Bust A Groove Play

[Eugene Hill]

BustA-Groove 1 & 2, or Bust-A-Move: Dance & Rhythm Action 1 & 2 in Japan as the name was already claimed by two lil' guys before it released in the west, is a PlayStation 1 rhythm game released in 1998 and 1999/2000 respectively. These games rode off the genre-defining high of Parappa the Rapper and the continued successes of Um Jammer Lammy and Dance Dance Revolution going into the second game.

BaG plays as a rhythm game the entire time, but in a direct competitive setting: You vs an opponent. You're given a list of inputs over your side of the screen. You input the buttons within the first box in order before pressing the final button in the second box on each fourth beat. The first box's rhythm does not matter. As long all the inputs are pressed in order before that fourth beat, you can do whatever (non)rhythm you want.

You get points for each move you successfully pull off which increases your combo gauge and applies a multiplier to moves' point values.

The song is interjected with solo segments where only one character plays for 2-4 measures and then the other character does. These always happen at the same time within a song around breakdowns or choruses. So these become important to play around and is where the "fighting" genre comes in.

Each character has an attack they can send over to the opponent by pressing R1 on the fourth beat instead of the shown button to dance. This sends over an attack to the opponent who must dodge it with R2 on the fourth beat, or volley it back with R1 in BaG2. If you're hit with the attack, your character will be knocked down and unable to dance for two measures, giving your opponent two measures to dance alone and get ahead in score.

To dip a bit into the meta aspect: You want to land an attack within two measures of a solo segment to get the most bang for your buck. If a player is down as they enter the solo segment, they forfeit their entire solo segment to the other player. And there's other small nuances in BaG that, ironically, mimic the knowledge and execution checks found in fighting game meta.

All ten characters in Bust-A-Groove house the dance energy groove-tron," a

mysterious jive power from outer space. As one of these characters, you must

dance rhythmically to beat a series of enemy dancers who become progressively

more challenging as you out-dance each competitor. Your goal is to become the

No1 dancer in the universe and BUST-A-GROOVE!

He's the cool poster-boy of BaG 1 and 2 and was my favorite character as a kid (he oozes that specific 90's cool). He can control fire after getting into a horrible racing accident. You know, as you do.

On another end, there's Kelly (nickname "Baby Suit"). A sexy office worker who goes clubbing at night. She obtained a loan to make her latex baby suit that she goes clubbing in. Real talk: If she'd been in a furry suit she'd be an incredibly relatable modern day icon. Too bad she instead cosplays as a cop in BaG2, but her 2P costume rules.

On the edgy end, Bi-O is an interesting continuity from the BaG1 character Gas-O with them being father and son. After getting in a fight over Gas-O never taking off his mask, Bi-O reached for an axe(???). Gas-O defended himself by spraying his dad with highly-corrosive chemicals and, effectively, turned him into a zombie. If that wasn't bad enough, Gas-O then took the axe and slammed it into the back of Bi-O's head.

Tsutomu is an overly-mature, intelligent kid and 99% of his class hates him. As his dad is a professional baseball player and his mom an high-ranking government official, he's in a class status of his own. No matter, his goals are to win the power of the Groove-Tron to become class president and marry his teacher when he's 18 (the 1% for the 1%, see what I did there? Anyone?) Oh, also he wets himself when he gets angry; his ending finishes on this goofy note.

They have memorable styles, looks, and it's all driven home with how they dance. Heat breakdances, Kelly does club grinding and soul bump, Bi-O appropriately rocks pop & lock with zombie elements, Strike represents hip-hop and shuffle, Tsutomu embraces house with occasional maracas. More than just grooving avatars on the screen, the characters are characters, but they're also representing a world of dance. These details make the whole package a lot more fun to embrace; details that are a rarity in the rhythm game space today. All their personalities and dance styles fits right into their stage themes, tying it all together.

What's a rhythm game without good music? (Stepping Stage.) Matching the various dance styles, the game features various music genres. It was handled with love and care, down to recording English lyrics when released outside of Japan. Furthermore, I prefer a number of songs in English, so it's not always a slapdash effort like one may expect of the era.

From the drama of Kitty-N's BaG1 theme, the Brazilian festival charms of Tsutomu's theme, and the hip-hop storytelling that's comedic but flows clean in Hamm's theme, BaG hits it all and likely what most remember and love about the game the most.

