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I gained some dangerous knowledge today. It turns out that Dance Evolution Arcade cabs are just fancy Windows PCs with two XBox Kinects plugged into them. Some kind soul got ahold of one of the cabs a few years ago and has dumped the game files onto the internet. So in theory, all I need is a couple of kinects and I can play all the Dance Evolution I want in my own living room.

So, I love rhythm games. I played a heck of a lot of Dance Dance Revolution in my late teens/early twenties, I played Guitar Hero and Rock Band back in college. I frequent convention game rooms as often as possible when I go to conventions. In the 21 years that I've been going to conventions I have seen the game rooms go from literally people bringing in their personal games to play, to local arcades bringing in one or two arcade machines (usually fighting games, sometimes DDR cabs) to full blown spectacles with rows of jubeat machines, claw machines, and at least a DDR cab or two (or DDR's inferior cousin Pump It Up). Around 2017 or so, a game called Dance Evolution started to pop up as well. It's a dancing game played with an Xbox Kinect. You score points by essentially being in the right pose at the right time. It doesn't track motion, but obviously if you know the dance and are actively performing it you get a higher score. It's a lot of fun, great exercise, and obviously a good way to learn dances. It was EVERYWHERE in convention game rooms... right up until the pandemic. Pre 2020, it was everywhere. Post 2020 the cabs had vanished. No conventions seemed to have them.

Well, Kamicon of all conventions this weekend (in Birmingham Alabama) actually had a Dance Evolution machine! And even though I'm 5+ years out of practice I absolutely nailed the six or so songs that I managed to learn in the pre-pandemic days. I didn't realize just how much I missed playing!

Dance Evolution did have an English release on XBox 360 called Dance Masters or something, but it does't have all the songs that the Arcade version does (namely all the Jpop songs, the ones I actually like to play), plus I'd have to buy an entire XBox 360 and a Kinect, so I have negative interest in owning it. So as soon as I get home to my PC you can bet I'm going to download those files and start looking on Ebay for a used Kinect or two.

Is 2026 going to be the year I get back into rhythm games for real? Maybe. I've still got working dance mats for DDR and a Guitar Hero controller...

#rhythm games #dance evolution