I had my doubts with rhythm games that involved nothing but button presses, but after seeing the concept work for games like PaRappa the Rapper and the Bust a Groove series, it was then I realized I had to shut up and let game developers do whatever stupid thing they wanted with their games. After all, we can never have too many titles like Irritating Stick around.

Either way, Korean developer Pentavision has come up with their own Beatmania knock-off in the form of DJ Max Portable. The game mechanic remains essentially the same: bars fall from the top of the screen, and your job is to hit particular buttons in time to the rhythm of the game, hence it being called a rhythm game.

Looks like fun though.

[Thanks Timmeh]

I debated the logic behind Bemani's drive to port their Dance Dance Revolution game to handhelds and mobile phones simply because I didn't see the role of any form of "dancing" in the act of rhythmically tapping your thumbs on a keypad. But since there are probably maniacal DDR fans out there obsessed enough to want to play a dancing game even when they can't technically dance, I have to concede in its existence. But, since Konami has no plans at the moment to delight PSP fans with hours of sequential button-pressing, homebrewer GameShark thought it prudent to let us know of a free DDR game for PSP he's made available at no charge to consumers. This version doesn't offer head-to-head waltzing or jitterbugging, but a future release might over ad-hoc. At least then we won't have to go dancing by ourselves anymore. Oh wait, I think I'm going to cry. No, I'm okay now.

[Thanks, GameShark]