Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA

"SuperNOVA, not so super"

"SuperNOVA, not so super"

While it is understandable that everytime a new Dance Dance Revolution installment is released, Konami has to balance the game in such a way that it appeals to not only fanatics but also to new players. This is evident in every US version and for the most part is easy to overlook. However, Dance Dance Revolution: SuperNOVA Is somewhat of a mystery. It's appearance, it's sound, it's feel is obviously catered towards newbies, and quite honestly, this is the most uniquely "American" song list to ever be release. Yet something is unsettling, the learning curve and difficulty to actually enjoy this game to its fullest seems to benefit only a select few dancers. Let me explain..

Gameplay: 4/10

Why so low? The game is still the game, there's nothing inherently wrong with the gameplay: it's still the same arrows and everything from the scoring [minus some insignificant adjustments] and layout is identical to every mix since the first. What gives the gameplay such a low score is something I mentioned in the very beginning of the review: the learning curve and the actual difficulty of the game itself. The main portion of the game is the new "Stellar Master Mode", in which the player hops from world to world completing trials and besting challenges. It's pretty much Dance Master Mode with a makeover, however, here's the key difference: Dance Master Mode is just long and a little tedious, while Stellar Master Mode is not only long, and tedious, but amazingly difficult to complete. While it is better in the sense that the Stellar Master Mode allows you to choose the songs you want to play in order to beat the trials [while Dance Master Mode forced certain songs down your throat] it is completely worse in the sense that while some challenges are ridiculously easy [such as get a C or better on a basic song] most are either based on dumb luck or are beyond challenging. Trials such as "play 5 songs in a row with a male character" or "play X song via random selection" are not based on the player's skill, only repetition and pure random circumstance. What is really unsettling though, is that most of the challenges are skill based, and only the most anal of players can complete them with ease.

Here lies my -real- problem. I have been playing Dance Dance Revolution for the past five years about. I own a few Japanese mixes, some of the US mixes, and -love- the game. However, I've never "devoted" myself enough to actually excel at it. I can pass most all songs on heavy with A's, some B's. I know the mechanics of the game well enough, my footwork and positioning for the most part is pretty good. I can't AA songs consistently or memorize charts though. If I could I'd be playing this game for money. Overall, I have good stamina and am good enough to "wow" a few people in a novice's arcade. The -real- problem is that I am a only a small percentage of the population, most casual players [the people who Konami tailors these US mixes for] aren't as good as I am, even though I'm not as good as most of the real Dance Dance Revolution community. In other words, the people who can actually pass the skill based challenges such as "AA an expert song" or "AA a song on 5x reverse" are an even more extreme minority. Yet Konami made it so that only these people can unlock everything this game has to offer? I'm a "decent" player, but I simply can not get an AA most the time. Because of this, I can not pass most of the world challenges or "showdowns" as the game calls them. All I've been able to unlock are useless hard to read arrows and outfits for the "Pix" character. Now imagine if I was a newbie...I'd never even see half the song list.

Song List: 4/10

Besides the fact that unlocking most of it is a chore and requires the player to be extremely accurate [which with most home pads, even the bundled one modified, is simply impossible] the fact is that the SuperNOVA song list is just horrible. It doesn't look good, sound good, or play good. While the Extreme 2 set list was nothing short of amazing, with the release of long awaited songs such as Butterfly and Boom Boom Dollar, and most of the better songs from the EXTREME arcade mix, plus half way decent licenses, the SuperNOVA set list is lacking in every way. Need I say it again, every song on Extreme 2 is playable, even the ones you thought would be unbearable ended up being absolute treats. The sheer joy of booting up and FINALLY seeing Butterfly on a US mix, unlocking Candy <3 after being so jealous of X-Box owners who did have it, and stepping away at songs like Cartoon Heroes and Speed Over Beethoven, was worth of price of admission alone. However, the SuperNOVA set list is filled with annoying, needless licenses, less than stellar [haha] Konami originals, and more than enough songs missing. I will admit there are some treats on the set list: several BeForU songs, some of the incredible Beatmania and Pop N Music tracks we barely get to see here, another Captain Jack, and even "Freckles" from all the way back in the Japanese MAX games. It's not enough though. A complete lack of actual Dancemania tracks, little or nothing at all that has been released only on X-Box, and still none of the licenses we've been waiting for more than a few years, the problems keep stacking up. What's worse is that there's just some songs that should have been great and ended up being absolutely grotesque. Come Clean? The original is a -good- song and you thought, "Hey, it's Naoki, so it'll be even better", but NO! They slow down the tempo, deform the vocals, and make it just plain boring. Then there's all the real problems; another boring Crystal Method song, a slow paced Kelly Clarkson track, an ear grating version of "Shout".

