The Aero Dancing Series Is Back Online!

It’s been just over a month since the revival of Speed Devils Online and here we are with yet another game (or technically multiple in this case) brought back online! Yes indeed, Aero Dancing i, iSD, and FSD are now back online thanks to the great Shuouma! For those of you unfamiliar with this series, it’s the Japanese equivalent of the AeroWings games. Sadly the AeroWings games never received the online multiplayer treatment but their Japanese counterparts did. Aero Dancing F was the equivalent to AeroWings 2, the “SD” version of which was the first to get online play, supporting 2-player online matches. Aero Dancing i cranked things up a notch and added support for up to 4 players. And then we have Aero Dancing iSD which was basically the same game as i but added additional content like new maps, aircraft, and even a World War II mode which included fighter planes from the era. iSD also included a collection of replays from players all around Japan. Regardless of the version you choose to play, it’s a fun time and they play quite smoothly online.

As with the last couple Japanese games revived, I’ve gone in and translated all of the online menus into English to make navigating them a lot easier. It’s not perfect as there are some slightly odd translations and a bit of Japanese text still lying around, but I think it gets the job done. I should note that I’ve only translated Aero Dancing iSD as it’s the latest game with the most content. I don’t think there’s much of a point in playing the older games as they’re very much the same, just with less stuff. That being said, a patched version of FSD will still be available for download.

Oh and one more thing to note, both Aero Dancing i and iSD do support the broadband adapter, errr, technically. There’s quite a big caveat to this however. Even the developers went out of their way, both in the game and in the manual, to say that the broadband adapter support is very experimental and they make no guarantees to its functionality. From what I’ve been able to gather, the games don’t support home networks. So essentially, your Dreamcast would need to be connected directly to your modem in order for it to work. I haven’t tested this though as it would be a pain in the neck. Sadly I’m sure most people will agree and will likely stick to using the dial-up modem for this game. It is what it is I guess but from my testing so far, it plays well over 33.3k regardless.

As per usual, be sure to check the Connection Guide for all the info you need on how to connect. If you’ve played either Sega Tetris or Golf Shiyouyo 2, you pretty much know the drill with this one as it’s essentially the same. If you have any issues with the server, be sure to report them in the Dreamcast-Talk post here. As always, all the thanks in the world goes out to Shuouma for his continuous work expanding our modern-day Dreamcast online library! See you in the skies!