Lately, I've been thinking about an old game series: Bust-A-Groove.
Bust-A-Groove 1 & 2, or Bust-A-Move: Dance & Rhythm Action 1 & 2 in Japan as the name was already claimed by two lil' guys before it released in the west, is a PlayStation 1 rhythm game released in 1998 and 1999/2000 respectively. These games rode off the genre-defining high of Parappa the Rapper and the continued successes of Um Jammer Lammy and Dance Dance Revolution going into the second game.
But what makes Bust-A-Groove special?
- A focus on dancing that pairs perfectly with the game's varied and great music.
- A versus experience that's more than a score attack by adding attack elements against an opponent.
- Unique characters (and stories) that stick in your memory and help you fall in love with the whole package.
So in this two-part Chost, I'm going to spend too-many words talking about the 3.5 games (as far as I know) that make up the Bust-A-Groove legacy.
Here I'll begin with an overview of the first two core games and how I came to love them. Then I'll move onto talking about each of the games in the second post.
How Bust-A Got Her Groove Back
Bust-A-Groove, or BaG, is considered a hybrid rhythm/fighting game.
BaG plays as a rhythm game the entire time, but in a direct competitive setting: You vs an opponent. You're given a list of inputs over your side of the screen. You input the buttons within the first box in order before pressing the final button in the second box on each fourth beat. The first box's rhythm does not matter. As long all the inputs are pressed in order before that fourth beat, you can do whatever (non)rhythm you want.
You get points for each move you successfully pull off which increases your combo gauge and applies a multiplier to moves' point values.
The song is interjected with solo segments where only one character plays for 2-4 measures and then the other character does. These always happen at the same time within a song around breakdowns or choruses. So these become important to play around and is where the "fighting" genre comes in.
Each character has an attack they can send over to the opponent by pressing R1 on the fourth beat instead of the shown button to dance. This sends over an attack to the opponent who must dodge it with R2 on the fourth beat, or volley it back with R1 in BaG2. If you're hit with the attack, your character will be knocked down and unable to dance for two measures, giving your opponent two measures to dance alone and get ahead in score.
To dip a bit into the meta aspect: You want to land an attack within two measures of a solo segment to get the most bang for your buck. If a player is down as they enter the solo segment, they forfeit their entire solo segment to the other player. And there's other small nuances in BaG that, ironically, mimic the knowledge and execution checks found in fighting game meta.
- How many moves you can fit into a section before a solo.
- How BaG 1's branching paths work for maximizing score.
- BaG 1's secret input solos (which are kinda just fucked up as a mechanic.)
- Perfect/Just Frame inputs for BaG2 additional points and how it's required to volley attacks back to the opponent.
I'll dive into these aspects and more in the next BaG Chost. So before this gets too long, let's move on from gameplay and talk about the funny characters.
Bustin' Makes Me Feel Good
From BaG 1's game manual (remember game manuals?):
All ten characters in Bust-A-Groove house the “dance energy groove-tron," a
mysterious jive power from outer space. As one of these characters, you must
dance rhythmically to beat a series of enemy dancers who become progressively
more challenging as you out-dance each competitor. Your goal is to become the
No1 dancer in the universe and BUST-A-GROOVE!
BaG's characters are late 90's comedy. They're sometimes strange, sometimes edgy, sometimes goofy, and they're perfect.
On one end, there's Heat. "Oh, that's his nickname"? Goodness no; his nickname is Fireboy.
He's the cool poster-boy of BaG 1 and 2 and was my favorite character as a kid (he oozes that specific 90's cool). He can control fire after getting into a horrible racing accident. You know, as you do.
On another end, there's Kelly (nickname "Baby Suit"). A sexy office worker who goes clubbing at night. She obtained a loan to make her latex baby suit that she goes clubbing in. Real talk: If she'd been in a furry suit she'd be an incredibly relatable modern day icon. Too bad she instead cosplays as a cop in BaG2, but her 2P costume rules.
