One of the realizations about Taito's Tetote Connect is that it didn't replicate the ballroom dancing like they planned it to as it's essentially a rhythm game where on-screen notes were interacted with touchscreen controls and most of the songs don't seem suited for ballroom dance whatsoever. Also, what kind of gamer would want to play that ever since it was announced and this question is going to be the same for the upcoming Penda Beats from Bandai Namco of all game companies? There was even a clone of Tetote Connect on mobile that's compatible with VRoid but the presentation during gameplay is unspeakably lame as it doesn't look like the avatar is dancing on screen at all.
Penda Beats from Bandai Namco is about the fan glow stick dance from the Japanese idol culture. Maybe there should be a warning from the arcade center or the game against anyone making obnoxious call & response during the song. The thing is, the dance can be done without it throughout the song. The song list is assumed to consist of the songs the nerds know of, including the modern J-Pop songs for instance.
Or so I assumed/thought when I saw a location test video from some tweet from Bean93449015. What were they thinking when making a brand new rhythm game for arcades like that? The VR concert simulation games including the Idolmaster one replicated the live concert experience correctly. The Kinect and VR dance games are still the craze when it comes to full body tracking. Nowadays, there are games that use webcam and AI-powered body tracking technology in addition to VR dance games since the Kinect line of devices was discontinued years ago. A glow stick dance game on VR would have been a better idea since the idea of replicating that dance was done wrongly for Penda Beats in many areas. The cabinet uses the sensors and some area where you tap with glow stick controller and that seems lame in multiple levels. It's like the game's trying to be an unhinged answer to Future Tom Tom where you have to raise up and wave at times during the song or maybe some other Sega rhythm games like Ongeki & Chunithm.
Dance Around from Konami happens to be another dance arcade game similar to Dance Evolution but with different technology that does full body tracking. When it came out in the arcades, the presentation and gameplay impressed the players with motion controls comparable to the ones in Kinect dance games. There's also Starri which uses webcam and AI-powered body tracking so that VR is not needed. Other games on Nex Playground, the family-friendly system Starri is also released on besides PC and mobile have some games you may be familiar with like the Fruit Ninja game for instance which is played a lot like Fruit Ninja Kinect. If there's going to be a proper glow stick dance game for arcades, they could have utilized the webcam and AI-powered full body tracking tool.
So, who is Penda Beats for after you see some location test video circulating on the net? Oh, about the location test video from some tweet, I hate to show links to whatever tweet I mentioned here after the amount of damage done to Twitter that I'll rather show links to posts from other social media sites with proper reputation. I guess that this is some arcade rhythm game you should steer clear once it comes out.
