Pump It Up pros and cons

While I was working at Works, I used to make lots of trips to Dave & Busters to play games and have lunch. Now I usually stop in every two weeks or so just to see if they have new games. Today I went since I was buying a ramen bowl next door, and discovered that Dave & Busters finally has a dancing game - but they got the wrong one! Instead of getting Dance Dance Revolution, they got the "rival" game, Pump It Up (not by Konami). Hey, I still ended up playing for over an hour, but DDR is so much better. To be fair, here's the good stuff:

Wide variety of songs, from Aha's "Take On Me" to J-Pop

Full-on cartoons animate in the background while you dance

Big-screen presentation is huge

Now here's the bad stuff:

The arrow system is DDR at 45 degrees (you step in the corners instead of up/down/left/right), which means the space between your feet is much larger, so it feels a lot less like dancing

Lots of annoying delays between songs

No announcer! (How am I supposed to feel larger than life?)

Anyway, I had fun, but Pump It Up will never be my dance of choice. Having something at Dave & Busters is convenient, though, so I'm sure I'll play every now and then (sweat is still sweat, eh?).