On the edgy end, Bi-O is an interesting continuity from the BaG1 character Gas-O with them being father and son. After getting in a fight over Gas-O never taking off his mask, Bi-O reached for an axe(???). Gas-O defended himself by spraying his dad with highly-corrosive chemicals and, effectively, turned him into a zombie. If that wasn't bad enough, Gas-O then took the axe and slammed it into the back of Bi-O's head.
Tsutomu is an overly-mature, intelligent kid and 99% of his class hates him. As his dad is a professional baseball player and his mom an high-ranking government official, he's in a class status of his own. No matter, his goals are to win the power of the Groove-Tron to become class president and marry his teacher when he's 18 (the 1% for the 1%, see what I did there? Anyone?) Oh, also he wets himself when he gets angry; his ending finishes on this goofy note.
They have memorable styles, looks, and it's all driven home with how they dance. Heat breakdances, Kelly does club grinding and soul bump, Bi-O appropriately rocks pop & lock with zombie elements, Strike represents hip-hop and shuffle, Tsutomu embraces house with occasional maracas. More than just grooving avatars on the screen, the characters are characters, but they're also representing a world of dance. These details make the whole package a lot more fun to embrace; details that are a rarity in the rhythm game space today. All their personalities and dance styles fits right into their stage themes, tying it all together.
Look out, Gordon! Hotted Jams ahead! Beats! Big ones!
What's a rhythm game without good music? (Stepping Stage.) Matching the various dance styles, the game features various music genres. It was handled with love and care, down to recording English lyrics when released outside of Japan. Furthermore, I prefer a number of songs in English, so it's not always a slapdash effort like one may expect of the era.
From the drama of Kitty-N's BaG1 theme, the Brazilian festival charms of Tsutomu's theme, and the hip-hop storytelling that's comedic but flows clean in Hamm's theme, BaG hits it all and likely what most remember and love about the game the most.
I'll have my thoughts on BaG 1 vs BaG 2's OSTs, but both OSTs are absolutely worth listening to... but ideally in game. ;-) Hopefully it pulls you in as much as it did me.
What It Means to Love a Game
Honestly, I can't remember how I first came across Bust-A-Groove itself. Likely my brother-esque nephew, who got me into Parappa the Rapper, introduced Bust-A-Groove to me as well. The swath of musical genres accompanied with a variety of dancing styles and character designs oozed an aesthetic that was memorable and eye-catching. I greatly enjoyed the game, and if you asked 10 year-old me if he loved it he would say he did. Little did I know I hadn't come to love it yet; to truly become infatuated.
America Online (AOL) chatrooms were the thing at the time. Internet connectivity became more widely available and I got into (poorly) role-playing in those chat rooms.
During my many forays into AOL chat room role-playing, I came across one with a game I'd recently played: Bust-A-Groove RP.
At this time of early widespread internet and my young age, I didn't think of the internet as a place to connect with folks with other niche interests. I just expected to be the weird outlier. I was a black kid growing up in white suburbia. I was deep into video games and anime. I was alone. I didn't know how to share my interests with others and being alone with those interests only drove me deeper into them.
So seeing this role-play rope dangling in front of me to connect with anyone else on an offbeat game was an opportunity I took. There I met Becca, roleplaying as Shorty (the character pictured at the top of this Chost) and we became quick and close friends for many years. She had encyclopedic knowledge about Bust-A-Groove and had her fingers on the pulse of news and gameplay videos from small Geocities websites. Bust-A-Groove 2 was game that I realized came out in Japan significantly earlier than when they came out in the U.S. and I followed the news any websites posted about the Japanese release. Bust-A-Groove 2 was also the first game I ever pre-ordered when it came stateside. We talked about the songs we liked from each, and why we like or dislike the characters we do (and holy crap have my opinions changed as an adult lmao.)
It clicked: I loved this game. I just needed an outlet who shared that same excitement.
Bust-A-Groove sticks with me to this day and likely forever will. That love of being able to ramble on it forever is also the reason why this Chost is a two-parter: It got way too long for anyone to feasibly read (and for me to reasonably organize).
So check in later (a week. Maybe two.) for part 2:
