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What We Think Fun Factor: Durability: (what this means) The Good: Challenging and entertaining, this game accommodates a variety of player levels The Bad: The Motion Tower can not be disassembled once it is put together In a Nutshell: The U-Dance is a fun, motion-based game that gets your whole body moving At a Glance Ages: 8 and up Requires: Television, Philips screwdriver and 4 AA batteries

The U-Dance encourages your child to get off the couch and practice real dance moves.View larger.

No controller needed. U-Dance uses Motion Tags that slip over your shoes.

Put Your Best Foot Forward
Tiger Electronics' U-Dance interactive video game encourages your child to get off the couch and practice real dance moves like sweeps, jumps, slides, and crossovers without the need for a mat or any other game controller. Instead, the U-Dance uses lightweight Motion Tags that slip over your child's shoes. The reflective surface on the Motion Tags is read by the Motion Tower placed next to your television and follows the movements of your child's feet.

Set-up is easy. Simply use a Philips screwdriver to insert 4 AA batteries into the battery compartment located on one of the three tower pieces, snap the three tower pieces together, and place it in front of your television. Next, connect the provided AV cables to any regular television set and slide the On/Off switch on the back of the Motion Tower to "on." Finally, slip the elastic bands of the Motion Tags over your child's shoes so that they are positioned on top of each foot. Be sure to keep pant cuffs out of the way and avoid wearing shoes with reflective detailing as this might cause interference between the Motion Tower and the Motion Tags. Now you're child is ready to get down!

Get Into The Groove
The U-Dance provides three modes of dance-oriented game play for one or two players. In the beginning, your child may find the foot-eye coordination a little difficult to get used to. So, to warm up and get familiar with the game, your child may want to start with one of two mini-game modes.

In the Lounge mode your child can practice moving with the Motion Tags by kicking lounge lizards out of the spotlight indicated on the screen. In the Workout mode they must step on diamonds while avoiding hazards on a moving treadmill. While both of the mini-game modes are entertaining, neither is as fun and exciting as the main game mode, the Dance Floor.

In this mode, your child may choose to warm up with a basic tutorial provided at the beginning of the game. Once your child has completed the tutorial they will be sent back to the main Dance Floor menu where they can choose from three difficulty levels and several upbeat songs before heading to the dance floor. On the dance floor the goal is to match foot movements with the target feet on the screen. As the song progresses, your child's progress is scored for accuracy and timing by the Dance Meter. If they successfully dance their way through a song, they will have their overall performance scored by the judges. If not, they may choose to repeat the same song or choose another from the main menu. As your child makes their way through the various songs and different levels of difficulty their performance can be saved so they can review their progress.

What's in the Box
Motion Tower, Motion Tags, and AV cables.




Customer Reviews

U-Dance - Great innovation, fun & sensitive Posted 01 December 2008
Ok, you've seen the vidoe here & on youtube. Here's another video on youtube under "U-dance game - I like to move it" of a girl using it in action for the whole dance sequence on HARD level: youtube com/watch?v=Td57iyOBTk8

Plastic structure: It's basic hard plastic in 3 peices that you click together. Once put together, you can't take it apart as the plastic tab is hard. Luckily it's not that big. It take 4 AA batteries that you have to unscrew small screw on the lid (why not a tab????) Why more batteries, why not even give an OPTION of plugging it in? Is it for on the go???? It comes with sealed in the composite yellow for video & white for MONO sound plugs directly to the tv. No other options, nothing else instead you can plug in as a better choice. The only switch/button it has is a small/hard on/off slider tab. The sensors are simple fabric comfortable strap even for bare feet with simple grey colored semi-reflective octagon top. I'm surprised that's all it needs to work.
Video/Sound Presentation - Very simple graphics, but great choices considering all the memory/programing is somewhere small in the plastic housing. The background dancers on are a loop, but you don't notice while you're concentrating on the feet graphics. Knowing which is your feet & the ones you are suppose to step on is very easy to see. The background colors are bright & positive w/o being so colorful you can't see where you are suppose to go or where you are at the time. The menu is very simple & you step & hold on the "buttons" on screen to make your selection. It has profiles using 3 initials, multi player (I assume you take turns). You can choose which song & easy medium & hard (unlocked until do easy & medium). There doesn't seem to be any score retention that I can see, only a check mark by a song if you did ok, I'm not sure even how well you have to do to get a check mark. The score is done like American Idol, etc. there is a static drawing cartoon of 3 "judges" who turn over a circular card to show you a score up to 9.9. Since if you do too badly you can't finish the song, I don't know how low it goes. The lowest I got on easy was 5.5? & I didn't think I deserved even that much. The scoring on easy is VERRRRRYYY generous. I assume to keep you motivated & not be negative which is a nice touch. It really isn't right there is no score retention. The sound of the songs was done very well, I didn't have an issue with it & most of the songs sounded like the original singers. If not, it was a very close mimic.
Extra Mini Games: There is "Lounge lizard" with even more basic floating static lizards you kick out of the way to keep them out of the center spotlight. I found it too simply done & not enough time/effort on programming. As you get into higher level, there are just more of them moving faster. There is also "Workout" which looks like a tradmill & with tiny sneakers being your feet, you step on the diamonds & lightening feet & avoid the air hockey looking circular controllers since they will literally put bars to keep you from moving fwd & then untimely push you back until the game is over.
There are 12 songs to choose from: ABC (Jackson 5) Run It! (Chris Brown) Dont Stop the Music (Rihanna) 1, 2 Step (Ciara) Everybody Dance Now (C + C Music Factory) U Cant Touch This (MC Hammer) I Like to Move It (Reel to reel) Cotton Eye (Joe Rednex) Temperature (Sean Paul) Crazy in Love (Beyoncé) Dance, Dance (Fall Out Boy) Get the Party Started (Pink)
Gameplay:
Your "feet" turn smoldering if do well & small flames if do really well. You step into the new displayed feet when the feet turn from dull green/red (green = left, red = right) to bright. This is handy in EASY mode where the movement demand is very slow. As I said, the sensitivity to your movements is precise & impossible to do any better. I was blown away by this. You step where it tells you & even sweep over any arrows between where you are & should be. You don't have to be perfect on the steps, a good 60% is fine, it only comes an issue if you're off & the next step is partially where you are & it will see that as a miss. Easy I would say is 1/8 the time of normal dancing. Very slow & easy. In fact, you have to make sure you don't take the next step too soon. In Medium, the speed was 2/3 the speed of normal dancing, quite a difference, but doable, though not without mistakes. From what I see, from only a couple hours of play, I think the steps are the same in Easy & medium, just a difference in speed. Step styles are also repeated during the song. I haven't unlocked Hard yet. Oh, btw, there is not much of a learning curve, you get used to watching what you see & knownig where your left/right feet are within 2-3 song attempts.
At the end of the song, before you get "judged" there is a bonus 10 seconds where you sweep/move your feet to get rid of all the arrows to add to your score. *shrug* The only issue, is though I've never dropped it & only played it on 2 separate occasions, the first time the Bonus worked well to my movements. The second, the Bonus barely says "GO!" before it freezes, the arrows disappear or even just cuts right to the judging. I hope nothing else goes wrong, but I will update this if I notice anything else good/bad of significance.

