Bust a Groove is a hybrid music/fighting game combined PaRappa the Rapper-like rhythm-based gameplay with fighting game elements, including special moves designed to damage the opponent and a focus on head-to-head competitive play.
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i love you, short, quirky 90's rhythm games.
I enjoyed Bust A Groove (or Bust A Move, as I played it) a nice amount. About as much as I was expecting to, really. The gameplay is pretty simpleonce you actually figure out what they're asking of you and it doesn't take any longer than an hour to finish up a single character's campaign. At the moment, I've only seen Strike's ending, but I'm sure I'll be returning to this game occasionally to try out the rest.
The music is great and easy to follow, as should be the case with any rhythm game, though I think I would have appreciated a little more experimentation when it came to each song's tempo. Combos tend to blend together once you get far enough in, as much as I tried to vary my timing a bit, especially since there isn't all too much variation to the actual input strings themselves.
Other than that, I can't think of much else to say. It's a very arcade-y feeling PS1 game, and I enjoyed my time with it, most likely will enjoy my time with later down the line as well. For now, though, I also have to play the sequel. Thank you Ptcremisi for the recommendations.
I enjoyed Bust A Groove (or Bust A Move, as I played it) a nice amount. About as much as I was expecting to, really. The gameplay is pretty simple
The music is great and easy to follow, as should be the case with any rhythm game, though I think I would have appreciated a little more experimentation when it came to each song's tempo. Combos tend to blend together once you get far enough in, as much as I tried to vary my timing a bit, especially since there isn't all too much variation to the actual input strings themselves.
Other than that, I can't think of much else to say. It's a very arcade-y feeling PS1 game, and I enjoyed my time with it, most likely will enjoy my time with later down the line as well. For now, though, I also have to play the sequel. Thank you Ptcremisi for the recommendations.
YES -- 8/10
My enjoyment of this game is mostly based on nostalgia. I don't know when or where I got this game, but I was VERY young when I played it. I remember I could never win a round, mostly because I had no idea how to even play the game.
Coming back to it many years later, its charm was not lost on me at all. The character designs were still memorable to me, and I even remembered the lyrics off a couple of the songs (especially Hiro's!).
That being said, a lot of the tracks were quite corny and aren't as memorable, but there are a couple of earworms.
The gameplay is interesting in that it actually relies more on rhythmical cues as opposed to visual (how about that for a rhythm game?). Depending on your sense of rhythm, after a couple of rounds this becomes second nature and the game becomes a sort of cakewalk. There are a couple of things that the game doesn't teach you such as how to use your Super or dodge the opponent's super (I personally couldn't find anything on this in the manual), but the general gameplay loop is quite simple.
I might revist Bust A Groove from time to time, but there are many other rhythm games higher up in my priority list.
Coming back to it many years later, its charm was not lost on me at all. The character designs were still memorable to me, and I even remembered the lyrics off a couple of the songs (especially Hiro's!).
That being said, a lot of the tracks were quite corny and aren't as memorable, but there are a couple of earworms.
The gameplay is interesting in that it actually relies more on rhythmical cues as opposed to visual (how about that for a rhythm game?). Depending on your sense of rhythm, after a couple of rounds this becomes second nature and the game becomes a sort of cakewalk. There are a couple of things that the game doesn't teach you such as how to use your Super or dodge the opponent's super (I personally couldn't find anything on this in the manual), but the general gameplay loop is quite simple.
I might revist Bust A Groove from time to time, but there are many other rhythm games higher up in my priority list.
Maravilhoso. Depois que se aprende a jogar não quer mais largar.
maybe it’s the eternal nostalgia speaking but half the songs from this soundtrack are permanently lodged in my mind at all times, both a blessing and a curse
there is one thing about this game that bothers the shit out of me. the game is complicated. you'd think it plays like a bust a groove 2, and it should, but what you'll notice after a few songs is that sometimes both you and the CPU will miss a note at the same time. and it will always happen either right before a solo, or at the end of a song.
this is because any dance move that ends a combo (a Freeze) requires 4 beats to complete. if there are 4 or more beats before a solo, the character does their Cool/Chillin/Freeze move, does a pose in which you don't do an input for a beat, and then starts the combo over. it rules. it feels good to hit those. however, if the solo is coming up on the next beat, the move will automatically miss regardless of your timing.
so how do you get around this? unlike BaG2, BaG1 allows you to enter the input for any part of your combo any time you want. for example, say the first move of your combo is just Circle. the next move is Down Down X, the third is Down Left X. at any point, no matter where you are in the dance, you can press Down Left X and go to step 3 of your combo. why does the game let you do this? because you have to know, before the verse starts, how many beats there are between the start of the song and the first solo. a full combo is 32 beats (8 measures), and if there are 9 measures between the start of the song and the solo then you're good to go; just push your buttons. but if there are exactly measures left, you can't just do your normal combo. because if you try to hit the end of your combo on that 8th measure, the game will give you a miss.
