Review: "D-Pad Hero" for NES

Rhythm-based video games have existed as long as the genre itself, but they've always been commercially shaky ground. Precious few of them have sold well (Samba de Amigo, anyone?), and the ones that have sold typically require external hardware or accessories, which are expensive, delicate, and difficult for toy stores and video-game retailers to stock.

Mario just split his overalls.

So it follows logically that the only place rhythm and dance games were ever successful was the arcade. After all, the experiences are tailor-made for each other. Dance games are designed to be played quickly, repeatedly, in short bursts - in other words, the damn things practically suck quarters from your pocket. There's a reason Dance Dance Revolution was so popular in arcades: the machines were expensive (more than twice the price of an average arcade set), but were so consistently popular that arcade owners could charge higher prices for each game.

Can you imagine one of these on Antiques Roadshow in 50 years?

You'll forgive me if a game like D-Pad Hero makes me cringe instinctively. It reminds me all too well of a time when I would fight with my brother over the last 50¢ for one more game of Drum Solo, a crappy Guitar Hero knockoff at our local Generic FunPlex operated with crappy rubber pads that made my wrists hurt. D-Pad Hero also makes my wrists hurt, but thankfully it's a much more charming and endearing experience than I ever had at age 11.

 
D-Pad Hero, a knockoff of the wildly popular and incalculably irritating Guitar Hero series, is a technical masterpiece programmed by Kent Hansen and Andreas Pedersen. The two clearly have some serious programming skills: immediately the gorgeously textured graphics come alive onscreen, and the renditions of popular rock songs like "Sweet Child O' Mine" made me laugh, then sing along. The gameplay is quite deceptively simple, and should be familiar to anyone who's spent 5 minutes inside an arcade next to a Dance Dance Revolution machine.

D-Pad Hero unfortunately suffers from the same problem as its antecedent: it quickly becomes very repetitive and dull. Once you master each song at the highest difficulty level, and once the novelty of hearing "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" on a 20-year old video game console wears off, there's very little that keeps the player coming back more. The game is difficult, but not quite difficult enough to keep it interesting or engaging. Furthermore, the technical limitations of the NES  console restrict the game from offering any of the hidden gems and unlockable suprises that make Guitar Hero so addictive.

D-Pad Hero is a lovely little slice of copyright infringement on the NES, well-designed and admirably executed. I couldn't see myself paying for an actual cartridge (the gameplay is just too limited), but for now it's only available as a free download from the developers' website, and it's well worth the effort to spend some bandwidth on giving it a try.

Michael Jackson commands it!