U-Dance - Hottest toys for Christmas
From Hasbro - Import
Customer Reviews
Great active toy!
My kids all love this fun, fast-paced, challenging game. My oldest son, 11, is really learning to dance by playing U Dance. His 6 y/o sister follows along side of him and is catching on too. It is a great indoor game that gets kids moving. I really love games like this that encourage activity. I highly recommend this toy. It was easy to set up, they did it all themselves!
Ok, you've seen trailer here & it's also on youtube. Here's another video on youtube under "U-dance game - I like to move it" of a girl using it in action for the whole dance sequence on HARD level: youtube com/watch?v=Td57iyOBTk8
Plastic structure: It's basic hard plastic in 3 peices that you click together. Once put together, you can't take it apart as the plastic tabs amke it very hard to pull apart. Luckily it's not that big. It take 4 AA batteries that you have to unscrew small screw on the lid. I'm surprised it's not a simple tab & why isn't it able to have a DC pout/plug out? It comes with sealed in the unit w/place for it to wind around for storage the a/v cable which is composite yellow for video & white for MONO sound which plugs directly to the tv. You cannot use any ohter cable for better a/v. The unit has a simple on/off slider switch on the back. The sensors are nice, simple, fabric, comfortable straps even for bare feet with simple grey colored semi-reflective octagon top. I'm surprised that's all it needs to work & it works great.
Video/Audio - Very simple graphics, but great choices considering all the memory/programing is somewhere small in the plastic housing. The background dancers on are a loop, but they are good choices & you don't notice while you're concentrating on the feet graphics. Knowing which is your feet & the ones you are suppose to step on is very easy to see. The background colors are bright & positive w/o being so colorful you can't see where you are suppose to go or where you are at the time. The menu is very simple & you step & hold on the "buttons" on screen to make your selection. It has profiles using 3 initials & multi player (I assume you take turns). You can choose which song & easy medium & hard (unlocked until do easy & medium). There doesn't seem to be any score retention that I can see, only a check mark by a song if you did ok, I'm not sure even how well you have to do to get a check mark. This is one of the only cons. The score is done like a reality judging show as there are a static drawing cartoon of 3 "judges" who turn over a circular card to show you a score up to 9.9. If you do very poorly, the song won't finish. The scoring on Easy is VERRRRRYYY generous which is a good touch for kids & not be too negative & keep them motivated. The sound of the songs was done very well & the songs not done by the origional artist was done very well.
Extra Mini Games: There is "Lounge lizard" with even more basic floating static drawn lizards you kick out of the way to keep them out of the center spotlight. I found it too simply done & not enough time/effort on programming. As you get into higher level, there are just more of them moving faster. There is also "Workout" which looks like a treadmill & with tiny sneakers being your feet, you step on the diamonds & lightening feet & avoid gum, etc. & the air hockey looking circular controllers since they will literally put bars to keep you from moving fwd & then untimely push you back until you can't move & ends the game.
Here's More Info:
Ok, admittedly I haven't played this myself, but there are several aspects that are not mentioned in the article description or other reviews, but on reviews on other sites. I feel this is good information the buyer would want to know:
The Good:
Udance is great for creativity; I love the idea of no dancemat, and the tracking is quite good, since they censors are on your shoes, and you can do more steps (such as sidestep, slide, etc).
There are several original songs, and the celebrity endorsement by Chris Brown can vouch for those original hits and the game's quality.
It's easy to set up.
The sales are doing very well, vouching for this game's success.
The Bad:
While there are some original songs, others are not.
There is a total of twelve songs on this game. (For comparison, DDR has around 60-75 songs a game.)
Good or Bad:
Since this game is it's own system; you will have to have this device taking up lots of space for only one game (as far as we know at the moment), but you also don't need another system to play it.
Three levels of play; no more, no less.
