Dance Factory coming to PS2

Codemasters has announced that next spring will see the release of Dance Factory, a PS2 dance mat game that works with any music CD of your choice.

Which means no more rubbish old Cameo songs or Japanese technopop - just pop in a CD, select your favourite track and the game will choreograph dance moves to suit, along with unique background visuals.

It's all thanks to Dance Factory's "innovative beat recognition technology", apparently, which was developed exclusively for the game. It'll work with all types of music, from pop and heavy metal to classical, latin and, er, bashment. If you're so poor you don't own a single CD, or so naughty that all your music exists only in MP3 form, the game features five tracks to bop along to.

You can expect a choice of game modes, including Fitness, which tells you how many calories you're burning, and Recorder, which lets you can choreograph your own moves for your chosen song and then challenge your chums to try them out.

If you're feeling particularly energetic you might like to try Endurance mode, which will let you dance your way through an entire album. But be warned, you'll need to achieve a minimum score on each track before moving on to the next one.

There's also a unique Creature mode, which enables you to "unlock digital music creatures that hide on each and every music CD and get them dancing too." Multiplayer options include freestyle, battle and elimination tournaments for up to 16 players.

Dance Factory is out in April, and we've already sent out the party invites and placed an order with Smirnoff.