Prepare!
Dance Masters (AKA Dance Evolution outside of America) combines the songs of the DanceDanceRevolution series, with the general movements of Para Para dancers, and announcers that must commentate on everything. Dance Masters is Konami's foray with using the Xbox 360's new Kinect device. The game is deceptively simple: follow the on-screen commands using your whole body. But like DDR, simple does not mean easy.While it may have been eclipsed in popularity in North America by its competition (the highly-established Just Dance, and Harmonix's Dance Central), Dance Masters was popular enough on the Xbox 360 in Japan to spawn an updated arcade version in 2012, Dance Evolution Arcade (which is played pretty much like the Xbox 360 version, right down to its use of Kinect, though connected to a PC instead of course)
Unfortunately for Arcade players, eAMUSEMENT service for it was discontinued after August 31, 2016. Fortunately, "offline kits" were made available to arcades carrying Arcade machines earlier that month, so that they can continue to run the game without eAMUSEMENT service.
Prepare... for tropes:
- Announcer Chatter: Still around.
- Downloadable Content: Alt. Clothing packs and a Master mode Difficulty.
- Fanservice: The mirrored mini dress.
- Harder Than Hard: Stealth mode. No markers are shown at all: instead, you must match the on-screen model the whole way in fear of missing a judgment.
- Master Mode. Like the Extreme mode but it feels how Insane Difficulty of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and Hard ROCK Difficulty of Elite Beat Agents does minus the flipped icons.
- Level Grinding: In the arcade version, Chocolate Smile and TA・DA ☆ YO・SHI start with only the Light difficulty unlocked, and you have to play Light difficulty once, then keep playing the game to fill up a meter to unlock the harder difficulties progressively. Later songs fix this slightly by having difficulties up to Extreme pre-unlocked; you only have to grind for Master and Stealth.
- Market-Based Title: Known as Dance Evolution outside North America.
-
Nintendo Hard: The harder difficulties can feel this way. - Recycled Soundtrack: Much of the game's soundtrack came from other DanceDanceRevolution games (particularly the Hottest Party games and X in most cases). The Arcade version carries on with this, but also adds more J-pop licenses and a few more crossovers.
- Rhythm Game
- Sexy Whatever Outfit: The mirrored dress looks like it's based on a disco ball.
- Spiritual Successor: Primarily to ParaParaParadise, a similarly motion-based, but short-lived dance game that used an array of 5 infrared beams for sensing. The game was ahead of its time, given its use of the "mirror the on-screen dancer" concept that most motion-controlled dance games use (but combined with the arrow paradigm of DDR). A few songs from Para Para Paradise ("Yesterday", "Night of Fire", and "CAN'T STOP FALLIN' IN LOVE (super euro version)") made it to Dance Masters and/or Evolution, with Para Para-esque routines too.
- In 2012, Konami released "Rhythm Party" (a.k.a. "Boom Boom Dance" in Japan) as an Xbox Live Arcade title. While still using Kinect, this game however, has more of a "freestyle" feel, as the goal is to simply hit targets when balls fly into them to the music.
- The game is this to DanceDanceRevolution; according to Naoki, since you actually dance.
