Not looking to be left in the dust by the competition, Konami once again steps into the arcade dancing realm — yes, believe it or not, companies still make coin-operated games. SuperNova joins the Dance Dance Revolution franchise as a first in the series, being released worldwide to Japan, Europe and, oh my gosh, America.
The game also marks the first coin-op DDR release in the United States since Konami closed its American arcade division in 2001. SuperNova hit the market this month. While it brings nothing new to the table, it proves to be a welcome addition to the series that started it all.
Right off the bat, DDR SuperNova brings about 300 songs to the table — a majority of which were pulled from previously released DDR games. While most of the songs are an "old hat" affair, SuperNova does bring the best of the series into one culmination along with a good chunk of songs which are brand new to the series.
While about half of those "new" songs are borrowed from other games in the Bemani series (Beatmania, Guitar Freaks/DrumMania, Pop 'N Music, etc.), the other half bring brand new licensed tracks from artists such as Smile.DK, the late Captain Jack, Janet Jackson and more, as well as a handful of Konami originals and remixes.
It might rain on long-time players' parades that they've been playing most of SuperNova's tracks for a number of years, but never before have all these songs been available and in one place in the American market.
With so many music games making their way stateside now, there's not too much new one can say in a review. Heck, I could probably cut and paste from my Pump It Up review I did a couple of weeks ago, and about ninety percent of it would apply to this review.
The graphics do their job, the sound effects and music play nicely (as long as your local operator keeps the machine at proper volume levels) and nothing beats the tight controls and response of a nice, solid, shiny, metal arcade dance pad (as long as your local operator keeps the pads properly maintained). The real story of DDR SuperNova is the number of additions and features contained within the game.
Article comments
1 - Robling
The sync issuses are supposed to be fixed when the ddr supernova software isn't beta. That's right, the machine is final, the software is beta. Thanks 573.
2 - Christopher Rose
Co-incidentally, I just saw a documentary about DDR which followed two kids from Leicester, England as they competed in national and international tournaments in the UK and in Las Vegas. Apparently the world championships are somewhere in Germany later this year.