Dancing Stage Fever - PlayStation

Amidst the flashing lights and flare-flapping bass drums of all the other dance-em-ups attempting to cash in on the recent bemani boom, veteran and inventor of the genre, Konami, is back with a new instalment of its long running Dancing Stage series. Obviously under no threat from the slew of new gimmicks trying to reinvent the genre, Konami has decided to stick solidly with its tried and tested gameplay formula, albeit with a host of new tunes to which you can strut your stuff.

For those of you not familiar with the concept, it's remarkably simple: Hit the right direction on the d-pad or, for the true Dancing Stage experience, step on the right part of the dance mat in time with the accompanying music and receive a score at the end, dependant on your performance. Work your way through an increasingly difficult assortment of levels, along the way showing off your Travolta-esque grooving ability or, as in some of our cases, looking like a complete burke.

New licensed tracks include Wannabe by The Spice Girls, Ace of Base's All That She Wants and a track called Virtuality, by Vbirds, which is taken from an animated series starring a group of dance fans that live in a Dancing Stage arcade machine. More importantly, the cheese factor has been upped significantly with the inclusion of a host of 1980s tunes and, as such, you can now shake your thang to the likes of Thin Lizzy, Squeeze and Madness. The game features 16 tracks in total, obviously including a collection of specially created tracks created by Konami's assorted development teams.

If you're a fan of such games then you must experience this latest addition to the Dancing Stage series - the Japanese art of musically-accompanied public humiliation doesn't get much better than this
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