Shocked this went under the radar: Last month, the creators of Dance Dance Revolution released a game titled Walk It Out.  South side walkin’ absent, the game is a Frankenstein of children’s fitness and the kind of box art that ruins kid-parent relationships…

…and the gameplay lives up to the billing, complete with the legendary “Why you turn off the announcer first thing in any Konami rhythm game made after 2006″.  If you abhor Guitar Hero for its “go play a real guitar” factor, I can feel your rage for the game where you pretend to walk through neighborhoods.

You now know why fitness games marketed as fitness games aggravate me.  Dance Dance Revolution hit arcades eight years before Wii Fit was a blip on the “Nintendo revolution”, and there is no shortage of physical education programs and diet success stories that have proven DDR as a legitimate part of any exercise routine.  But back in 1998, flailing around on a dance pad looked stupid.  It still does, but Just Dance and Wii Fit have made strides to soften that stigma.  And during that time, Konami has not invested a single dollar in rejuvenating DDR, and hasn’t conceived a significant innovation since 2002’s freeze arrow.  (Yes, in the the rhythm game genre, “press and hold” is creativity defined.)

Think about it: Someone in the Konami board room decided the company could make more money off the Bemani song list by packing it into a pseudo-fitness game instead of its flagship rhythm game franchise.  The result is a game that features ten more songs than the Japanese edition of Dance Dance Revolution Extreme for the Playstation 2, undoubtedly the swan song for DDR’s adventures on gaming consoles.

Currently, the financial success of Walk It Out is in “wait and see” mode.  But in 2010, we shouldn’t have to be waiting to see whether this game can justify its existence.

This week’s episode:
“Move It or Lose it”
(If you’re from outside the States, you can always torrent the episode.  Unfortunately, the World Cyber Games is throwing every episode onto Hulu, presumably to keep the international audience from laughing at the game selection.)

Previous Episode Guides:
“Shut up and Drive”
“Kicking and Screaming”
“Are You Ready to Rock?”

Pregame Notice: These episode names suck ass.  If Dante can wake up in the morning and muster significant energy to tend to that ridiculous haircut, you can come up with something better than the combined efforts of various Google searches.  What’s next, a Halo episode entitled “Things Get Explosive”?

2:33 – Jamal:  “When I first walked in the house I kind of felt like, dejected.  They didn’t want me to come through the door, none of them really did.”  Don’t worry, Jamal.  I wanted you to come through that door.  I know what it’s like to be one of the most average gamers in the room, and then walk out the most hated.

3:13 – Jamal: “I’d just like to let you guys knows what kind of player Dante is.  The other day, he approached three of us, and asked to have an alliance.  Also, he admitted to me that he was the one who shit in Chelsea’s bag.  He then said to me, and I quote: ‘This story Jamal is telling right now is 100 percent true.’  I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but as I stand here and tell this story, I now do.”

3:56 – Dante:  “Why would I want you in [any alliance]?  Honestly, that shows you you’re lying right there.”  Finally, man!  It took four weeks, but you showed some actual backbone!

5:14 – Clubbin’!?  Augh!  Why do bad things happen when I watch this show…
6:36 – …and why do worse things happen when I continue to watch?

7:26 – Congratulations, asshat: We are about to watch nine gamers embarrass themselves in a dance contest, and your scarf is the goofiest part of this segment.

7:41 – Hannah: “You’re gonna come up on stage of groups of three.  When the music starts, show us what you got!”
8:34 – Okay, I cannot imagine I am the only person who saw this:

And immediately thought this:

(more…)

She’s one of gaming history’s conundrums. As rhythm gaming’s grandaddy, never have hardcore and casual contingents embraced a game that was loathed by everyone inbetween. Notoriety aside, the franchise was a financial success, with DDRMax 2 selling more copies in the States than the original Guitar Hero. But two criticisms kept the game from going Madden-level mainstream: the furry-fucking hardcore DDR followers, and a song list populated by J-Pop monstrosities. My every mention of DDR in conversation with friends (yes, plural, as in I have real-life friends), the conversation usually concluded with “yeah, but Sandstorm was awesome. Why not more of that?” Konami’s answer: why risk a cheap-to-produce million-seller’s foundation?

Eventually, the creative breath in a fledgling genre turned rotten under years of a cash-in mentality. It’s fitting the series tailed downward with the 2004’s American release of DDR: Extreme, since Medieval historians are still trying to pin down when the word “extreme” jumped the shark. When Juan Castro reviewed DDR: SuperNOVA in 2006, he greeted readers with a thoroughly-apathetic 7/10 rating.

Fans of the DDR series will find a lot to like in DDR SuperNOVA. Only they’ve liked the same stuff for several years now. Enhancements abound, but most will fail to grab the attention of diehard fans or those who never bothered with the series. The coolest addition, Stellar Master Mode, adds some depth and variety, but it would have been nice to see it as part of a family of new modes. Instead, it’s the only one that really feels any different. In the end, the old DDR formula works well, but it feels irrefutably tired. Again.

“Irrefutably tired”? Even while Guitar Hero was becoming the talk of the genre, Konami still moved 800,000 copies of SuperNOVA. A year later, SuperNOVA 2 moved half a million units. Not bad for a decade-old series that hasn’t held steam in nearly four years.

But follow the media’s infatuation with the game, and no story clamors about its longevity or influence. Incredibly, the game that took a genre mainstream and developed a modest pop culture following could see its legacy reduced to “fitness trinket”. West Virginia thought so, and while Wii Fit snares the market, it’s possible new gamers could discover this game and brand it their magic diet pill.

So what’s the historical record going to consider the franchise? Rhythm gaming’s Doom? Good game that never broke the hump towards mainstream status? Physical Education’s trump card? Or a “silent majority” fan base that has quietly purchased massive quantities of the game since 2005? I guess it’s not surprising a simple gameplay concept generates a question this complicated.

Portable gaming has advanced, but here’s the precedent for fearing a portable version of Guitar Hero. This Japan-exclusive (the first of five DDR games for the Game Boy) shows us you can run the series’ best music through a low-quality synthesizer and fuck up what made the series fun: moving in-rhythm to CD-quality music.

Wondering how you play the game on a device unintended for up-down and left-right directional commands? This was the only picture I could find of the in-box peripheral, which is similar to another plug-in that stretches the intellectual boundaries of its franchise. But it’s not my job to impose opinions on you. That’s the job of this video:

Well, it could be worse. You could have bought this:

A “finger pad” for the versions of DDR you can play with your feet. How decidedly mediocre.