Dancing Stage SuperNOVA2 (PS2) (Europe)

MAT'S ENTERTAINMENT
... but don't expect much that's new in Dancing Stage Supernova 2

PUB Konami DEV Konami ETA September WEB www.konami.com

In America, the Dancing Stage series of dancemat games is called Dance Dance Revolution. We're not sure why the name was changed for the British market, but it's a good thing it was. If they'd released Dancing Stage Supernova 2 with the word 'revolution' on the pack. Trading Standards might have had to get involved, because this is no revolution.

Konami has stuck to the formula of singleplayer, two-player, workout mode and challenges that's made the Dancing Stage franchise such a success, adding only a few extra trimmings to justify the '2' in the title. Well, if it ain't broke, as they say, why fix it?

The most interesting feature is a singleplayer option that lets one person use two dancemats at once. Great if you're a dancemat expert who wants to practise for showing off in the arcades of Tokyo; even better if you're a human/spider hybrid who finds a single four-direction mat cramps your eight-legged style.

Tune up

Apart from that, you've got a new career mode, a new type of challenge that takes a 'four strikes and you're out' tack, and the option for online multiplayer with up to four people going at it hammer and tongs.

Plus of course, there's a bunch of new songs to throw shapes to. This includes plenty of the sub-Eurovision techno-cheese and high energy J-Pop that we've come to expect from dancemat games, of course. But there are other genres too - probably the widest selection of music types we've ever seen in a dance game. Yes, people, this is where dancemat goes emo.

Rather less positively, the other main thing that's changed since the last game is that there are now no real videos for any of the songs. Sure, the ones in the first game looked more than a bit pony, and we said as much in our review of it. But we'd have preferred to see them improved than rather dropped altogether. It shows an ironic laziness in a game that demands a lot of effort from us.

Sophie Mason