Sunday, August 8, 2010

AND YOU CAN TRY TO STOP MY DANCING FEET BUT I JUST CANNOT STAND STILL: While I do not consider myself a Wii aficionado, I would nonetheless like to sing (and dance) the praises of a couple of deeply girly new games that entered the Cosmopolitan household earlier today: Just Dance and Dance on Broadway.

By way of background, as my husband can attest, I (a) am a lousy dancer and (b) have spent a goodly amount of time and money over the last couple years trying to find some Wii-enabled way to dance in my living room without anyone having to see me. (I am totally one of those people who spends half an hour watching the college-age Asian guys jamming away on the full-arcade-style Dance Dance Revolution.) Sadly, even the at-home versions of DDR are a little too complicated for me. So you can imagine my excitement when I saw Cosmo Girl and a friend bopping away to Just Dance last weekend.

There are two basic differences between DDR and Just Dance: first, no dance pad. You hold the regular Wii controller in your hand and mimic the moves on screen, and the system figures out if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing based on the controller's movements. Second, no getting booed off the stage if you screw up. So Cosmo Boy can happily hop around following the occasional move and still thinking he won ("I WON THE DANCING!!!!"), rather than me standing behind him stomping on enough of the right circles to keep him in the game. The music is fun (Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Heart of Glass, Who Let the Dogs Out, Kids in America, U Can't Touch This, Cotton Eye Joe, et al) and the dancing is wiggly and giggly. Good stuff.

Once Cosmo Girl and Boy went to bed, however, it was time to cue up Dance on Broadway. Same concept, but listen to this song list: All That Jazz, Lullaby of Broadway, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Dreamgirls, Age of Aquarius, Cabaret, Luck be a Lady, (a bunch of others, all well known) . . . and, of course, You Can't Stop the Beat. Best parts: scrolling song lyrics, for the 3% of people who buy this game who don't know them all by heart already, and thematically appropriate (while not difficult) choreography. So having Fosse'd, charleston'd, jazz hands'd, and fail'd to stop the beat, I am happily ready to sit down for Mad Men. (Which does not as yet have an accompanying Wii Dance option, but give them time.)

11 comments:

  1. Yay!  Kim's back!

    1.  If there is not a "lead a conga line with Joan" in the inevitable Mad Men video game, I will be sorely disappointed.
    2.  I'm very interested in how Dance Central for Xbox Kinect implements this sort of gameplay.

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  2. isaac_spaceman12:10 AM

    Welcome back! 

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  3. Hobart12:25 AM

    My 10 year old sister loves Just Dance and will destroy all challengers.  My 6'4" 240 lbs. college baseball playing brother-in-law is so competitve that after getting trounced 4th of July I believe he bought the game and is training for the rematch. Ali-Frazier eat your heart out.

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  4. Jenn C12:32 AM

    Just Dance 2 comes out in October. They've only released a few of the songs on the list. As someone who enjoyed the 90s, I am REALLY looking forward to Snap's The Power.

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  5. Anonymous2:11 AM

    I saw this at best buy and immediately went WANT, but then didn't buy it because I assumed it would be lame, but I trust my thing throwers, so I might just have to go back and buy it.

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  6. girard319:00 AM

    My girls played Just Dance until they busted the Wii. I thought it was fun just watching them until I tried it and got hooked.

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  7. Travis12:56 PM

    While not a conga line, I did witness this game draw an entire house of 20-somethings into the living room during a house party. I thought for sure the floor would collapse having about two dozen people jumping simultaneously.

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  8. Genevieve2:31 PM

    Does Dance Broadway measure what you're doing with your feet at all, or is it all arm movement? (which I would be fine with)

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  9. Anonymous7:28 PM

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  10. KCosmo8:04 PM

    Basically just arms, although I haven't messed around with it sufficiently to figure out whether the arm movement that would be necessitated by prescribed feet movements triggers the score at all.

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