I actually have one of those :D got it at a car boot sale for a whole one pound. its manufactured by ABL (last one on this page (http://www.advancebright.com.hk/V2_html/dance_html/dance.html#null)), they seemed to be quite widespread in the UK at one point. Can't remember if mine is the version with Hit Marmot or Tetris though.[/quote]ABL, of course! I remember seeing that on their page in the past, even, but had totally forgotten about it.
Something else random I noticed: some of the fonts in GLK Dance are identical to those in screenshots of games by CubeTech. Who also developed stuff for ABL. Coincidence?Actually, now that I look at the screenshots a bit more, the fonts are only vaguely similar. Blame it on the low resolution of Cube's screenshots...
The user interface for the dance part of the Dance Master is literally
identical to that in the ROM "Dance Xtreme - Prima". Only differences are that this one's got 28 songs, and they're all bootlegs of actual DDR songs with duplicates having very bizarre titles.
Oh, yeah, and the score is shown in the Family BASIC font in this version-- it's in the IBM VGA font in the Dance Master console.
Edit: And "perfect" is spelled correctly in Dance Master. The devs spelled it wrong
two different ways in Dance Xtreme.
speaking of dance mats, someone in the UK clearly imported a ton of them that they couldn't shift, they're now selling lots of 10 for £19.99.
heres some apparently Sega-compatible Gold Leopard King ones: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQitemZ120678895141 (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQitemZ120678895141)
& "Mix Party 2000": http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQitemZ120678893487 (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQitemZ120678893487)
i'm sorely tempted, i must say. though i'm not exactly sure what i'd do with all those dance mats. carpet my living room?
Wow, apparently the packaging to that Gold Leopard King actually does claim to be compatible with 16-bit Sega carts-- see the photo in this other eBay listing (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Gold-leopard-king-dance-mat-/130484641842). And I thought they only made the 8-bit version...
Of course, given the rest of the nonsensical Engrish on the package, they could very well just be lying through their teeth.
Edit: And I have no idea what sort of hardware the Mix Party runs on-- there seems to be no further information on that console at all.
Edit #2: Hm, there's this auction (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PLUG-PLAY-DANCE-MAT-PARTY-MIX-MUSIC-FUN-TUNES-SALE-/110630776899?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item19c21bb043) showing a (very small) screen capture of the system, which is very clearly not 8-bit. Interesting!
oh, now i'm even more tempted to just buy ten of the damn things. ten of each. There's no way in hell buying twenty dance mats would ever be a good idea, is there.
Yeah, it's a tricky decision. Particularly given that they're probably crap even if they are 16-bit... but the sheer interestingness does make it tough...
yeah, its just interestingness vs having a house full of terrible dance mats that i'd obviously never ever be able to sell.
and actually, looking at that auction for the GLK one you linked to, i can't actually see any cartridge port, or anywhere that a cartridge port might be, unless the whole top bit lifts up somehow. so maybe the "Sega" thing really is a lie (or just a feature some models have and others dont, and they just use the same packaging).
but then it is still presumably "super digit music compatable". so you can't argue with that.
- taizou
- Feb 12 2011, 03:37:22 AM
and actually, looking at that auction for the GLK one you linked to, i can't actually see any cartridge port, or anywhere that a cartridge port might be, unless the whole top bit lifts up somehow. so maybe the "Sega" thing really is a lie (or just a feature some models have and others dont, and they just use the same packaging).
but then it is still presumably "super digit music compatable". so you can't argue with that.[/quote]I'm not sure about that. If there are dance mats where you can play Tetris on them, then GLK might just be dumb enough to think that people can play Sonic the Hedgehog on one as well. :P
- Codeman38
-
Edit #2: Hm, there's this auction showing a (very small) screen capture of the system, which is very clearly not 8-bit. Interesting![/quote]
I'm not sure about that, could just be running on the OneBus for all we know.
- Cheetahmen
- Feb 12 2011, 05:45:17 AM
I'm not sure about that. If there are dance mats where you can play Tetris on them, then GLK might just be dumb enough to think that people can play Sonic the Hedgehog on one as well. :P[/quote]Maybe it's running on Sega-clone hardware and includes several embedded MD games? Who knows. I wish people would actually post demo videos or screenshots in addition to their auctions...
