Space Channel 5 may very well be the greatest music game ever created.

I don’t care if Guitar Hero and Rock Band let you and several inebriated friends karaoke your way through real tunes on pseudo-realistic toy instruments; the decade-old Space Channel 5 serves all music game challengers by creating a game world filled with infinite amounts of charm, and funky danceable tunes that make it one of the most unique titles in its genre. And on the SEGA Dreamcast.

Developed by United Game Artists and published by SEGA, Space Channel 5 tells the story of Ulala, a reporter from the eponymous media outlet who combats the Morolians, the cutest alien menace to ever threaten a game world. The invaders’ sinister scheme? To force earthlings to badly dance. Ulala’s mission? To detail the happenings, rescue hostages, defeat enemies, and stave off rival reporters.

When you pop Space Channel 5 into the Dreamcast, you’ll arrive at a title screen that features a theme song (with a driving baseline and horns) that’s reminiscent of ’60s go-go dancing meets spy flick–a perfect fit for the game’s retro-futuristic sexiness.

And speaking of sexiness,  Ulala is one of the more striking character designs in videogamedom. Ulala’s sports bright reddish-pink hair, a mini-skirt, jetpack, ray gun, and platform go-go boots. But it isn’t her legginess that keeps your eye on the media darling, it’s her body movements. Ulala struts through stage and toward foes with an exaggerated stride that one part uber-confidence, one-part funky strut, and one-part bad ass.

Although the gameplay has all the makings of being repetitive, United Game Artists sprinkles the formula with enough deviation to keep things bouncing along nicely. Each level typically begins with Ulala walking through rooms/corridors with her aforementioned bop, where she quickly encounters an alien dance group. Besting unarmed aliens simply require you to match their moves to free hostages; armed aliens require you to match their moves -and- zap them with your ray beam. These require the same controls (D-pad for executing dance moves, A to shoot laser, B to shoot a secondary hostage-reeing ray), but the camera angles and presentation keeps it from being a constant loop of the same ol’ same ol’.

Correctly inputting the D-pad and button presses frees hostages which join Ulala in her bad ass power struts and battles within Space Channel 5′s world. They are, essentially, backup dancers, but don’t seem to have any obvious impact on the gameplay besides looking really, really cool. A handful of hostages are also musicians; freeing a guitar player, for example,  sees him joining your troop, and playing guitar as you march toward battle. How many music games offer skilled players on-the-fly track remixes? Not many, I’d reckon.

Botching dance moves causes Ulala to lose hearts. Should your heart meter reach zero, Ulala does a dance of defeat (yes, she even grooves when losing) and walks with hand held to head in a dramatic fashion. You will also need to focus on the View Rating listed in the lower-right corner of the screen. As Space Channel 5 is a TV station, its goal is ratings, so you need to get a minimum number of viewers to move onto the next stage. The first level, for example, requires you to have at least a 15% view rating, or you can forget about moving onward.

Space Channel 5 is short; very short. Once you get the gameplay mechanics down, you’ll be able to smoke the title by the time the day ends. That may have been an issue purchasing a new, full price Dreamcast game in 1999 or 2000, but considering that I payed $10 for the game, it’s no bad at all. There’s no two-player mode to open up the floor, but trophy-hunters will dig the collectible bios that you accumulate when freeing slaves to the rhythm. My last beef: there’s a hint of lag when you fire your “choo” weapon, but you’ll get used to it.

If you think music games begin and end with colored icons scrolling on a screen, you need to do yourself, and the genre, a favor by tracking down Space Channel 5. It may not be the deepest game, but it drips in SEGA’s old school arcade and innovation sensibilities that the company desperately needs to reclaim in order to move forward.