Video Game / Danz Base

Ready to dance?

Danz Base is Taiwanese game developer IGS's arcade-exclusive motion-based dance rhythm game, first unveiled in 2013 to the greater Chinese market before being exported a year later in 2014^note to much fanfare in many parts of Southeast Asia - in fact it became a breakout hit in Indonesia to the point that IGS held the first official Danz Base contest outside greater China there◊.

Now, just in case you haven't noticed, the gameplay of this game may remind you of Dance Masters for a number of reasons - mainly how both games tend to utilize circular notes in their routines^{still confused?}Compare this routine, which comes from this very game, to this routine from ''Dance Evolution Arcade'' (which is basically Dance Masters for arcades). And now you know., not to mention the the use of announcers both in-game and on the song selection and results screens. But while the two games share their own similarities, there are also differences in how they function, with Dance Masters starting out as an Xbox 360 game before getting an arcade port and this very game having remained arcade-only for its entire existence^note though it hasn't received significant updates since 2018 but we won't get into that now. There's also the game's song catalog, which contains more K-pop and western licenses than its Konami counterpart^note and need we mention the numerous Mandopop licenses in this case?.

This game provides examples of:

• Announcer Chatter: this happens in multiple aspects of the game^{some examples}in the "Ready to Dance" screen that pops up after the song and difficulty level have been chosen and the online matching stage's complete, as well as in the results screen when you've beat your own high score/managed to get a full combo/won a Live Battle and also in-game whenever combos are made.
• Anti-Frustration Features: after the game's diamond deposit and log-in bonus services ended at the end of 2017 IGS made it a point to make songs that were previously only unlockable using diamonds free-to-play on an in-game account with later updates^{an example}when "Fly" was made playable by default when logged in with an account along with the addition of "Shoujo Byou"◊.
• Celebrity Toons: the game's player character version of Pikotaro, Mr. Piko◊^note also doubles as Not Quite Starring in that he doesn't have any spoken lines in-game, not unlike the other player characters.
• Creator Provincialism: given the developer's basis in Taiwan, it's no surprise that a significant portion of Danz Base's song catalog happens to be Mandopop.
• Crossover: As of the latest update from 2018:
  • There's "Splash Free", one of the ending songs of the 2013 Kyoto Animation anime Free!. And "Hare Hare Yukai" from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya as well.
  • The memetic Pikotaro song "Pen Pineapple Apple Pen" makes an appearance in the game too. Not to mention the Wagakki Band hit song "Senbonzakura"^note it's not the Hatsune Miku version though.
• Derivative Differentiation: while Danz Base uses circular notes in its dance routines like Dance Masters does, the former still manages to stand out in that a significant chunk of its song catalog is either western licenses, K-pop, or Mandopop^note although it still has its fair share of songs with Japanese lyrics, which is another similarity it shares with Dance Masters; there's a wider variety of user customization options; and the Master difficulty's the highest possible you can get for a song (unlike in Dance Masters where the harder-than-Master-difficulty Stealth difficulty takes that crown).
• Global Currency: the in-game diamonds^note although given the discontinuation of the in-game diamond deposit service at the end of 2017 their only use became for the shop on the game's website, which in turn was discontinued on March 1, 2018.
• Harder Than Hard: the Master difficulty, which basically requires you to memorize every single step in a song's dance routine (unlike the three lower difficulties which only require you to move your body based on the notes displayed).
• Real Song Theme Tune: another typical rhythm game-genre example, ranging from western hits like Flo Rida's "Low" and Ariana Grande's "Break Free" to K-pop songs like GOT7's "Hard Carry" to the obvious inclusion of Mandopop songs. And need we mention how the song catalog features J-pop and anime songs like "Senbonzakura", "Wake Up", and "Splash Free"? Not to mention music from other parts of the world like Saykoji's "Jomblo" and Yinglee Srijumpol's "Your Heart for My Number".
• Spectacular Spinning: the Spin note that tends to appear in routines from the Hard difficulty onwards^{an example}Roly Poly in Copacabana Hard.