For the first time in years, the long running Dance Dance Revolution series is actually undergoing a, well, revolution.
Konami has announced that its franchise is coming to the Nintendo Wii with Hottest Party sometime in 2007. When you think about it, this is a no brainer. Dancing titles have always appealed to a wider demographic than most other games, and the Wii is proving that it can attract a similarly diverse audience. So you have the genre and the console that draw both hardcore fans and casual fans, both kids and parents and both geeky anime lovers and mainstream American Idol lovers... working together in mass marketing harmony. Warm up the money printers!
But the developers aren't just slapping a Mario face on a dance mat and shipping out the latest retread sequel. They're bringing the motion sensing Wii remote and Nunchuk into the mix and making this one of the first DDR previews that can literally be called a "hands-on" (unless you count the arm waving madness that was DDR Extreme for PS2's Eye-Toy).
How does it work? During our demo, the mechanics were simple. Ridiculously simple. Sprinkled amidst the usual avalanche of directional arrows pointing out what to do with your feet was a new symbol indicating what you should do with your hands. And, for now anyway, "what you should do" is always the same - shake the Wii remote or Nunchuk as the symbol passes. It doesn't matter which chunk of white plastic you choose to move... or even which vertical column the symbol scrolled through.
For the first time in years, the long running Dance Dance Revolution series is actually undergoing a, well, revolution.
Konami has announced that its franchise is coming to the Nintendo Wii with Hottest Party sometime in 2007. When you think about it, this is a no brainer. Dancing titles have always appealed to a wider demographic than most other games, and the Wii is proving that it can attract a similarly diverse audience. So you have the genre and the console that draw both hardcore fans and casual fans, both kids and parents and both geeky anime lovers and mainstream American Idol lovers... working together in mass marketing harmony. Warm up the money printers!
But the developers aren't just slapping a Mario face on a dance mat and shipping out the latest retread sequel. They're bringing the motion sensing Wii remote and Nunchuk into the mix and making this one of the first DDR previews that can literally be called a "hands-on" (unless you count the arm waving madness that was DDR Extreme for PS2's Eye-Toy).
How does it work? During our demo, the mechanics were simple. Ridiculously simple. Sprinkled amidst the usual avalanche of directional arrows pointing out what to do with your feet was a new symbol indicating what you should do with your hands. And, for now anyway, "what you should do" is always the same - shake the Wii remote or Nunchuk as the symbol passes. It doesn't matter which chunk of white plastic you choose to move... or even which vertical column the symbol scrolled through.
