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.