Breakdance

The Good
There's not much to like about this game. The urban city backdrop is well done and rendered in a nice perspective giving some depth to the display. Sadly, it is the only backdrop you will see. The game is quick to play and quick to end, which is a plus for crap like this. There is a practice mode, so at least you can figure out which controller direction does which move before you start.

The Bad
Break Dance is an obvious attempt to cash in on the tremendous popularity of break dancing in 1984. The game shows no love or understanding of actual break dancing. Aside from the wind mill move, the dance moves aren't even recognizable as being break dancing moves. The game play is a simple Simon derivative. One mistake and it's game over. No attempt is made on the developers behalf to extend that simple formula. At the time Epyx was generally known as a quality publisher of computer games. It's astonishing that this was released as a full cost game. People that purchased it assuming the normal quality you would expect from an Epyx game were surely severely disappointed. The main characters look terrible and animate terribly. The music is grating and doesn't even attempt to represent something anyone might have break danced to back in 1984. This would be an acceptable game if it had appeared as a type in game in an early computer magazine, as a full price release or even were it budget priced, it was a sore disappointment.

The Bottom Line
The game operates in the manner of Simon. Instead of a sequence of colors, you have to repeat the dance moves done by the character on the left. You use the joystick to select the moves. There are five total moves. One for up, down, left, right and the fire button. Every round you successfully match is followed by another round with an additional move added on to the previous sequence. The more moves you match the higher your score. A single incorrect move ends the game abruptly.