This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on December 28th, 2019.
Hello once more, and welcome back to the PlayStation
Basement. PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of games for the original
PlayStation that are somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated
Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasis the written review. Now, let’s go!
The end of the year, the end of the decade is approaching.
In only a few days, the world of 2020, a time foretold in many a
science-fiction novel, will be upon us. It’s kind of unbelievable to me that
the PlayStation 2 came out 20 years ago and that 2009 ended a decade ago. Time
moves in the shadows when we forget it’s there. Before you say it, I’m not
reviewing a ninja game to work with this metaphor of time that I’ve just made.
Instead, I have a game for the New Year’s holiday of parties and joyful
celebration. This is Superstar Dance
Club: #1 Hits!!!
Superstar Dance Club:
#1 Hits!!! is a rhythm game published by Media Rings in 2001 in Japan and
by XS Games in 2002 and 2003 in North America and Europe respectively. The game
is known as Love Para: Tokyo Para-Para
Musume in Japan. It was published as part of the Fukyuuban 1500 Series of budget titles that also included Runabout 2, the dating-sim/RPG combo of Yuugen Kaisha Chikyuu Boueitai – Guard of
Earth Organization, Zap! Snowboarding
Trix ’98, and the mahjong title of Saibara
Rieko no Mahjong Toriatama Kikou. While all of the other games were
reissued under this brand after their original print run, Love Para was released only in this format. Though this game did
come out in the United States, I never heard anything about it until a year
ago.
When I saw the cover art to Superstar Dance Club, I was excited about the odd genericity and
bright colors. The design of the North American and European cover art is a
time capsule of the early 2000s: it looks like the many contemporary remixes of
the 70s, especially Bratz and Totally Spies! The art also reminds me
of the odd Charlie’s Angels image
used on the North American Mobile Light
Force games also published by XS Games. The Japanese art is even more of a
70s trip with dayglow chibi dancers in floral prints under glittering lights.
These images certainly match the cheap price of the game.
The in-game graphics are very similar to the cover art:
cheap but whimsical. It’s all 2D with characters that look like cardboard
cutouts, similar in a way to Parappa the
Rapper. Each of the stages has its own unique design, and these include
locations such as the circus, a haunted house, a wrestling ring, and a
science-fiction battle. Each stage has characters to match too, so it’s all
pretty neat looking despite the limited animation. The opening cutscene looks
pretty cool with Warholian mirages of color cascading across the screen. The
one thing that actually suffers from the low budget in Superstar Dance Club is the UI. That’s a story still to come
though.
Thankfully the sound in Superstar
Dance Club: #1 Hits!!! is reasonable. The electronic tunes are very
danceable and full of energy. I found myself moving to them as I played,
partially to get myself in the rhythm and partially because the songs were
good. The musick isn’t maybe the most memorable, and at least some of it
appears to be remixed classical musick and the like. I think that these new
versions are done in a creative way, so it’s actually pretty good. The effects
aren’t to the same quality as the musick. Some are kind of annoying, especially
if heard often, but this is all up to the player. Again though, the sonic
feedback to the player, essentially the aural portion of the UI, is not up to
the level I expect a rhythm game to be. “So what do I expect a rhythm game to
be?” you may be asking.
Well, Superstar Dance
Club does a lot of things that you would expect from a rhythm game well.
Buttons appear on screen that flash with the song. You must press the
corresponding buttons on time. The closer to perfect you are, the better. Each
press fills up a green gauge above a red gauge. When the red gauge reaches the
end, the green gauge must be similarly filled up (or filled even higher). If it
is not filled all the way, you lose. If you do go higher than the maximum, the
gauge starts to fill up in another color. This extra color is how much the new
gauge will fill up when the red completes. There are several red gauges per
song. Some sections of each song pause your dancing but continue to fill up the
red gauge. This makes it crucial to fill up the extra gauge to have extra
power. Sometimes green alone isn’t enough.
Superstar Dance Club
is very basic in regards to many things, though. Inputs are one button at a
time with no holds or other special inputs. Also, only the four face buttons
appear, limiting you to, on a standard controller held in the standard way,
your right hand. You may want to hold the controller differently or use an
arcade stick. Another odd thing about this game, something that actually makes
it more challenging but less user-friendly, is that the screen does not scroll
as you would see in something like Guitar
Hero. Only eight inputs will appear on screen at once, and they don’t
necessarily go in order. You input the left side of the screen until arrows
appear under the right side. Then you switch until arrows appear back on the
left side. A lot of the time you will be switching, but the game mixes it up
from time to time. There’s no sound when you press the commands, and that can
be somewhat awkward, but, honestly, I got used to it over time. You do get to
see how well you did after each section of button presses, so you can see if
you did Bad, Good, or Cool.
There are some little extras in Superstar Dance Club: #1 Hits!!! that add a bit to the game.
There’s a slight story here about the heroine traveling to Japan to dance at
the CAT Star Dance Club where a competition is held every so often. You start
at the club and move on to other places that are surreal but make some amount
of sense too. You might find a dancer in a horror, martial arts, or tokusatsu
film, at a wrestling ring, or at the circus. There’s also Akihabara, the famous
tourist spot in Japan, as another area. It’s fun to see the wild backgrounds
and characters, and I find it kind of neat to see how our heroine progresses
through different media. After each stage you earn money (your points), and she
uses these points to buy things like clothes, accessories, and places to live.
There are no real visuals here, but the goofy storytelling is kind of
endearing. The other little bit I was going to mention is that during the
dancing scenes, you can press the shoulder buttons to play a sound effect. It’s
not exactly clear how this works, but if you play the sound effects with the
song, you can get some more points at the end. The sound effects can be hard to
use when concentrating on the dancing, but that makes it fun and challenging. I
do wish there were more than two sound effects per level. This is still a
low-budget title when all is said and done.
Overall, Superstar
Dance Club: #1 Hits is good for what it is. It’s not a top-notch rhythm
title, but it has a little niche with its fun visuals, quirky dialogue, and fun
gameplay. I never imagined seeing a dancer blasted with a laser cannon,
launched off of the screen by Bruce Lee, or pulled into the underworld for
failing a song. The game isn’t particularly long if you are good at it; you can
beat this in an hour. I’m not sure how long I played it, but I had trouble with
a few of the tracks, one in particular holding me back from getting to the conclusion.
This is a decent beginner rhythm game if nothing else. I don’t know if it will
please the experts, but I enjoyed Superstar
Dance Club: #1 Hits!!! for the little game that it is.
Superstar Dance Club:
#1 Hits!!! receives a Good.
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