Dirty Dancing For The PC
October 2nd, 2008 
Have the time of your life… with minigames!
If you’re like me, then you like classic movies from the ‘80s. Now, we’ve seen some great games from licensed flicks of this era, such as The Goonies II or Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, but it always felt like something was missing. Something really important… Well, I’ve found out just what that something was, and it’s Dirty Dancing for the PC. The box assures me that I’ll be “having the time of my life with Dirty Dancing — the video game”, and the awesome box art using the movie poster is nothing to sneeze at. Not only that, but it’s a GameStop exclusive, and for the low, low price of $2.99.
Before you get started, make sure you have a PC with an 8x CD-ROM. My PC only has an 8x DVD-RW drive, so I was uncertain if I could run it. It also takes up a whopping 150MB of space, which is absurd. Thankfully, though, everything installed perfectly, even under Windows Vista, which is known to cause problems. When you first load up the game, you’re presented with the beautiful title screen of Dirty Dancing, complete with licensed music. Everything runs at the crystal clear resolution of 800×600, so if you don’t have a Super VGA monitor, then I suggest you upgrade (especially you EGA owners)! The game is multi-lingual, and requires you to choose what language you wish to play the game in. I speak English, so of course I chose the half-American half-British symbol. You need to create a new profile by typing in a name, and then you get to customize your own character. I chose to name mine Johnny, and modeled him after the star of the movie, Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze).
The game begins when you check into the luxurious Kellerman resort, where you’ll be spending the remainder of the game. After you get to the map screen, you get to choose from a wide variety of mini-games – there’s 10 total. One thing to note: you need a mouse to play this game, which means it loses some points due to the lack of support for my serial Microsoft SideWinder gamepad. After getting my mouse squared away, I decided to try out the Breakfast Buffet game. There’s a stack of different types of food, and you need to line them up in order to clear specific plates to fill up a meter. Once you’ve filled up the meter, you get money, which you need to save up for the big dance contest. Another great minigame is the Talent Show one, where you need to click on different items on a list before the timer runs out. You don’t get any money if you don’t finish the list, though, so I think it’s a bit too hard for most people.
The rest of the minigames include Bellboy Bedlam, where you control different bellyboys as they serve customers, Pinochle Mahjong, where you play with Dirty Dancing-themed cards, including both Johnny and “Baby”, and other various fun games. I’m not much of a cards guy, so I wasn’t too sure how to play Pinochle. The best minigame is of course the Dance Contest, where you need to buy different dancing steps in order to compete. If you’re just starting out, make sure you learn the Tango, as it seems to be the easiest to play. To dance, you merely click on random circles as a little meter swirls around them; green is the best time to click. If you hit it too early, you don’t get any points!
My main problem with Dirty Dancing on the PC is the high system requirements, since not all of us that want to enjoy such a fine game can simply due to the current financial crisis our fair country has befallen. Also, the use of SecuROM is a big disappointment, making it mandatory to keep the disc in your CD-ROM (or other media drive) at all times when you wish to play. While the game does have licensed music, there isn’t enough of it, and sometimes it’s just clips that repeat. I really expected more from a developer as renowned as Funsta, but they’ve let me down in the end. If you have a PC that can run this baby, I would definitely pick it up, but please: fans only. If you’re not a fan, then I suggest checking out the Flashdance game for the Wii, where you get to interact with Alex as she works her way to ballet dancing supremacy.
I give it 34 Swayzes out of 3 Kevin Bacons!
