Superstar Dance Club

Superstar Dance Club is a rhythm game originally released as a budget title on PlayStation in the early '00s. There's quite a bit of interesting history surrounding it that Wikipedia won't tell you, actually. In Japan it was originally a Simple 1500 game known as "Love Para: Lovely Tokyo Para-Para Musume", developed by Warashi and published by Media Rings in 2001, with XS games localising and releasing it in North America in 2002, and Europe in 2003. It's existence is mainly to cash in on the Para-Para dancing fad in Japan at the time. A lot of that cultural significance was understandably lost in XS Games' localisation, which is what this Steam version is based on, but you can still see elements of early '00s Japanese culture in the game's visuals. Youtuber Vysethedetermined2 explains this game's history in more detail in this video's description. You can also see what the game looks like running on original hardware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2dHnvkOtq4 But as for the game itself, I'm coming into this from a 2015 perspective, as I hadn't even heard of it beforehand. So, as a 2015 release, it actually stands up quite well! The graphics are charming and have aged well despite the low resolution, the music is catchy Eurobeat-inspired tunes, and the gameplay hold up well too! It's not too complicated, you just press the buttons to the beat, and occasionally the button prompts change positions on the screen to keep you on your toes. It starts out easy, but gets very challenging in the later stages! There are 7 stages in all, and each have three difficulty levels, so it's not a particularly long game, but at its original price of ¥1500, or indeed $5 USD on Steam, it's good value for the content you're getting. On the technical side, like all of Console Classics' PlayStation rereleases, this release runs in a PS1 emulator with no enhancements, so it's exactly how it was back in 2001 for better or for worse. Since it's a 2D game, raising the internal resolution would only introduce graphical issues anyway. To make the game more presentable on modern systems, it comes with its own launcher with a bunch of preset graphical and sound settings, and control profiles for a variety of controllers. It even adds Steam Achievements. Unfortunately, you can't remap the controls to your liking, so Xbox 360 controller users are stuck using the analog stick to navigate the menus, but it also supports the PS3 controller without requiring it to be remapped to XInput controls, so that's a plus if you want to play with the original control layout. While the presentation is a bit bare bones and could stand for some more customisation, the game itself is very well preserved, and for retro games I feel preserving exactly how they were is important, so I'm pretty happy with this release. Do I recommend it? Absolutely. If you like rhythm games, this one may be simple, but it's great value and definitely fun and charming.

I FIGURED IT OUT, THE CONTROLS ARE ON THE NUMPAD! 5 = X 4 = Square 6 = O 8 = Triangle After playing through nearly the whole game, I must say this game is TIGHT. IT'S SO TIGHT. HIGHLIGHT: http://www.twitch.tv/p_tog/v/9759351

PS時代に生まれたあの音ゲー 「LOVE☆パラ ラブリー東京パラパラ娘」がsteamに登場！ 起動しただけであの時代の空気が感じられて… もう満足したから遊ばなくていいよね… キーボードで遊ぶ際のキー配置（テンキーの8456が△□×○）を調べるまで まともに遊べない素敵仕様でした