so you need to do some manipulation here. you can kill a note by attacking or whiffing a dodge, so that on the 8th measure you end up on the 7th measure of your combo. you get less points for not getting all the way up to Freeze, but it's an easy fix. but the best thing to do is to skip one of your steps. instead of pressing Down Down X when it appears on the screen, press Down Left X instead. the game will skip the 2nd step and go straight to the 3rd. now you're one measure ahead; your combo will end in 7 measures, with the 1 extra measure the game needs to accept your Freeze move.
so far this is weird, but it's not that big a deal: just memorize what songs require you to skip a beat and remember an easy, two-button input to enter to skip one of the early steps. but then the math changes when you want to attack or dodge. say you don't skip a step, because you know you've got 9 measures before your solo and all you need are 8. but then Heat chucks a fireball at you. you gotta dodge that. but now you're one measure behind where you were initially; you're on pace to hit your Freeze on the last note before the solo. that's a miss! so you have to know what the next step of your combo is, wherever you might be in the chain. if you're 4 moves in, you need to do the input for the 6th. is it DUD Circle? is it DDRLL Circle? you have to memorize all 35 possible combinations in order to do this optimally. i've been playing this shit casually for like 20 years and I haven't done that. so usually you just attack, or whiff a dodge, or bite the bullet and watch the points from your perfectly timed Freeze slip away.
what kills me is that the game designers knew that this would happen. they designed this giant memory game that required them to unify every input in the game and give the player the freedom to choose their place on the combo chart provided they memorized all 35 possible combinations that can appear outside of a solo. they did this, when all they had to do was just let you do a cool pose at the end of the song. nothing happens during that measure anyway. Bust A Groove 2 does this. you even get a special pose if you do the timing right. it's like they identified a problem and chose to solve it by implementing a system that i bet the overwhelming majority of people playing the game never even noticed was there. they did it just to spite the literal one person on earth obsessive enough to care. they did it to spite me.
5 stars.
this is because any dance move that ends a combo (a Freeze) requires 4 beats to complete. if there are 4 or more beats before a solo, the character does their Cool/Chillin/Freeze move, does a pose in which you don't do an input for a beat, and then starts the combo over. it rules. it feels good to hit those. however, if the solo is coming up on the next beat, the move will automatically miss regardless of your timing.
so how do you get around this? unlike BaG2, BaG1 allows you to enter the input for any part of your combo any time you want. for example, say the first move of your combo is just Circle. the next move is Down Down X, the third is Down Left X. at any point, no matter where you are in the dance, you can press Down Left X and go to step 3 of your combo. why does the game let you do this? because you have to know, before the verse starts, how many beats there are between the start of the song and the first solo. a full combo is 32 beats (8 measures), and if there are 9 measures between the start of the song and the solo then you're good to go; just push your buttons. but if there are exactly measures left, you can't just do your normal combo. because if you try to hit the end of your combo on that 8th measure, the game will give you a miss.
so you need to do some manipulation here. you can kill a note by attacking or whiffing a dodge, so that on the 8th measure you end up on the 7th measure of your combo. you get less points for not getting all the way up to Freeze, but it's an easy fix. but the best thing to do is to skip one of your steps. instead of pressing Down Down X when it appears on the screen, press Down Left X instead. the game will skip the 2nd step and go straight to the 3rd. now you're one measure ahead; your combo will end in 7 measures, with the 1 extra measure the game needs to accept your Freeze move.
so far this is weird, but it's not that big a deal: just memorize what songs require you to skip a beat and remember an easy, two-button input to enter to skip one of the early steps. but then the math changes when you want to attack or dodge. say you don't skip a step, because you know you've got 9 measures before your solo and all you need are 8. but then Heat chucks a fireball at you. you gotta dodge that. but now you're one measure behind where you were initially; you're on pace to hit your Freeze on the last note before the solo. that's a miss! so you have to know what the next step of your combo is, wherever you might be in the chain. if you're 4 moves in, you need to do the input for the 6th. is it DUD Circle? is it DDRLL Circle? you have to memorize all 35 possible combinations in order to do this optimally. i've been playing this shit casually for like 20 years and I haven't done that. so usually you just attack, or whiff a dodge, or bite the bullet and watch the points from your perfectly timed Freeze slip away.
what kills me is that the game designers knew that this would happen. they designed this giant memory game that required them to unify every input in the game and give the player the freedom to choose their place on the combo chart provided they memorized all 35 possible combinations that can appear outside of a solo. they did this, when all they had to do was just let you do a cool pose at the end of the song. nothing happens during that measure anyway. Bust A Groove 2 does this. you even get a special pose if you do the timing right. it's like they identified a problem and chose to solve it by implementing a system that i bet the overwhelming majority of people playing the game never even noticed was there. they did it just to spite the literal one person on earth obsessive enough to care. they did it to spite me.
5 stars.