Over the years, we have seen endless games of different genres, from the beat-em-up like Final Fight and Double Dragon to the fighting ones such as Street Fighter II and The King of Fighters.  But what if we had to name the most recent titles that belong to the street phenomenon? Well, probably those would be the dancing games, especially the ones from two particular series: Dance Dance Revolution and Pump it Up, which had been able to revive the arcade industry in a good part of the American continent.

In Japan, Konami has dozens of rhythm games, all under the stamp of Bemani (Beat Mania), but the one who has been more successful and also the most famous throughout the world is, without any doubt, Dance Dance Revolution, which was firstly launched on 1998 at the country of the Rising Sun, and a year later it would be jumping to the international market.

 

The style of the game was easy to understand, but a bit hard to dominate. In a piece of furniture like no other, you had a huge monitor with a metallic pad that was composed by four different arrows (up, down, left and right) where you had to step on according to the instructions shown in the screen to follow the rhythm of the songs that you were able to choose.

At the beginning, players only had to follow this simple mechanic to play, but the interesting thing came when tournaments were carried out and on them, people created some incredible choreographies to show their skills in the game, which was the result of many training hours.

Logically, the game had several sequels; most of them were released for home consoles, (including the N64, GameCube and also the Wii) where very popular American Pop songs were included in order for players to feel more identified with the music. Despite this, the most successful titles were the ones that included mostly Japanese songs, such as Butterfly, Nori Nori, Dive and Broken my Heart.

 

Just when Konami thought that he had everything under control, a new rival appeared. Andamiro, a studio composed by a Korean developer team, was the one who saw the gold mine that Dance Dance Revolution represented: the perfect chance to stand out with an own title.

 

 

Andamiro always thought big, attacking since the beginning, all the defects that the studio was able to found on the Konami’s series. The first one were the arrows; while in Dance Dance Revolution we had them in the traditional position, in the Korean bet titled Pump it Up, the orientation were presented diagonally, leaving two arrows up and another couple at the bottom. Besides that, they added a circle at the center of the pad to make the game more difficult.

 

Pump it Up was more focused on the choreographies. In Dance Dance revolution, players themselves were the ones that could create with their own style these choreographies while in Pump it Up, the order of the arrows forced you to move in some specific ways. There are even some songs where you need to make some spins in order to beat them; in other words, it is easier to show off instead of playing normal.

Obviously the chance to win Konami wouldn’t be good if the songs weren’t catchy enough. Fortunately, Andamiro did a good selection of songs where all of them belong to the Dance and Pop genres. The most remarkable ones that people still play are: Beethoven Virus, Comeback, Starian, Loner, Monkey Magic, Turkey March, You Are and Tell Me Tell Me.

 

Andamiro was able to overtake Dance Dance Revolution in several countries around the world, being Mexico one of them. It was very common to see this kind of machines even inside drugstores while the competence only existed in places like shopping malls.

To define which game is better is very complicated. It would be very irresponsible to name a winner since both have cool features, but the most important thing is that thanks they have always been searching a different style is how they have won millions of fans across the globe.

Nowadays, both sagas are being renovated, but we can mention the case of Konami, which has used the features that the Wii has to offer to expand its franchise. If you haven’t tried any of these games, don’t wait anymore, gather some friends and let the party begin!