The producer of Get Up and Dance chats about the making of the upcoming title.

As the season of inebriated partying approaches a brand new dancing game is looking to make it's mark in the party genre on the Nintendo Wii. Earlier in the year we playtested Get Up and Dance and now that the game is due out next month the title's producer has sat down for an official question and answer session.

Mark Mainey discusses how the studio used motion capture footage, taken from real dancers from Mezzo Forte Dance Company, to provide a "more realistic fluidity to the dancer's movements" and while this was not the first time that the studio had used motion capture it was their first time doing so for a dance title.

Anyone who has gleaned some footage from Get Up and Dance will be sure to notice that the characters are very stylised. This was an idea that was decided in the initial development stages, although it was tweaked during the actual process of development so that the dancers would stand out from the background. The characters have stark white faces to help highlight the contrasts and keep the designs simple, although this was also used in the motion capture stage; dancers' faces were painted white to help simplify the motion capture and prevent shadows from causing problems.

One of the features of Get Up and Dance that helps separate it from its competitors is the inclusion of the official music videos, which Mr. Mainey describes as something that adds credibility and hopefully allows "players to become engrossed in the music to the point that they are not just dancing to a video but actually performing as the artist in question".

In order to obtain the dance that players are compared against Gusto had the dancers perform twice; once to obtain the motion capture data and once more with a Wii Remote. The two results were compared and if there were any discrepancies the dancers had to perform again, resulting in some very long days.

Get Up and Dance is released next month and will offer players the chance to create dance troupes, take part in competitions and more importantly have fun.