Once again though, my -real- problem? They should have just called this "DDR: aging degenerate 20 something 1980's mix". I have no problem with "hit" licenses to bring in newbies, in fact I expected "Toxic" by Britney Spears. I expected, WANTED, Cascada's Every Time We Touch. I heard there was going to be Beyonce's "Pink Panther" single and "Don't Cha" by the Pussycat Dolls. I wouldn't have minded The Veronicas "4Ever" or maybe a poppy Shania Twain song. However, I need to say it; Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Video Killed the Radio Star, that David Bowie song, none of those have ANY place on a DDR mix. There's some songs I try to avoid, 80's music in general I try to avoid, yet these days just from playing SuperNOVA, I feel like killing myself because I can't get the snippets of "Video Killed" and Cyndi Lauper out of my head. That's the least of it though, you want to know the worst of it? Fall Out Boy. What in the world does a amateurish, whiney emo band like Fall Out Boy have to do with DDR? This DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION, I realize the song is called Dance Dance, but we want to dance to pop, to dance pop, to trance, to electronic, to euro. We even like dancing to J-pop, and we love hip hop too. And we don't mind rock, when it's hard core, pump up your blood stream, rock. But when it's some doughy pasty white boy singing in a falsetto with hideous guitar work, it has no place, at all. And Franz Ferdinand? ----ing college kids.

Graphics: 1/10

Oh my God, what did they do the characters? Worse, you can't even pick them. While Extreme 2 had a wonderful character selection menu, and TONS of character, SuperNOVA cuts the list of characters by more than half, replaces them with 20 variations of Pix, and makes the few characters they left in hideous. Mind you, Emi is really cute in this one, but that's it. Rage looks like some ghetto wanna be, Alice isn't even in it, and Jenny looks like Where's Waldo. And the graphics themselves? They got rid of the insane wacky Japanese videos real DDR fans know and love, they're replaced with strange prison looking like square rooms with little to no detail. No more unique animations to each song, but just stale repetitive rooms where the only thing that changes is the color. Oh, and the music videos are back, except they're only for the old songs, and they're blurry, and stupid looking. I might not mind if it was a minute of a half of Kelly and Hilary dancing, but it's either Cyndi Lauper looking like a drugged up fool, dozens of ugly people dancing with David Bowie, or a doughy pasty white boys moshing at a wedding looking depressed. If you're going to do music videos, bring back Kylie Minogue and the Captain Jack. You think because CJ died, they'd do a tribute to him, put tons of his songs in the game and put the music videos in, but no. Oh, and on a minor note, they screwed up the fonts and menu arrays, they look..weird..too big or too small, I don't know. Lastly, the arrows, why did they have to put in so many stupid arrows? Tulips? Grids? Birds?

Overall: 3/10

The bottom line is that SuperNOVA is quite honestly the first mix done wrong. It makes the original Dance Dance Revolution and Konamix seem down right godly, it even makes Disney Mix down righe bearable. After playing SuperNOVA, even Extreme [US] and MAX are satisfying. MAX2 and Extreme2 are beautiful, the kind of beautiful that makes you cry, after playing SuperNOVA. Quite honestly, I'd rather play Oha Star [yes, the kid's DDR on PSOne Japanese] because it has cute songs and crazy characters. If I had to sum it up, here's the deal. Imagine if there was a new Karaoke Revolution, and it came with a tiny little song list, and in order to be able to play all the songs, and access everything the game has to offer, the game made you sing a complete aria spot on, then made you do an entire Bach chorale by ear, and on top of that made you do four octave scale exercises with no errors whatsoever. Or a Street Fighter game, in which the only way you can unlock Akuma and a picture gallery, is by fully parying Chun Li's super art with a dying Ken. Better yet, a Pokemon game which makes you beat the entire game with a level 1 Metapod, just to catch Pikachu and Bulbasaur. That's what SuperNOVA is, besides the "makes you want to die" music, and the fact that everything Extreme 2 did right [which quite possibly, Extreme 2 is the ONLY US mix even close to a Japanese one] went down the drain, it's enough to ruin the entire game.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 10/05/06