Back to Blog

Dance Central Spotlight at Comic-Con 2014

enter image description here

This past week, we had the opportunity to take Dance Central Spotlight to San Diego Comic-Con to be a part of Xbox's Lounge. Comic-Con itself is one of my favorite shows each year, because it's such a cross-section of so many of the things I love --awesome comics and cartoons, TV shows, movies, and even an increasing game presence!

enter image description here

This is the second year Harmonix has gotten to participate in Xbox's Lounge, and boy is it growing rapidly. This year the Lounge was twice the size of last year, meaning even more exciting games packed into the ballroom of the Manchester Grand Hyatt. And one of the most exciting games, of course, was Dance Central Spotlight!

enter image description here

For Comic-Con, we took a newer game build. The game itself is almost done as we rapidly approach launch in September, but not quite. So instead we took a newer version of the game build so that attendees could check out the new songs and characters we've announced since E3.

enter image description here

That meant we had 15 songs, with 8 routines each, and 4 characters. I'll let you do the math, but I can definitely say it was a whole lot of dancing. Over the course of the show, those of us working the kiosk did our best to master every single move in the game. Even with 7-14 hours of dancing a day, there were still routines we didn't get to! But we made a lot of progress and had a great time doing so.

enter image description here

This year we brought animation artist Kristin Palach along to help run the kiosk. She's had a hand in the art of every Dance Central game beginning with DLC for the first game. Remember all those funny/awesome/adorable facial expressions your favorite characters make? That's her work!

enter image description here

You'll see her in a lot of the photos coming out of Comic-Con. I promise I worked too! But, you know, someone has to stand around and take pictures every now and then. When asked how her first Comic-Con went, Kristin had this to say: “My time at Comic-Con was much fun, many dance, so people, wow.”

enter image description here

We had an awesome turnout, with everyone from a lobster to Elsa from Frozen coming by for a dance. Friends were made, dreams came true, and a great deal of sweat was shed as everyone took their turn in the spotlight (see what I did there?). We had friends getting their friends to play, wives pulling husbands over to our kiosk, and brothers and sisters forming a temporary peace to dance it out.

enter image description here

And to everyone of Comic-Con who now does the Blazer Step when they hear the song "Happy" come on before they even realize they're doing it, you're welcome.

enter image description here