenge mode, or to unlock more mini games.

    

Challenge Mode

Have some friends over that want to play, but none of you want to play any of the mini games? No problem! In challenge mode, there are different sets of levels to play on that are similar to the levels you go through on story mode. The only thing different about challenge mode is that it’s multiplayer and you all have a certain amount of lives that you can use. Don’t worry too much, you do get continues even if you lose all of your lives. “Well then what’s the point of lives if they’re just going to give me continues anyway?” Well reader, if you get through all of the challenge courses and don’t use a continue, you get to move onto the bonus stages! How’s that for motivation?

Practice Mode

Practice Mode is exactly what you think it is. You’re able to go into practice mode and play any level you’ve reached in story mode and replay through it. Even though you can replay the level as many times as you want, you don’t get to record your score.

Let’s talk about this games mini games for a second. A lot of these mini games are broken and unbalanced, to the point of being unfair. In most of these games, there are items with different helpful actions, but the moment you turn them off is the moment you’re doomed. In racing with items off, there is no possible way for you to catch up if you’re in last place. In boxing, the items they use can be 1 hit KO’s to your enemies, which sounds like a fine thing for you but the moment one of your opponents gets a hold of one of those power ups, you’re through. Some of these games are poorly explained, or can make playing the game nearly impossible (lack of speed, courses that are impossible to read or figure out, and in some cases the game controls your character for you). My suggestion? If you’re playing Super Monkey Ball 2 with friends, go play challenge mode.

Overall, I’d give this game a 8/10 rating. The story line is cheesey, but the game isn’t played for the story but more for the levels themselves. The mini games are unfair, but can sometimes be fun if you’re playing with a group of friends who won’t take the game seriously. if you can laugh off how badly designed some of the games are, I think you’ll be just fine playing them. As for the games courses and controls, you always have full control over your monkey and the game does a brilliant job of teaching you how to improve rather than making some levels easy and some of them impossible. Most courses even have different routes you take for those who want the easy way through or for players who want a challenge. There are buttons hidden in the back of some levels as well that slow the level down to make things easier, but of course it’s all optional. The game is less than $10 used on Amazon, so go get yourself a copy!

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