I warned you this would happen. Okay, maybe I vaguely implied it. The fact of the matter is that another video game franchise is getting ready to hit the stage as a musical. This time, it’s everybody’s favorite rhythm game that got gamers off their butts to experience Japanese pop music, Dance Dance Revolution. Curse you, High School Musical! Your ability to instill the desire to create musicals will not cease!
Business, Game Design, Headlines, Music
Dance Dance Revolution was just about everyone’s first foray into rhythm gaming. Whether you care to admit it or not, you’ve probably given DDR a chance at some point in your life even if it was just one run of “Burning Heat” on easy. Most of us musically-inclined gamers moved on from DDR once a fun alternative sprouted up with the advent of a guitar controller, but it looks like Activision is intrigued by the idea of people sliding around their living rooms in their socks all over again and have trademarked the name Dance Hero.
Hey, put down that guitar controller for a second. Yeah, the Wiimote, too. Look toward that dusty corner of your bedroom, at the dance mat with all the arrows on it. Remember how much joy it used to give, before you realized you could have just as much fun with “star power” and not having to actually move around? Konami wants you to dust it off and get nostalgic, thanks to their new online community for DDR fans. The site is part of Konami’s year-long celebration of the tenth anniversary of their mega-hit dance rhythm game.
The average gamer may be surprised to learn that PC games for the visually impaired exist at all; video games for the blind seems like a contradiction in terms. However, dozens of companies, focused specifically on producing PC games for the blind (BSC Games, Bavisoft, GMA, Gamesfortheblind, to name a few), have been at it for the past decade. The only problem is that many of the titles that these companies have published are geared so specifically for the visually impaired that they are virtually unplayable by gamers with good vision. Historically, the sensory divide between blind and sighted players has carried over to the gaming world, thus preventing the two groups from ever playing digital games together… until now.
