The gameplay system in Space Channel 5 is very, very simple. If you know how to play Simon Says, you pretty much know how to play SC5. Ulala and her dance crew work their way through the levels, out dancing groups of aliens, taking down alien bosses and freeing captured civilians, all while broadcasting her news report. Upon confrontation, aliens and other enemies of Ulala, will perform a few dance moves, which must then be accurately mimicked. Dance moves are performed by pushing up, down, left, right, or the 'A' (shoot alien) or 'B' (free civilian) button. Unlike rhythm games such as Parappa and Um Jammer Lammy, Space Channel 5 has no actual visual clues as to when to hit each direction. Moves must be done by memory and by ear. The better you do, the higher your "View Rating" percent goes, and the better Ulala and her crew, dances. And vice versa. If you get to a point where your View Rating is below the Required View Rating, the dancing suffers, the music becomes warped and off key, and you risk having your broadcast cancelled.

Visually, Space Channel 5 is not exactly mind blowing, but it does get the job done. Ulala is a fairly detailed polygonal model, and at times there can be a large number of moderately detailed backup dancers and aliens on screen, but I don't recall anything much more taxing than that. The streaming MPEG movies which serve as the backgrounds, come across pretty nicely most of the time, despite a few spots of compression artifacts and the occasional unsynchronized frames. I would have preferred real time polygonal backgrounds, but maybe we will see that in the inevitable sequel.

A large portion of Space Channel 5's attraction, is the super catchy soundtrack. After playing a few short stages, many of the songs and tunes became semi-permanently stuck in my head. I found myself actually humming and whistling the tunes throughout the day, without even realizing it. As mentioned earlier, the soundtrack adjusts itself depending on how good, or bad, you are performing.

As far as the all important English voice acting is concerned, like I covered in my earlier impressions, Sega of America did a stellar job with voice localization. Dare I say that the voices are even more appropriate than the original Japanese voices? Ulala, the radio announcer, and the supporting characters were cast pretty much perfectly in my opinion. Good job.

Space Channel 5's one drawback, is it's length. The first time around, it's over a bit too quickly for my tastes (about an hour and change). However, the real game doesn't begin, until you start a second game. There are many more paths and locations, as well as wacky hidden characters to rescue, once the game is played through at least once. It took me a few more hours to actually see most of what else there was to see, and to improve my View Rating. Overall, I would describe it as short but sweet, with above average replay value.

Despite Space Channel 5 not making all that big of a splash in Japan (which was odd), Sega is still pushing the cool, and very hip, Ulala into the US gaming and entertainment scene. It seems like a great idea, and as anyone who attended the E3 can tell you, Ulala was definitely one of the show's main attractions. The combination of simple Simon Says play mechanics, catchy tunes, interesting eye candy, and great character designs, should equal a hit game for Sega. That is of course, if US gamers take to it.