As you may be aware, SEGA has recently announced that they will be re-releasing Part 2 of Space Channel 5 on the Playstation Network and Xbox Live services. Whilst there is no known cost or release date, it is definately something that I will be looking to get. However, for whatever reason they have decided to ditch the first one in the series for an unknown reason, therefore I have decided to write this quick review on the first game, one that is hard to find in Australia, however I got for four dollars, so not a bad deal for such an intriguing game.
It’s the 25th Centuary and planet Earth is in a state of crisis.
An alien race, the Morolians have launched an invasion against Earth, randomly shooting innocent victims with a mysterious ray gun. The effect of the ray is rather unusual, as it forces people to dance uncontrollably, enslaving them to alien rhythms. Of course, their attack has caused widespread panic.
The first station to grab the scoop is a little-watched space broadcaster- Space Channel 5. Sensing a golden opportunity to boost ratings, the director, Fuse, has sent Ulala, the only report who hasn’t been captured to the scene. The broadcast begins at the location of the first incident – Spaceport 9. She must copy the Morolians dance steps – Up! Down! Left! Right! Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!
The storyline was never mean’t to be epic or overshadow the dancing component in the game, therefore the only time the story has much of an impact is at the end of the game, and then it is only to throw out more challenges at you. The storyline does work well with the game however, and the setting of news stations was rather different. The storyline is however forgettable among the dancing steps needed to be remembered.
The main character is Ulala, a pink haired reporter who works for Space Channel 5 and the character you will be seeing the most of in every frame of the game. She is joined by Fuse, who is a director and provides the details to Ulala. The other characters in the game consist of the Aliens and other reporters from other stations. Characters are not really developed at all and as with the storyline, are just there to keep the dancing purposeful.
This game was released on the Dreamcast all those years ago, and then ported to the PS2, therefore the graphics were never going to be stunning. The animating is good in terms of the dance moves however in the quicker sequences, you are much better off remembering the directions said as the animation doesnt indicate well at that pace. Graphics quality wise, I would say appropriate, most of the hostages come from the same batch of character designs and can dulplicate 12+ times in the same dancing round. Instead of rescuing the hostages however, you have them dance behind you for the rest of the level, however they spontaneously disappear at times and all imitate the same pose, regardless of if it looks silly.
This game is all about the music, however it has a much more varied soundtrack in Part 2, as a large number of the tracks seemed to be remakes of the song Mexican Flier or songs similar in tune. Personally, I had no problem with it as they were able to give it a variety of tunes to go by and it suited the characters voices, actions and the overall tone of the game that was trying to be portrayed. Voice acting is good in this game considering its origins on the Dreamcast. Ulala and several of the other characters are fully voiced and every enemy says the Up! Right! Left! Down! Chu! in their voice, not some generic multi-use one. My favourite voice actor by far would have to be Fuse, who does the narration during the levels.
Credits of the video go to VirtuaPlayer
I wouldnt usually use a video walkthrough to demonstrate the gameplay, however I think actually viewing the gameplay would determine if you would enjoy this game. Now, the game uses six buttons, Up, right, left, down and both the X and O buttons. There are many challenges in the game such as the basic follow the pattern, shooting to kill aliens and rescue hostages and following directions. The key point in this game is to get the rhythm perfect, as in my first playthrough, I found the game to be very strict in terms of it, and the first stage especially took me a while to do simply because I kept getting one key off beat. A level is won by fulfilling two conditions:
a) In a single round, do not lose all your hearts. 1 mistake in a pattern = 1 heart loss.
b) Meet a particular ratings percentage.
Failing either of these will require you to restart the level.
This game is pretty short, with only four levels in total during the game, each split up into three sections and can take only a few hours to complete. To keep replayability just a bit longer, there is an Extra mode which replaces the second section of each level into a much more complicated zone with much harder patterns to remember…. such as “left right left right left right left right left right left right chuchuchu chu chu” which requires you to remember the beat of the song precisely or you will lose a heart.
Whilst this is not a perfect game, from what I have seen, it is improved upon in the second game and honestly, despite it being short and out of date, I had a lot of fun playing this game and would recommend it to anyone, especially if you can find as cheap a copy as I did. I have paid ten times more for a game with less entertainment value then this.
Total Score
Storyline: 6
Characters: 5
Graphics: 7
Music: 8
Gameplay: 7
Replayability: 6
Personal Opinion: 8
Overall Score – 7
Pretty late at night, so my apologies for any spelling errors. Will try and get images up once I reinstall all my video and image editing software.
