Dancing Stage Fusion – Review

Move your feet forward, backwards, to the right and to the left and in Konami’s latest dance game you need to combine all steps. Connect your dance pad to the Playstation 2 and get ready for a new dance adventure. Don’t forget to put on some sweat bands and make sure you have enough space around you before you going to hurt yourself.

Konami has a good reputation when it comes to dance games as they are the main publisher of the dance puzzle game. In the past they have released the famous Dance Dance Revolution series which became the famous dance games ever. But now it’s time for Dancing Stage Fusion. Maybe you don’t have any experience with dance games or the idea of active gaming isn’t your style but don’t judge too fast as it really is a funny way to be active!

If you never experienced a dance game before and don’t know what to expect or how to play it. I’ll give it my best shot to make you understand how it works: After starting the game you’ll directly go into dance mode. Choose if you would like to take some dance classes, a practice or the game mode itself. Pick out a song you like and get it on! On television you’ll see besides the visual effects and dancers a lot of arrows which slide from the bottom to the top of the screen. On the top you’ll see a bar with all arrow directions (left, down, up, right). As soon as the moving arrows are on the bar, you need to make the steps in the correct direction. Because the arrows starts at the bottom, you have enough time left to determine your dance steps in a logical way without knotting your legs or falling.

There are a lot of different game modes to choose from. If you are a dancing game beginner without any experience, it’s not a bad idea to start with a dance lesson which gives understandable instructions. In total 3 lessons are available to take part in and teaches you how to follow the arrows with your feet. Each lesson contains seven instructions and after completing you need to wrap it up and do all the steps you’ve learned to proof you’ve understand the instructions and capable of doing them correctly…or almost correctly. I recommend everybody to take part in these lessons first before you start hopping around and doing wrong steps.

After you’ve finished the lessons it’s easier to dance then you may have thought at first and you are able to move on to the game mode, the main game part of Dancing Stage Fusion. This is the most extensive game option where you can show your dance style. Also this mode can be modified to your desire such like difficulty level, how many stages to dance and of course the song needs to be selected. Of course you don’t know all songs but while turning the song wheel, you’ll hear a preview of it. That makes it easier to choose, don’t you agree? Oh wait there’s even an easier option. Why not let the game randomly decide which song should be danced on? Or why not do the roulette option where the songs start turning around the screen, you push stop and it will stop after 3 seconds. The song selected is then the song you need to play on in the gaming mode! The main goal in the game mode is to complete a couple of stages as selected. For each stage completed you’ll be judged on how many steps you made in time in the correct way. If you have some excellent results you’ll be rewarded with extra songs and new dance characters. Yes unlocking new features by good performance.

Don’t get upset or depressed if you’re having a rough time completing the stages on your favorite song. You can always learn to dance on your favorite song by practicing in the training mode. This is completely focused on the song selected and the moves required to pass the game mode stages and you can dance till you drop, eh…I mean dance till you’re able to move your feet according to the arrows. It is also possible to take out some difficult parts from the song and only practice them instead of the whole song.

Music People! It’s all about the music. If the music isn’t cool or varied on a dance game, it’s trash time and it will not be a good game to play. Why do I get a flashback of Britney Spears Dance game? Anyway Dancing Stage Fusion has enough varied songs selected for you to groove on. In total 54 songs are available and almost half of them are pretty familiar and are famous pop songs. Here’s a short overview:

Jamelia – Superstar
Basement Jaxx – Good Luck
Big Brovaz – Ok
Moloko – Familiar Feeling
Electric Six – Danger! High Voltage
Atomic Kitten – Somebody Like You
DJ Bobo – Chihuahua
Pop! – Heaven & Earth
Kylie – Promises
Sugarhill Gang – Rappers Delight
Junior Senior – Move Your Feet
Sugababes – Freak Like Me

Hey what’s that on the cover? Eyetoy compatible? Excuse me, but could it really be the case that you can see yourself dancing on TV? Not that I’m a vain girl which loves nothing more then seeing myself on TV or in the mirror, but the eyetoy possibility seems to be a nice add on. In the Party mode it is really possible! A couple of mini games can be played with the eyetoy. Two mini games are focused on the dancing and broadcasting yourself in the game / on the screen. One is to play with hands and feet, see picture, and the other is only focused on dancing. Personally I was too busy following the arrows and trying to make the right steps in time instead of watching myself doing those crazy things. After playing a couple of rounds, I thought it would be a good idea to set the eyetoy camera to my feet to see my dancing attempts on screen. Further on there are also other mini games to play. What about shaking coconuts from trees or cleaning the screen to see the dancing arrows comparable to the original Eyetoy game Wishi Washi.

Dancing Stage Fusion is a good expansion in the dancing game genre. As you can see on the screenshots, the graphics aren’t quite spectacular but the alternation of different kinds of screens is good enough while playing. You’ll see dancers, video clips, the eyetoy application and other visual possibilities. The music is very varied and the unlocking of new songs is an addictive game play. Don’t forget to activate the workout mode which automatically counts the burned calories together for all songs played. To end this review I would like to point out that it doesn’t matter if you use this game to loose a couple of pounds (weight), to get your condition back in shape or because you just like to play an active game once in while. Keep on Dancing!

Review by Wencke
Thumb Bandits European Correspondent & manager of GGU.