dancerush

konami, 2018

one of the newer dancing games out there. attracts a lot of attention in the arcade thanks to its huge dance pad that lights up where you step on it, which i see a lot of small children and random people fooling around with without actually playing the game. the game itself is based around a sort of a shuffle-style dancing which i guess might be popular with the hip people these days, i don't know. maybe they should have named it "danceshuf". if you get really into it, you can start doing some really sick moves, spins and all that. it's funny, though, because all of the best dancerush players i've seen are always THE nerdiest asian dudes imaginable who seem like they should have no business being anywhere near dancing or the dancerush cab. then, they started playing and absolutely SHRED, maybe even throwing in something really outrageous like a backflip, possibly gathering a small audience around the cab in the process, before hopping off without acknowledging the presence of the crowd at all (it seems extremely cool but in fact it is due to lack of social skills) and perhaps tripping over something nonexistent on the way out.

in my experience, though, playing the game itself is extremely annoying. every time i log in, it feels like i have to sit through an unbelievable amount of bullshit before i can play. event announcements, event progression, warnings, so on and so forth. it feels like it takes five minutes to actually start playing, although maybe it’s faster if you play more than one credit per day and get all that crap out of the way on the first one. the problem is that i'm always so put off by the menus that i've pretty much only ever played one credit of dancerush at a time. then once you actually get into the game, a lot of the charts in the already-slim song selection are locked away behind an unlock system that requires you to play more and earn some currency or something. on top of all that, i’m almost positive that you only get two songs per credit, or at least i have every time that i’ve played it. this makes it hands-down the worst value among the rhythm games at round 1, which pretty much as a rule give you at least three songs per credit (though certain games have modes where you can potentially fail out before the third song, like “light start” in sound voltex. those were very anxious times for me, back when that was the only play option offered in sdvx, since i always want to get my money’s worth. also, hatsune project diva arcade is arguably the only other exception to the rule with a max of two songs per credit, although all the playable songs in the game are 3+ minute uncut “full” songs so you do get to play a little longer than in dancerush.) the only pro is that for some reason (hmmm...) there's always a ton of free credits left on the machine by people, who i can only assume got confused by all the menus or something. occasionally i see people who seem to be into it like the aforementioned asians but it doesn't seem to attract many dedicated players, just endless casuals trying out a song or two. i guess casuals don't really care about new songs or content so konami has used that excuse to neglect the game for a while, i don't think it's ever had a major version update and frankly i wouldn't be surprised if it coasts for a few more years with very few updates before going offline.