- Cheetahmen
-
I'm not sure about that, could just be running on the OneBus for all we know.[/quote]Ah, that's true-- didn't even think about that. At the very least, it's using high-color
graphics, anyway.
- codeman38
- Feb 12 2011, 12:12:25 PM
- Cheetahmen
- Feb 12 2011, 05:45:17 AM
I'm not sure about that. If there are dance mats where you can play Tetris on them, then GLK might just be dumb enough to think that people can play Sonic the Hedgehog on one as well. :P[/quote]Maybe it's running on Sega-clone hardware and includes several embedded MD games? Who knows. I wish people would actually post demo videos or screenshots in addition to their auctions...[/quote]No idea TBH, and the vagueness (is that even a word?) of that auction in general adds to the confusion. The box does say 16-bit and Sega, but for all we know the 16-bit claim could be a lie and the Sega games could refer to Master System games, although the latter is doubtful. Not to mention, if it does support Mega Drive games then where are the A, B and C buttons?
Hm, interesting... while searching for other ripped ROMs of dance-mat famiclones, I've just discovered a sort of missing link between Gold Leopard King and Dance Master.
Recall that there's the already dumped "GLK Dance" ROM, produced by a company called Feng Li. As I discovered a while back, GLK does indeed stand for Gold Leopard King, and Feng Li is the manufacturer of that line of consoles.
Well, it turns out there's an alternate Chinese version of it, with an almost identical title screen also crediting Feng Li. This one's got two sub-games: a 12-song version that's identical in its interface to GLK Dance, and a 24-song version that's clearly the predecessor to the above-mentioned Xtreme Dance-- and thus, to Dance Master as well.
This is in the file "FC-两款跳舞机.rar" on maxzhou88's file storage (http://maxzhou88.ys168.com/).
found yet another one being sold in bulk: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQitemZ150559164157 (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQitemZ150559164157)
and googling the model number to see if i could find any more info on it led me to this:
"CHILDREN CAN DANCE INTO DANGER WITH LATEST CRAZE." (http://www.thefreelibrary.com/CHILDREN+CAN+DANCE+INTO+DANGER+WITH+LATEST+CRAZE.-a097248833)
and this:
"Warning on danger dance mats" (http://www.newswales.co.uk/?section=Community&F=1&id=6290)
ahem. oh dear.
if i ever get one of those i'll remember not to use the AC adapter that comes with it :D
I personally wouldn't use any AC adaptor that came with imported Chinese crap - I've seen some really dangerous ones, and heard several stories of them exploding, luckily half the time they have a foreign plug which forces me to use another one (for some reason they are all the same, 9V 500ma tip negative) - built-in safety measure :)
yeah true, i'm always a bit wary of famiclone/etc adapters, especially the cheaper looking ones. I tend to just use the one from my Mega Drive (model 1), its 10v rather than 9v but its never caused me any problems.
I have a suspicion that's probably the system that's dumped as "Hot Dance 2000". Given that it says "Dance 2000" on the mat itself and "hot dance" on the package, it only seems logical.
("Hot dance"... literally. Lulz.)
Edit: Then again, perhaps not; the thing claims to have stereo sound, which a Famiclone obviously doesn't. But then again, the packages for these things are usually covered in blatant lies, so yeah...
Edit #2: The manufacturer appears to be "Soyin", as one can see if one squints at the upper-right corner of the mat. This appears to be them (http://jayaries.en.busytrade.com/about_us.html), judging from the logo; they're now known as GreatHouse Electronics (http://soyin.com/newEbiz1/EbizPortalFG/portal/html/index.html) and don't sell any dance mats even on their Chinese site. Granted, it has been over 10 years...
Edit #3: And the Internet Archive proves useful again! (http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20021102162048/http://www.soyin.com/ebusiness/en/product_list.asp?catalogid=10&type_id=42) SY-2000-04 is the first product listed there. The things were sold in bulk, in packages of... you guessed it... sixteen. Alas, no demo video or anything, not even a spec list or song list or anything.
More bootleg-DDR history, courtesy of maxzhou88: original Chinese post (http://hi.baidu.com/maxzhou88/blog/item/7be94bc82b4e791b7f3e6f9d.html) and Google translation (http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fhi.baidu.com%2Fmaxzhou88%2Fblog%2Fitem%2F7be94bc82b4e791b7f3e6f9d.html&act=url). Seems that there are even more variations of Hot Dance, GLK Dance and Dance Xtreme out there, all of which appear to have originated in the Baoan district of Shenzhen. There's even one version that has the Hot Dance graphics but the Dance Xtreme/Dance Master UI.