All in all, a GREAT idea, works well, only a few issues about the batteries (should have a/c plug), a/v plugs (would have been better if they asked you to supply them), no high score area/retention & would have been easy to make it fold at least in half where it already is shipped in 2 pieces. I really hope this kills DDR & opens up more games ideas & play both for dancing & possibly other game ideas & uses. This really has a potential to be used for other games for great interaction, maybe even for the hands???? I hope this game idea takes off & is marketed unlike the Playsation 2's Eye Toy camera game line which was also great but didn't take off due to lack of marketing so the average consumer didn't know it exists. Do you? I would have preferred this be off a game console like Wii & Playstation 2 so that more time could have been put into graphics, but I see that maybe this would be a great alternative to people who can't afford those systems. Though I can't complain about the level of detail & hard work on a stand alone system for this price.

Here's More Info: Posted 22 November 2008
Ok, admittedly I haven't played this myself, but there are several aspects that are not mentioned in the article description or other reviews, but on reviews on other sites. I feel this is good information the buyer would want to know:

The Good:
Udance is great for creativity; I love the idea of no dancemat, and the tracking is quite good, since they censors are on your shoes, and you can do more steps (such as sidestep, slide, etc).
There are several original songs, and the celebrity endorsement by Chris Brown can vouch for those original hits and the game's quality.
It's easy to set up.
The sales are doing very well, vouching for this game's success.

The Bad:
While there are some original songs, others are not.
There is a total of twelve songs on this game. (For comparison, DDR has around 60-75 songs a game.)

Good or Bad:
Since this game is it's own system; you will have to have this device taking up lots of space for only one game (as far as we know at the moment), but you also don't need another system to play it.
Three levels of play; no more, no less.

U-Dance Rocks Posted 19 October 2008
This game rocks. It tracks your feet like magic--however you move, that's what you see on the screen. The dancing starts easy, and gets really tough on the hard levels. It really gets you dancing, even someone like me who can't dance at all. We've tried Dance Dance Revolution, but that doesn't feel at ALL like dancing, this one really does feel like dancing. You actually need to sweep your feet, jump, cross...My 7 year old loves it, and it's also really great exercise, it got me sweating. Even my 4 year old can play one of the games that comes with it (the funny lizard one). The song selection is great too--there are new songs I don't know (yes, I'm a Dad), but some great older songs like ABC (Jackson 5). I would never spend the money on a Wii, but this is totally worth it. It takes a little bit to really get used to the menus, but once you do it's totally intuitive. When we hit the rainy season, this is going to be a great way to keep the kids exercising (without them knowing it...)

I Dance...U Dance too!!! lol Posted 15 October 2008
Ok, first off let me say, thanks to Hasbro because I don't have a lot of money to buy a Nintendo Wii! So this is sooo great. I'm a huge fan of Dance Dance Revolution, so this was right up my alley! U Dance is sooo fun and user friendly lol I got it last night at target for 74.99. I mean come on...whats 10cents? Anyhoo, my friends were with me and I hooked up to my TV, we were laughing and making fun of each other, because we looked crazy but it was soooo much fun!!

Also, I saw Chris Brown advertise this on The Ellen Degeneres show and I immediately fell in love because I haven't the money for a Wii yet. So thanks to Chris Brown too! His 'Run It' song is on there as well as Rihanna's 'Please Don't Stop the Music'. Balls of fun people!!

The music is up to date, a bit, but then there's some old school MC Hammer "Can't Touch This' and Jackson 5 'ABC' on there, I'm 21 by the way and I can recall all the music on there. I recommend this, simply because it's fun, my friends and I were hanging out and having fun, plus all 3 of us worked up a sweat!!! lol It was great.

If I'm wrong someone tell me I'm wrong...but I know I'm right...this game rocks my socks!! lol BUY IT!! What's a little splurge in life...lol