Pump It Up!
{beginner mode}
It's very difficult to talk about Pump It Up! (also known as PIU or Pumpy) without mentioning its predecessor, Dance Dance Revolution. It's a dance floor with 5 squares (situated like a +) and a screen (we're talking about the arcade). You choose a song and level, and you have to step a square when you see passing through the top of the screen. It was/still is very popular, but that arcade had some problems. First of all, the +-like position of the squares made it very difficult to play. Then, all the songs were J-Pop. So in 1999 a Korean enterprise called Andamiro created Pump It Up!, another dance floor very similar to DDR, but with some differences: the squares are x-like, making it easier to play, and to make better dance steps & combinations. Then, there's a lot more music styles than the ones in DDR, most of them composed by Banya. Well, in the first versions, all songs were by Banya... then Pop songs of artists such as Madonna or Pink were included, and some other Korean & Japanese ones by other artists.
As we know, there are also many other arcades similar to DDR, but instead of dancing, you're a DJ (Ez2Dj), have to dance & touch certain objects at the same time (Para Para), play the guitar (Guitar Hero), and many others.
PIU is a complete success in Asia, Europe, USA & Latin America. There is even a PIU tournament, called WPF (World Pump It Up Festival), and it even has an alternative for girls only (Girls Challenge).
In the versions part, we have many, but the better known ones are Perfect Collection (curiously one of the first ones), PIU The Rebirth, Pre-Exceed, and the Exceed.
The newest PIU versions are: Pump It Up! Zero (the 7th Arcade), Pump It Up the Exceed for DVD -a home version of PIU, giving you the chance of dancing in your living room-, Pump it Up! Xenesis, in 2007, and Pump It Up! NX2 in 2008.
game mechanism
{beginner mode}
The mechanism is hard to learn but then it becomes very easy. The only controls you have are the 5 squares (كلمنؤ). Although configuration may change from one version to other, (sometimes you choose the mode first, sometimes you can choose mode (Easy, Hard, Crazy, Half-Double, Double, One on One, Nightmare, and some more, although they're not always together in the same game) and song in whatever order you want, etc.) the playing mode is always the same: while the song is being played, the arrows pop up from the bottom of the screen and when they reach a line in the top, you have to step on that square. There are combinations of 2, 3, even 5 (yes, in Young Man-High School Rock 'n Roll Remix), and most of the time you can make choreographies. You can end up VERY tired after some songs, and it requires a lot of practice to start playing even some Easy ones, but once you get used to it, it becomes as natural as breathing. :)
