Ryyudo

That "I Fucked Up!" guy

  • He/They

That Twitch dot tv dot com streamer. That once FGC commentator and memer with some bangers.

On the front cover of The Lara-Su Chronicles Beginnings by Ken Penders (top-right)

Avatar by @drdubz
Header by @whohostedthis


Bsky
ryyudo.bsky.social

Ryyudo
@Ryyudo

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.


Ryyudo
@Ryyudo

Planning on starting it this or next week 😌 The job search (obviously?) took priority and still is, but all this is just to say that the project hasn't left!


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in reply to @Ryyudo's post:

My one friend, her parents were huge gamers and RPG nerds so they had every Sega console, then Nintendo from SNES on and of course got really into the Playstation. So if a new game took her fancy, she got it and that included Bust-A-Groove. And since this was 1998 and DDR wouldn't hit the US for another year it was simply not like anything else at the time.

It's pretty different than DDR anyway, but once DDR made a splash that's what everyone would compare it to. I think the bigger variety of musical styles in BaG's soundtrack is more fun.