Alas, I couldn't find the dump of these four versions on his file storage (anyone who knows sufficient Chinese want to comment to tell him the file's missing?).
Edit: Ooh! One of them is Mix Party 2001! Apparently it's a Famiclone with an added chip for digitized sound. Can't tell if it's the VT03 or not; the photo is rather blurry.
He also claims there's a dance mat that uses Megadrive-compatible hardware, but that he broke it trying to rip it. -_-;; So maybe that one Gold Leopard King box really is telling the truth.
- codeman38
- Feb 14 2011, 08:53:44 AM
Edit: Ooh! One of them is Mix Party 2001! Apparently it's a Famiclone with an added chip for digitized sound. Can't tell if it's the VT03 or not; the photo is rather blurry.[/quote]I'm guessing that's what the 2008 version of Street Dance runs on. And of course, that one's by Inventor.
Street Dance 2008 is definitely a VT03. Runs perfectly well, audio and everything, in EmuVT after the ROM header has been stripped.
- codeman38
- Feb 14 2011, 02:56:38 PM
Street Dance 2008 is definitely a VT03. Runs perfectly well, audio and everything, in EmuVT after the ROM header has been stripped.[/quote]It actually runs perfectly fine in CaH4e3's FCEU mod as well, so it's nothing a NES emulator can't run. I'm not expert at this sort of thing, but I think it's possible that all of the PCM is in the ROM (which would explain why that ROM is 2mb because that Hit Mouse game is 40kb) and the emulator runs it directly. I also assume that it's somewhat similar to the raw PCM samples in games like S.C.A.T. (gotta love the title :D ) except of course, the ones in Street Dance are a lot longer than the NES can handle. (If I remember correctly, a PCM sample in a NES game can be about 10 seconds long at the most, and that's in poor quality) Action 52 seems to do the same thing with its intro music, but I'm not sure what.
I don't think there is a limit on sample length even on the standard NES, it just depends on the mapper and ROM size and stuff. there's a demo ROM out there that plays the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme tune (way better quality than Street Dance) and that just runs on MMC5.
- taizou
- Feb 14 2011, 04:46:55 PM
I don't think there is a limit on sample length even on the standard NES, it just depends on the mapper and ROM size and stuff. there's a demo ROM out there that plays the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme tune (way better quality than Street Dance) and that just runs on MMC5.[/quote]So you're right, wasn't even aware the NES was capable of that quality TBH. Mind you, I think if they tried putting 12 songs on one NES game with that good quality it'd take way more than 4mb to do, let alone 2. (Mind you, I think that would be possible seeing as multicarts with about 200 different games exist) I got the idea of that PCM limit from FamiTracker, seeing as it has a limit to prevent you from using PCM samples that are too long. Not entirely sure why that is, but whatever.
In any case, at least it's better than "GOAZHBUZTAZ!" :P
just found this on ruten, its a multicart with a dance game on it that i've never seen before:
http://goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21012024495279 (http://goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21012024495279)
the gameplay doesnt look like the usual DDR setup, not sure if its original or a clone of something else. the song list seems to be mostly the same as the 2000 version of Street Dance. & the font on the menu looks like the one Nice Code uses sometimes
- taizou
-
just found this on ruten, its a multicart with a dance game on it that i've never seen before:
http://goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21012024495279 (http://goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21012024495279)
the gameplay doesnt look like the usual DDR setup, not sure if its original or a clone of something else. the song list seems to be mostly the same as the 2000 version of Street Dance. & the font on the menu looks like the one Nice Code uses sometimes[/quote]I'm not sure that is a dance game, actually, but it's a rhythm game-- it looks very much like Samba De Amigo.
Edit: Yeah, definitely some sort of Samba De Amigo clone; note the little red and green dots emanating from the center toward the "O"s.
The graphics definitely look like the same style as Street Dance, and the font on the menu seems to be the same as Nice Code's games. Also, I'm no aficionado of dance music but I somehow doubt that "Blums" is spelled correctly, or "Street Seaor" for that matter.