Dance Central 2 Message Board

Those mechanical kings of rhythm are the true patriots.

You know how Dance Central 2 is super fun because you can dance like a crazy person with utter disregard for the social consequences, thanks to the fact that you're alone in your own damn house? Well, take that same concept, add the watchful eyes of the entire Internet and remove any trace of humility or dignity, and you've got an exciting and new way to make a total fool out of yourself in 15 second bursts.

The Dance Central 2 Dance Cam app from Harmonix, available for free on iOS, Android and Windows Phone lets you choose snippets from 7 songs, record yourself dancing to said snippets and then "dancify" the resulting video, which can then be uploaded to Facebook or deleted forever in shame. The app also features dance-move diagrams for the included songs, just in case you ever find yourself suddenly and desperately unprepared for a dance battle while on public transportation.

Dance Central 2 is nearly upon us, as we are now merely a week away from its brand of fancy footwork and fist pumping. To celebrate, Harmonix has released a new demo allowing players to check out the dancing game and its additions over last year's award-winning title...

Servants of the dance floor, rejoice: Dance Central 2 continues the full-body experience of the original with new tracks, new routines, and new modes. If you need a great game to break out at a party, or you just love dancing as much as I do, Dance Central will serve your fist-pumping needs. Even with a few hiccups, Dance Central 2 provides further proof that the Kinect can facilitate amazing gaming experiences when they're well designed around Kinect from the get-go...

Many years ago, before Harmonix was the dev house that birthed Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Dance Central, the company created EyeToy: AntiGrav -- a motion-controlled game for Sony's PlayStation 2 "EyeToy" camera peripheral. Despite strong sales, that was the last time that the Massachusetts-based developer created a project not steeped in music. But it seems that studio may not have abandoned its one-time interest in non-music motion-based games.

"I think we're always open-minded about new opportunities," Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos told me in an interview this week at the Tokyo Game Show. "Certainly our focus always has been and probably always will be on music-themed games," he added, but his company's involvement with Dance Central has rekindled the studio's interest in other types of motion-based gaming. "A perfect example is the Kinect, which I think that through our work on Dance Central we've developed an affinity for -- towards motion gaming."

Though Rigopulos wouldn't speak to specifics, he would say that, "It wouldn't be surprising if in the future we took some steps outside of our wheelhouse in music to try some new things in non-music focused motion gaming."

Harmonix' latest release, VidRhythm for iOS devices, may also be on the cards for some type of Kinect-based adaptation. "Of course our hope is to keep improving it and expanding it, including bringing it to other platforms, such as possibly Kinect," Rigopulos explained. That said, with VidRhythm having just launched in the past few weeks, he's not even sure of initial sales reports just yet, so it may be a few before we hear more about the application headed to other devices.

Get on it, Harmonix.

Ever since Harmonix made it known that the Rock Band franchise was taking 2011 off (outside of the usual DLC pipeline), many have speculated as to what the newly independent studio might be focusing its developmental efforts on instead. Dance Central 2 is obviously one of those in-development projects, but word has swirled for a while now that Harmonix had some other, original ideas kicking around.

One of those appears to be Vidrhythm, a name recently trademarked by the studio with/rock-band/62-567/ an "intent to use" filing. What is Vidrhythm? I have no idea, but it's a thing that exists, according to Harmonix Communications Director and noted rage enthusiast John Drake, who confirmed to us that this is most definitely a project currently under development, and that "it will be awesome." So, hey, you heard it here first.

Now feel free to spend the next several hours constructing what the combination of Vid (one can presume it being short for "video) and rhythm both signify. I'm personally hoping for something in the vein of Make My Video. Bring back Marky Mark!

#geewhiz Soon Xbox 360 gamers will be able to get some use out of their Kinect: Interacting with a new suite of multimedia advertising set to hit the console and its $150 peripheral next spring. More »

New features revealed with a Harmonix developer on All Access Live!

Flawless dancing gameplay from E3 2011.

Simultaneous two-player dancing is headed to the Kinect!

I just wanna dance...again.

What is Dance Central 2? Dance Central 2 is the sequel to last year's extremely popular and critically acclaimed dancing game from Harmonix. If you've ever played or seen the original Dance Central then the next iteration should look and feel extremely familiar to you. Dance Central 2 Demo ...

After officially revealing the multiplayer follow-up to Dance Central this morning in -- surprise, surprise -- Dance Central 2, Harmonix today released a developer interview detailing the game's new features. Beyond news of multiplayer functionality, a handful of tracks from the game were unveiled, ranging from Rhianna's "Rude Boy" to Bananarama's "Venus" (full list after the break).

If that weren't enough, Harmonix also dropped a mess of new assets from the forthcoming sequel, which we've dropped into a gallery below and a video after the break. And hey, maybe you'd like to play the game before it even has a release date? Come by our E3 reader meetup this Friday and have a go!

The sequel to the successful Dance Central on Kinect debuts at the Microsoft Press Conference at E3 2011!