Dancing Plate

How to play Dancing Plate online

• Run left and right: left and right arrow keys
• Steady a wobbling plate: hold the Space bar while standing at its pole
• Choose a game variation: F11 (the console’s Select switch)
• Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
• Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it

Gameplay

The plates begin to wobble one after another. Move the girl to a shaking plate’s pole and hold the button until it settles. If a plate falls, you can still catch it on the way down, and a fresh plate appears on the pole. The longer you keep them all spinning, the higher your score, and the game ends once four plates have smashed. The variations change the number of plates and how hectic things get. Compared with Dishaster, the Bit Corporation version has oriental-themed graphics and eight variations rather than four.

Tips

• Fix the oldest wobble first. The plate that has been shaking longest is closest to falling.
• Catch falling plates. A plate is only lost when it hits the floor, so run underneath it.
• Move in a steady pattern. Working along the row in order is easier than dashing back and forth.

Which Dancing Plate is this?

Dancing Plate is usually described as a PAL game for European televisions. AtariMania lists two cartridges under this exact title from Bit Corporation and its Puzzy label, both PAL releases for Europe, and a third, NTSC version sold in the USA, credited only to “Taiwan – Cooper Black”. AtariMania marks that NTSC cartridge as not yet dumped. The file this page loads is labelled “USA”, so it is not clear which of these releases it really is; if the colours or speed look odd, F2 switches between colour and black-and-white.

The game has at least a dozen other names. Bit Corporation itself also sold it under the German title Tanzende Teller, and Home Vision sold it as Plate Mania. Others include Mr. Chin, Chinese-Juggler and Teller-Jonglieren. The best-documented is Zimag’s 1983 NTSC version, Dishaster, which has its own page with the full list of variations.