Greetings!
I know it’s been a long wait for me to come by and inject some teh into tehben.com, but It has been a really rough skid up here at the headquarters of America’s Favorite Soda Blog ™ over the last year(s). To be honest, still I haven’t really gotten back my inspiration fully and that’s why you are getting a few articles where YouTube will be doing the heavy lifting. While my medical license is no longer was never valid, so all I can legally prescribe to you are some over-the-counter methods for inducing a decent amount of serotonin. I know it might not seem like much, but it’s all I can offer to you since my days as a self-licensed medical expert are have come to an end. The only genuine medical advice I can give you (from experience) is that the government will come after you immediately after administering a single tainted batch of injectable horse-derived growth hormone to your employees. Live and learn, I always say.
Whenever I’m at my lowest points, I’ve found I can always come back from the brink with a secret little cache of rays of sunshine contained within the machinery of humanity’s greatest creation, YouTube.
It’s no secret that I am an obsessed/adoring fan of the Bust A Groove series on the OG 32 bit Playstation. I love the motion capture animations, the bangin’ music, and most importantly, the memories that those games contain. It’s easy to have warm nostalgic memories for the days of perfect health, band brotherhood, never ending summers, and absolutely no responsibilities. At my house I still own a singular CRT (old ass tv) with a PS2 hooked up to it, but I can rarely jam out to my favorite games on it since the boy is convinced that the big heavy monitor is a portal to Demon World. Whenever I can finally get a chance to play Bust A Groove at home I always blast the squishy jam “i luv hamburgers” so loudly that controllers and memory cards are forcefully removed and hidden by unseen forces while I’m at work the next day.
So replaying these games on a tiny TV at home is not viable for the most part and using a sketchy upscaler on an 8k big screen looks like ass but it is also compounded by some godawful latency issues (it’s a rhythm game after all). I often will jam out a Bust A Groove playlist, but it is always done in secret with headphones on since the music is kind of “different”, but just listening to the music alone is a pale stand-in for enjoying that physical fourth beat smashing gameplay. But for the rest of you Bust-a’s, all hope is not lost. I’ve found something even more impressive than playing an old game on an old tv. Something that I still cannot fathom being an actual thing.
There are folks out in the world keeping the magic of the Bust A Groove series alive in this modern day and age. I cannot stress enough how rad it is that this rather niche game from the 90’s still retains a dedicated fanbase of kids in the year of our lord (J Fresh) in 2024.
These folks are indeed impressive, having learned the dance moves for each specific character and the fact that they are willing to perform these routines in public in front of other human beings. Just seeing this makes me realize there is indeed good still in this world, or it just illuminates the fact that there’s never going to be a shortage of weird nerds on the planet.
And then… there is this fucking guy. I am in absolute awe of this dude’s flawless moves and style. After going through his whole catalog, I have picked some of my favorites. His moves are perfectly synchronized with the dancers in the game. I would also like to confess something else as well, I think this might be the same guy I talked shit about in the best bust a groove songs article. I am impressed that he took my colorful criticism and used it to become an absolute Fever Time Certified Boss while I am known to throw my back out tying my shoes.
And, to add to absolute insanity of this schtick, this guy does the Comet dance while wearing fucking rollerblades. If I even thought about attempting this dance you guys would be reading this article posthumously.
So, maybe weird internet people doing weird dances to old video game music might not be your thing? If that’s the case maybe you should check out videos of folks doing cover versions of these tunes! These bands probably won’t get famous from these, but the care they put into these covers have a special place in the hearts of people that liked bizarre video games back in the 90’s.
Bust a Groove themed content might be sparse when compared to other trending things and memes born from modern games. While it might not be the most popular (spoiler: it never was) content, it still means a lot to some of us that grew into adulthood during this time period. I just wanted to share some of my favorite videos to watch when I’m blue, and I hope you like them as much as I do.
Be sure to check out my next article: “23 Most Realistic Wii Controller Routines from the Just Dance Series” due out sometime in 2028.
Teh Ben is a Dancing Queen and frequents both Boogie Wonderland and Funkytown. When not sporting his bell bottoms and gold chains, he can be found posting sporadically on Twitter (fuck Elon Musk), posting photos, writing to himself on Threads, and there’s always his YouTube channel if you enjoy questionable choices in entertainment.
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