Many people think that Dance Dance Revolution is responsible for the proliferation of music (or "rhythm action") games and their expensive custom peripherals. Not so! The new wave began as it so often does in Japanese arcades, with:



Beatmania! That's right, it's finally coming out in America, along with its special "DJ Controller." The E3 demo included a couple songs that have become familiar through DDR, and the Beatmania mix of the Metal Gear Solid main theme, in which Snake claims he is going to "kick your ass, beat and kill dem all." In 1996, PaRappa The Rapper (which really actually started it all) inspired Konami's Beatmania series, in which you press buttons and "scratch" a turntable according to the falling note marks. And only ten years later, America gets to experience the addictively obsessive-compulsive non-simulator for itself! I mused aloud to a Konami rep that perhaps, if Beatmania does well, we might eventually get a US version of Pop'N Music! He laughed at me. :(



The hippest, hottest*, tiniest nightclub around: CLUB REVOLUTION! *(it was not air-conditioned.) What goes on within its exclusive walls?? Prepare your eyes for THIS:



I'm sorry that picture is enormous. (I have a huge monitor, and it is hard to judge these things.) But you simply must experience the full impact of Karaoke Party Revolution's "Sing And Dance" Mode. YOU CANNOT LOOK AWAY. I had never before played Karaoke Revolution, but I have quite a bit of Dance Dance Revolution experience, so when I stepped up to the plate I unwisely ignored the advice of the guy giving the demonstration and chose the hardest difficulty. I wasn't going to let anybody underestimate the power of dance! Expecting the arrows to scroll up the left side of the screen like DDR, I was confronted instead by a stream of arrows flying in one column from the right! I relied only on instinct, gusto, and the "dance magic" technique I mastered in Michael Jackson's Moonwalker to Sing And Dance my squatty ass off to A-Ha's "Take On Me." Remarkably, the game decided I was only 7% bad, which leads me to believe that I had accidentally activated Flattery Mode.



In case your eyes could not believe what they were seeing and your brain chose not to parse those words, this game is called Parfait Station. PARFAIT STATION. It promises "a new type of shooting MMORPG," which also just so happens to be "the answer" to "how to make a better tomorrow." From Webzen, the makers of "Wiki," the non-user-editable game that got press for looking too much exactly like Wind Waker.



Yes. Yes we do. Note that some of those people have animal heads. That is kind of screwed up, even for Katamari. NOT A JOKE: Winamp just randomly chose File #4846 out of 11,265: Yu Miyake - Katamari March. Even computers with no emotions [heart] Katamari. We are speechless.