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Do You Want to DANCE!|Online?
By Cameron Sorden | October 28, 2007
I’ve always thought that Dance Dance Revolution looked like a lot of fun, but I’ve only done it once or twice. Embarrassing myself in public by sucking horribly at a game that looks like it’s for ecstasy-addled teenagers isn’t my idea of a good time. Still, I often kicked around the idea of buying a cheap dance mat and getting the home version for both fun and exercise. Punishing learning curves and rampant flailing are more bearable when you can close the curtains and hide.
Last week my boss e-mailed me a press release from this crazy game from Acclaim called DANCE! Online. It’s basically DDR with microtransactions and other players. You can earn points by dancing and buy coins by paying (or inviting friends). We shared a good laugh about how silly of a concept it seemed and then we moved on. I was intrigued, though. A free to play DDR-type game that would be updated with new songs and content over time? I downloaded it in the name of research and checked it out. What I found was that it’s a really fun game (fun enough that there’s a new $40 Mad Catz beat pad sitting on my apartment floor right now).
It plays exactly like any other beat-style dance game, and you can either play with the keyboard (WASD) or a dance pad that you hook up (it may take some wrangling). You can see how it works in the screenshots at the end of the post. Your character dances when you hit the arrows correctly and stands there sadly when you screw up. Don’t be fooled by that “Cool!”, by the way. That’s clever timing in my screenshot taking. I suck pretty badly.
The game has a decent selection of songs, but you probably won’t recognize most of them unless you’re really into the teen pop music scene. What’s important is that they’re catchy and fun to hop around to. You can select from a variety of different backgrounds, song speeds, difficulties, and play modes. The game really shines in the multi-player play modes, though. One of the best parts of the game is the ability to compete with up to five other players. You can do superstar mode, where everyone plays for themselves, couples mode, where the guys and the girls pair up and square off against the others, or boys v. girls. Unlike other online games, the gender split here is even enough that I didn’t have any trouble finding these types of games to play. Since you’re testing yourself against others, the game awards extra spendable points for winning multi-player games and it also tracks your win-loss record over the lifetime of your character.
Speaking of spendable points, they’ve got items in spades. A quick glance through the clothing store reveals a multitude of clothing choices, with the best clothes segregated by player level (you’ve gotta dance to get xp and wear the best threads). You can also buy hairstyles, body types, and add-on items (no clue what those do). Sadly, unless you want to spend real world cash you’ll be dancing for quite a while to dress your character. The cheapest dance point shirt starts at about 10k points.
It’s surprisingly addictive and fun for a free-to-play game, and the quality is high. The download is only about 600mb, so I’d recommend checking it out. Even playing on just the keyboard is quite fun.
By the way, if you’re going to try hooking up a beatpad to your computer, save yourself some aggravation and use this keyboard emulator for joysticks. You can’t map joystick (beatpad) keys within DANCE! Online and some people have reported problems with it correctly recognizing beatpad directions, but you can just leave it on keyboard settings and map your pad buttons to WASD with that program. Also, if you don’t want to special-order a PC-compatible beatpad, you can do what I did: go to Best Buy, purchase a Xbox 360 beatpad (the Mad Catz one is working fine for me), and use XBCD to give it drivers under Windows. That way you also have a 360 controller if you ever want to buy the real DDR.
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October 28th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Careful, Dance! is still in beta and — I’ll need to go check the NDA again, but it seemed pretty restrictive. It’s the first time I actually wondered if I was even allowed to say I was in the beta at all.
That said, it’s pretty fun though it’s difficult and I haven’t found a keyboard combo that’s intuitive yet. Almost got DDR to use the dance pad with it but the forums said the room are segregated, ie. only pad users can join pad rooms, keyboard users only in keyboard rooms and most people were complaining there were never any pad rooms. My personal complaint is Dance! won’t (yet) let me increase the screen resolution.
There’s also one called Audition that is also fun but uses a totally different dance control mechanism though it gets difficult fast.
I’m not normally a dance-pop music fan, so I almost embarrassed to say I’m enjoying myself in these lol!
October 28th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
It’s in open beta now– I signed up for an account without any kind of invite or anything, and you’re also encouraged to send invites to your friends. Before posting, I looked through the Terms of Sale, Terms of Use, Code of Conduct, and Privacy Policy (which isn’t active right now for some reason), and didn’t see anything about an NDA. I don’t recall agreeing to an NDA when I signed up, either, but I can’t find a link to an EULA or NDA anywhere in-game or on the main website other than the links I already checked out.
If someone points me towards an NDA clause I’ll pull this post until it’s lifted, but I think I’m in the clear…
As for the lack of pad rooms, if you use my suggestion and emulate your beat pad keys as keyboard controls, you can leave it on the keyboard setting and play in keyboard rooms with a pad.
October 28th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Hmm… I’ll look, my client still says Beta 2 on it and I had to agree to their NDA but that was a couple weeks ago. In that case, all bets are off and I’m posting my screenshots as soon as I manage to recover my blog!
October 28th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Let me know if you find something. I don’t want to be violating any NDAs here.
October 28th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Well, something’s wonky here. Google brings up tons of hits saying Dance! is in open beta but I had to jump through all the hoops a couple weeks ago to apply to the closed beta. I still have the acceptance email with the “ssshhhhh!” NDA restrictions.
Maybe I’m just retarded…
October 28th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Hrm. Maybe they opened it up just in the last week or two? No hoops for me. Gave them my info and I was in.
October 29th, 2007 at 10:57 am
The game I’ve got like this is Boom Boom Rocket for XBLA. Same basic premise, though I’m sure dancing (as opposed to a hand-held controller) is a completely different animal. I’d love to play an active game like that one day, but I’ll hold off for something else.
October 29th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Yeah it’s a rhythm game just like DDR or Guitar Hero. I didn’t care for Boom Boom Rocket *at all* but it’s the same principle.
Oh and the Google hits say Dance! went in open beta back in April so I have no idea (other than my original retardation theory) why I had to do the hoop-jumping and apply to closed beta to get in.
I do prefer Dance! over Audition though, but mostly in terms of graphics. Both are low-res (800×600 max at this point) but Audition uses the big-eyed anime look and it just doesn’t do it for me. It does have cool group dance moves though, especially in freestyle mode when each dancer takes front and center if he gets his combo right.
October 30th, 2007 at 12:26 am
[...] first brought up Acclaim’s Dance! Online yesterday at Random Battle but I was thinking the Closed Beta NDA still applied. I had to apply to closed beta a couple weeks [...]
October 30th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
DDR the MMO? Huzzah! I have to try this…
March 22nd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I love to dance and wish to play your dance game