2001年にPS（勿論初代）で発売された「LOVE★パラ　ラブリー東京パラパラ娘」の英語ローカライズ版である。ストアページに表示はないが吹き替えも一応日本語。 そもそも極東日本の中でも局地的なブームでしかなかったパラパラを輸出してどうするんだ、という根本的疑問が頭をよぎるが、よっぽど権利が安かったのだろうか。 可愛くてポップなデザインとパラパラというジャンルでターゲットがギャルであることからパラッパラッパーをパクったカジュアルゲーだろうと誰もが予想するのに反して、鬼のような難易度を持つリズムゲー史上最凶の魔物なので注意。チュートリアルやマニュアルがないのも初見殺しに拍車をかけている。 わけもわからず30秒でゲームオーバーになった被害者が大勢居らっしゃるでしょうが大丈夫です。ボクも同じです。 ルールは単純。 矢印で指定されたコマンドが光って一瞬小さくなるので、その小さくなった瞬間を狙ってボタンを押すだけ。 タイミングがズレると減点されて、ステージにいくつかあるタイムリミットまでに合格点に達していなければ容赦なくゲームオーバー。 聞いた感じだと普通の印象だろうが判定がシビアなので、実際にプレイしてみれば80年代アーケードゲームばりの歯応えと緊張感を味わうことになる。 素材の味を楽しんでもらうためなのか、初代PSのSD解像度に対応したグラフィックがそのまま手付かずで収録されており、とても見れたもんじゃないので小さいウインドウモードで遊ぶのを推奨。 また、Steamでは珍しいDUALSHOCK対応のゲームである。というか画面の表示が○×△□というまんまPSのボタンなので箱コンだと多分やりづらい。 なんだかんだ言ってリズムゲームなので慣れればそれなりに楽しい。 入力を成功させても演出がまったく変わらないのはどうかと思うが、失敗すると曲の途中だろうが問答無用でゲームオーバーなのでクリアするだけでそれなりに達成感も得られる。 ギャルサーとスチーマーを両立させる奇行種にはオススメ。

IT DOESN'T HAVE A TUTORIAL SO HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW HOW TO PLAY IT

This game is my childhood in a nutshell! I remember playing this game as a child on the PlayStation 1 and spending so much time playing through each level over and over again. Although this game feels shorter than i remember, I'll take that as a sign that my skills have improved massively. No tutorial but a great button pressing rhythm game.

WARNING: THE GAME IS RIDICULOUSLY DIFFICULT! PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK. IT MAY BREAK YOUR KEYBOARD AND/OR CONTROLLER. (Oh, and good luck earning the achievements in this game)

一個超級老的PlayStation跳舞遊戲，按了老半天，所有按鍵都按了，就是無法開始。 適合作紀念和收藏卻不適合玩的遊戲。

tl;dr this game is worth the dollar just so you can marvel at how horrible it is. I have no way to explain the positive reviews. If this game was your childhood, you were seriously starved for video games to play. From my very first glance at the little cover image when this game popped onto my screen as a Steam gift, my impression of Superstar Dance Club was that it had to be a Dadaist statement, not an actual game. The ridiculous title and hideous art style suggested that the creator was either an utterly talentless "indie developer" trying to be ironic, or a colorblind virgin with an art style primarily influenced by Astro Boy and Mew Mew Kissy Cutie Black. To get this out of the way: the gameplay of Superstar Dance Club has two different sequences of buttons at the top of the screen, and the game tells you at the last second which sequence comes next. The two sequences do not change over the duration of the song, and buttons are always pressed rhythmically on the downbeat. So it's a really stupid and boring system, but don't get me wrong, Bust a Groove had an even stupider core mechanic and Bust a Groove was awesome. The difference is that Bust a Groove is full of personality and has great music. Thanks to the simple enjoyment of tactile interaction with catchy songs, rhythm games almost can't help but be entertaining for at least a little while. As for Superstar Dance Club... ... well. The first song in Superstar Dance Club is one sickeningly cheerful measure of blaring synthesizer looped eight times. It's 30 seconds long, tops. I was a little curious about the rest of the songs--surely some of them would mix it up with different instrument voices or something--but the sync is so far off (and/or the timing is so strict) that I was not equal to the challenge of pressing the X button four times to make the lazily drawn waifu on the screen cycle between her five frames of "animation." So I said screw it and uninstalled. When I say that this game seems like a Dadaist statement, I mean that I could imagine someone creating this game as a way to sneer at people who think that the objective of game development is to create something that players enjoy. Superstar Dance Club is bad in a way that's much more than a lack of good qualities: what we have here is the Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff of rhythm games. It is a nega-game that finds creative ways to be unpleasant. Go ahead and buy it, I guess. Perhaps you will gain something from the experience.

The timing is so off it's nigh-unplayable.