The first time I ever even heard of the mere existence of dance games was when I went with a friend to a youth night with her church a few years ago and two little 10 year olds were frantically competing down the front on two dance mats. At the time I thought it looked like some mild form of torture and it took a bit of convincing before I took a turn myself.

Now, however, I'm a bit of a dance mat addict which shows how dead my social life is these days!

In case you don't know by now, dance games are used in conjunction with a dance mat instead of a normal controller and you hit certain squares on the dance mat at the same time as the on-screen arrows.

I have Dancing Stage Party Edition for the PlayStation, but personally prefer the earlier EuroMix game. When you first load up your disc you'll be faced with various choices such as game mode, arcade mode, workout mode and training mode. In game and arcade mode you can play yourself or against an opponent and you dance to 3 songs before it resets itself, but in workout mode you can keep dancing without it resetting itself and can also be shown how many calories you've burned off and how long you've been dancing for. In training mode you get to work through those tricky songs at a slower pace until you master them.

You also get graded on your performance for each dance and I tend to find myself staring at a big, fat E most of the time. The songs are all graded with levels of difficulty, too, so beginners can pick the one-star songs and the more experienced dancers can go for trick or maniac dances.

The thing that puts me off most about this game is the layout. The songs are grouped into collections which I find a bit fiddly because you have to constantly be loading up different collections to find the dances you want, whereas in EuroMix all the dances are available in one all-encompassing menu.

Nevertheless, there is quite a good variety of songs, including songs that you'll recognise such as Don't Stop Moving and My Favourite Game as well as others that only appear in the game. Certainly dance games are a more sporty alternative to the usual video games and you can really get your heart pumping if you choose to perform the more upbeat numbers.