Honestly, I can't remember how I first came across Bust-A-Groove itself. Likely my brother-esque nephew, who got me into Parappa the Rapper, introduced Bust-A-Groove to me as well. The swath of musical genres accompanied with a variety of dancing styles and character designs oozed an aesthetic that was memorable and eye-catching. I greatly enjoyed the game, and if you asked 10 year-old me if he loved it he would say he did. Little did I know I hadn't come to love it yet; to truly become infatuated.

At this time of early widespread internet and my young age, I didn't think of the internet as a place to connect with folks with other niche interests. I just expected to be the weird outlier. I was a black kid growing up in white suburbia. I was deep into video games and anime. I was alone. I didn't know how to share my interests with others and being alone with those interests only drove me deeper into them.

So seeing this role-play rope dangling in front of me to connect with anyone else on an offbeat game was an opportunity I took. There I met Becca, roleplaying as Shorty (the character pictured at the top of this Chost) and we became quick and close friends for many years. She had encyclopedic knowledge about Bust-A-Groove and had her fingers on the pulse of news and gameplay videos from small Geocities websites. Bust-A-Groove 2 was game that I realized came out in Japan significantly earlier than when they came out in the U.S. and I followed the news any websites posted about the Japanese release. Bust-A-Groove 2 was also the first game I ever pre-ordered when it came stateside. We talked about the songs we liked from each, and why we like or dislike the characters we do (and holy crap have my opinions changed as an adult lmao.)

Bust-A-Groove sticks with me to this day and likely forever will. That love of being able to ramble on it forever is also the reason why this Chost is a two-parter: It got way too long for anyone to feasibly read (and for me to reasonably organize).

My one friend, her parents were huge gamers and RPG nerds so they had every Sega console, then Nintendo from SNES on and of course got really into the Playstation. So if a new game took her fancy, she got it and that included Bust-A-Groove. And since this was 1998 and DDR wouldn't hit the US for another year it was simply not like anything else at the time.

ouuuhh bust a groove... i had it on a demo disc as a little kid and never quite figured out how to play it properly until much later*, but the sheer style never left me. it's so COOL

*i didn't revisit bag itself for a long time, but some friends in high school tried to get me into audition online and i was like wait this is kind of famili- oh shit THAT'S how you play bust a groove??? very weird experience overall

Growing up in Queens, Young saw as Hip-Hop made superstars out of local talents like Run-D.M.C. and LL COOL J. "When I was growing up in Hollis, there were a lot of things going on, some good things but a lot of bad things," he told The Washington Post in 1990. "So I saw rap as being one of the good things, and I gave it a shot. I didn't get the hang of it right at first. I was using variations on other people's lyrics, but I found out quickly you have to write your own. And I found out I was good at it."

Producers Mike King and John Simpson had a Hip-Hop radio show that caught the attention of a local L.A. artist named Tone-Loc, who was newly-signed to Delicious Vinyl. The label asked the duo to help with production and engineering and that subsequently led to work on both Loc's album and this single by Young MC. It was on "Bust A Move" that the duo decided to coin the name "the Dust Brothers."

"King and Simpson are pretty common names," Simpson explained to Sound On Sound. "And we decided that we'd better come up with a cool name. At the time we were bringing back music that no-one was listening to any more, so we wanted the name to be an anachronistic reference to things of the past. While we were working for Delicious Vinyl, many people had been describing our music as 'dusted,' and that's where we took the name from. The state of Hip-Hop was pretty minimal at the time, and we were doing these very textural, tripped-out, almost hallucinogenic remixes of things. Angel dust was just an additional whacked-out reference that also fitted with what we were doing."

On the heels of Loc reaching the Top Ten with "Wild Thing" and "Funky Cold Medina," Young dropped "Bust A Move." Both of those Tone Loc singles had been platinum-sellers, and "Bust A Move" followed suit, going all the way to No. 1 by summer 1989.

That summer was an interesting time for crossover success in Hip-Hop. N.W.A. had hit majorly in 1988 with Straight Outta Compton, and Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back was one of the most acclaimed albums of that year. With serious, angry rap records earning accolades and Hip-Hop's creative credibility more tied to socio-political commentary than ever, poppy acts like Young MC were suddenly primed for criticism.

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