Breakdance harks back to the days when a lot
of people thought it was fun to self-inflict injuries
of all kinds -- including brain damage -- to the sound
of trendy, aptly named 'break' music.
There
are four games, and in the first the objective is to
clock up a high score by closely following the steps
of Hot Feet -- the 'hottest breaker in the neighbourhood'
-- whose moves get progressively more complex as the
score rises -- a bit like 'Simon says'. A practice mode
is available for you to gain familiarity with the various
moves (achieved by manipulation of the joystick). Speed
of reaction is not important, but accuracy is. If a
player makes a wrong move, the message 'Wack Out' appears
and the score is reset to zero.
The
second game takes the first a stage further. The ferocious
Rocket Crew are invading your 'turf'. Various breakdance
moves must be copied in order to scare them off before
they throw you into the river. The gang's dancers must
be taken on in successive breaking battles, until finally
they are all defeated.
'Perfections
Dance Puzzle' is the third exercise, like a more complex
version of the first game but with a time limit. The
player competes with Boogaloo Brewster, King of breakdancing.
Basically, it's a one to one battle where the opponent
performs a whole sequence of moves that have to be worked
out and followed against the clock.
The
fourth game is non-competitive. You choreograph an entire
routine and perform it on stage. There are two screens.
The first is a menu screen from which all the moves
for the dance are chosen, allowing fourteen possible
moves usable in any combination and repeated any number
of times up to a maximum sequence of 251 moves. Each
time a move is chosen, a dancer appears on the lower
part of the screen to demonstrate it.
When
a routine is complete, the 'Go Dance' option changes
the screen to a stage. The joystick is used to move
the character around the stage while the moves are being
performed, and the movements can be speeded up or slowed
down. Dances can be saved out to tape and reloaded for
later use.
The
fifth part of the game, the 'Grand Loop', is a successive
combination of the first four stages, giving the game
a sense of logical progression. All the breakdances
are accompanied by what the instruction booklet calls
breakdancin' music. Finally, the instructions
give a guide to performing some of the real moves mentioned
in the game.
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