"Yo! You! Yes, you! Counterstrike-addict geek boy! U can't touch this! *Freestyles.*"

What is Dance Dance Revolution? How does one describe the 3rd Mix of this innovative franchise? Seeking help, I looked to my reference books. The American Heritage Student Dictionary, which I happen to have more handy than my other dictionaries, defines dance as “To move with rhythmic steps and motions, especially in time to music,” and revolution as “Movement around a point in a closed path, especially as distinguished from rotation around an axis.”

...Which doesn’t help at all. But enough of mindless studying! Time to groove!

The premise of the Dance Dance Revolution series is simple: Tire the hell out of couch potato videogamers, such as yours truly, by taunting them with the gleaming prospect of getting the attention and admiration of complete strangers. “Gah!,” you think to yourself. “What the heck am I doing at this machine?? I’m about to waste valuable PSO time DANCING? Just to get a little mindless praise??” *Cute member of the opposite sex walks by, discussing DDR with equally cute friend.* “...I’ll do it!” So step up to the machine. Make a fool out of yourself. Get addicted. Drain your savings account on arcade tokens. And, God help you, put that controller down.

“Ah!,” the DDR n00b thinks. “No controller. So will I be using an arcade stick or a lightgun?” Neither. “Steering wheel?” Uh-uh. “Is this one of those skateboard or street luge games?” No way. “Then it must be... Oh my God, no... I’ve heard of these things... No moves to memorize... No controls to learn... No zombies to shoot... No leveling up... This must be one of those... Those... MUSIC GAMES!” Bingo. The Dance Dance Revolution series fits in to the music game genre perfectly, if not embodies it. It combines freakishly catchy tunes, simple gameplay, a Master’s Degree in Rhythm, a lot of style and yes, physical movement. You see, in DDR, your controller consists of 4 arrows on the floor in front of you. Up, right, left and down. The screen consists of arrows floating up to permanent arrows at the top of the monitor. When those arrows collide with the permanent ones, you have to step on the corresponding arrow. You are then given a mark, depending on how accurate your step was.

I know what you’re thinking. “This can’t be too hard. If the game has time to judge your every step, there can’t be too many.” Wrong again. This is a CPU grading you, not a person. A quick flash of ‘Great!’ or ‘Boo!’ doesn’t bog the game down at all. And you don’t just step, you jump. That’s right, Mr. Lazy, two arrows can come up at the same time. You have to hop across the platform, paying extreme attention to your commands, because too many wrong moves sends your meter down, and when it runs out... BZZZT! The machine kicks you off, and you hang your head in shame, walking away, as the aforementioned cute person giggles at your defeat.

“Okay, okay, but where does the music, rhythm and style come in?” Right now. You see, you aren’t just hitting commands. You’re hitting commands timed to music, so you actually are dancing to a song. Most of the arrows are on a main beat, which lulls you into a false sense of security, destroying you with a half beat and a third beat from nowhere. And, yes, style? Well, no one is going to cheer for you if you’re just shuffling your feet like a zombie. You’ve got to get some arm, body, head movement into it. Make unnecessary steps, flourish and push your heart to the limit. Look away from the machine for a second and give your crowd a wink. You can even go so far as to stop freestyling, and choreograph specific moves for specific songs. Whatever. Just do it cool. Don’t just play DDR. Dance it.

DDR 3rd Mix has an equally eye-catching cabinet as its newer brethren. Flashing speakers, light-up buttons, a good-sized screen displaying bright colors, a large dancing stage complete with safety rails... and, hopefully, loud music. Unfortunately, in my travels to many a machine and conversations with other players, I have found that not all arcades believe music is needed in a music game. While, generally, music is blasted forward, hitting the players head-on and the crowds with scatter shots of sound, more cynical places turn down the machine’s sound. A lot. To points where you have to strain your ears to hear it, even when you’re playing. (I heard a story of a muted DDR cabinet once, but I highly doubt that...) I suppose some arcades think that the sound of pinball machines, guns, and zombies grunting in pain is more important than crazy tunes.

If you have an arcade that doesn’t believe in those unsound principals, however, it’s pretty easy to tell if an arcade has a DDR cabinet nestled somewhere in it. Despite how much I love my House of the Dead 2 and Time Crisis, neither of those games sports crazy beats by E-Rotic. Or the male prostitution goodness of Kind Kong and D Jungle Girls’ Boom Boom Dollar. DDR 3rd Mix is just overflowing with rocking music, ranging from J-Pop to J-Rock to Euro-Pop, with some disco and techno thrown in for good measure. Even if you aren’t fond of these genres in particular, it’s virtually impossible to step up to a 3rd Mix and not find a song you love.

...Graphics? There are graphics? Oh, yes... Those... The things on the screen behind the arrows... Sorry I forgot, but I’ve learned to tune out the backgrounds, and with good reason. They’re extremely distracting. When you’re hell-bent on stepping on those easy-to-see yellow arrows in the foreground, the psychedelic pictures displayed behind them can mess you up good. Which, I suppose, is the point. But, anyway, the backgrounds consist of your character floating around, tearing up the non-existent floor with mad steps, and bizarre, colorful, seemingly random slideshows of color. Though everything has a grainy touch, it’s barely noticeable. Assuming you can see the backgrounds while dancing.

Thankfully, there is no reason to ever stop playing DDR 3rd Mix. Ever. There are tons of songs, each with three difficulties to master, so there’s always something to challenge you. Even if, after a few years of non-stop play, you Perfect and master every song, you can always challenge another DDRer to a match (The cabinet supports 2 players.) or create a new routine. With an easy-to-navigate interface, traditional DDR gameplay, and the second best soundtrack in the series, Dance Dance Revolution 3rd Mix is one game that you’ll never get tired of.

But you might get tired. :p

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/16/02, Updated 08/16/02