Game Review: Dance Dance Revolution (PSone)

Previously on the SDP, it's been four long years, but my "Dance Dance Retrospective" mini-series has finally come to its bittersweet end. I guess there's nothing left to do now... but to do it all over again! This time, however, I'm going to review the different DDR games as I would any other work on this blog.

Dance Dance Revolution

• Publisher: Konami
• Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo
• Release: PlayStation, 2001
• Genre: Music, 1-2 players
• Save: Memory Card, 1 Block
• Rarity/Cost: Moderate, US$5-15

Dance Dance Revolution is a game series that has been around for over fifteen years, and each new game to come along has brought along new content, whether in the form of new songs and/or new modes, to make each successive entry better than the last. Well, in quantifiable terms, anyway. But it had to start somewhere. For American gamers, those first impressions may have been forged in the arcades, or it may have been the first Dance Dance Revolution home game we got for the PlayStation, back in 2001. Does it still hold up today? Let's take it back to simpler times, before all the speed mods, Shock Arrows, and Justin Bieber licences, and find out!

Dance Dance Revolution, and indeed all of the series' home games, are fully playable with a regular controller, but to stay true to the arcade experience, are designed with a special floor-mat controller in mind. What's always bugged me about their official controllers is that there are no Square or Triangle buttons, however the American games all use Triangle to back out of menus. This was fine for the Japanese games, which instead used Circle to advance and X to back out, but apparently something got lost in translation. And it's not like there aren't PlayStation games sold abroad which use that setup; heck, even Konami's own Metal Gear Solid games do so! Fortunately, the Select button is also used to back out, but it feels weird using that button, tucked away in that upper-left corner. I am, however, thankful for a particular option unintuitively called "Dance Mode", which toggles the ability to use the four face buttons as well as the D-Pad to hit arrows.

Even in Double Mode, the game is just as playable with a controller as it is with a dance pad.

This particular DDR game runs on the same "engine" as DDR 3rdMIX. For those who neglected to take notes when reading its entry for Dance Dance Retrospective, that means all three difficulty levels (the easy "Standard", medium "Difficult", and hard "Expert") are available at any time from the start, without hiding behind any button codes. Likewise, all the songs in the game are selectable at any point during a game, as opposed to the first version in Japan which added or removed certain songs depending on whether it was your first round, second round, or otherwise. It also includes extra modes such as the Nonstop courses, sets of 4 songs each played back-to-back, the Workout mode, which records Calories burned as you play, and the multiplayer-exclusive Unison mode.

DDR's songlist is composed entirely of 26 selections from the first three Japanese games. Just shy of half of those are licenced songs, although there's nothing the average American listener would recognise, unless he or she were familiar with the DDR franchise already. The artists featured herein are all various flavours of European dance-music acts who had essentially no presence in the States until this game. If you're lucky, you'll here a familiar sample or cover version here or there -- the immortal riff from Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" is one such sample -- but that's it. And I'm not saying these are bad songs, either, but they have their own share of '90s Europop cheese. By my money, the standout tracks are the original songs made by Konami's own artists, which explore different musical genres, and generally provide a higher range of challenge in their charts.

Your choice of character doesn't matter in gameplay terms.

Upon starting a game, you have a choice of characters who will dance in the background during your game. There are quite a few of them -- 16 in all -- however, you can only select the male or female characters (8 of each) depending on whether your controller is plugged into port 1 or 2 of your PlayStation console. And even then, they don't alter the gameplay itself in any manner. Do they let you trigger different abilities to make your experience easier or more challenging? No, they're just another layer of background animation to distract you from the arrows you're supposed to be focusing on.

DDR has all the basic elements that make a Dance Dance Revolution game good, but not much on top of them. There's a certain simple charm in booting up a game and having all its content available to you at the start without even needing a Memory Card to save to, but that statement is a tad misleading because there is no content to unlock. The replay value in this game is limited to setting high scores for all the charts on all the songs, doing the same for all the nonstop courses, and perhaps starting a regular exercise program in Workout mode. While it may be a bad Dance Dance Revolution game, if only in terms of content, this introductory entry is not a bad video game.

And finally, in honour of Rerez, a YouTube gaming channel I discovered recently, I shall close out this review, and all other reviews going forward, with a list of the positive and negative qualities which stood out to me whilst playing, watching, reading, or listening to the work in question. (It's also a handy way of planning out my reviews before I start writing them.) As always, this shall be promptly followed up by the category grades and the final call. The more things change, the more they stay the same. So:

Positives:
+ One of the first great examples of "exergaming" in a long time.
+ No need to unlock anything.
+ The inclusion of Beginner, Unison, Nonstop, and Workout modes.
+ Some of the step-charts have become unforgettably fun.

Negatives:
- A relatively small music selection, with nothing to unlock.
- Not many of the songs will be familiar to non-fans.
- Some of the music is cheesy -- "Let Them Move" especially.

Control: 5 Perfect!s out of 5
Design: 3 Perfects!s out of 5
Graphics: 3 Perfects!s out of 5
Sound: 4 Perfect!s out of 5
Value: 3 Perfect!s out of 5
The Call: 70% (C+)

Dance Dance Retrospective: The Mobile Games

At last we have reached the final installment of Dance Dance Retrospective, and with this momentous occasion upon us, please allow me to say... This series was a mistake. A mistake I made whilst blinded by fandom. Pretty much all I did in those articles was describe the changes each game made from one installment to another, no how irrelevant they would be to readers without my level of interest in the franchise. I even planned a video series at one point, but never finished even the first episode once I realised I was wasting all my time on so much minutiae. Oh well, I suppose I let some critical observations slip in from time to time, so it can't have been a total waste. Spoiler alert: I'm going to be doing just that for this article as well.

Okay, so I've covered all of Dance Dance Revolution's arcade games, all the home console games, so what's next...? The mobile market, of course! With pocket-sized touchscreen devices proving their feasibility as gaming platforms ever since the invention of the iPhone, Konami eventually saw fit to introduce their venerable DDR property into the market. Their first foray was DanceDanceRevolution S, which first appeared on the iTunes Store on 25 February 2009. (Ports were later made for Android and Windows Phone platforms, but they were only sold in Japan.) As you might imagine, this game was played by tapping the arrows on a virtual dancepad on the bottom of the screen. As with most mobile games that use virtual-gamepad inputs on a touchscreen, there was always the problem of missing the buttons and not getting any feedback that you did so, but I suppose that could be less of a problem for some gamers. There was also the "Shake Mode", where you shook the iPhone unit in four directions instead of tapping the notes. It was only available for Basic and Difficult charts and, as with any kind of motion control, the lack of physical feedback makes your timing even more imprecise, but as an added bonus, I guess it was fun for a little while. There were 25 songs packed into DDR S, mainly revivals from the Hottest Party games.

Gameplay in DDR S, using a virtual dance-pad at the bottom.

In my opinion, DDR S didn't have the most engaging setlist, but they rectified that issue, in a sense, with DanceDanceRevolution S+ (iOS, 5 October 2009). This game had a price of just ninety-nine cents, but only packed three songs within. That is, unless you count the DDR Store. There were a total of 219 songs released, across 67 song packs, as DLC for S+, spanning more-or-less the entire franchise, including tracks from (the real) DDR X2. There was even an option to purchase a "Starter Pack" of 150 songs for US$65. This was a pretty strong showing, considering that the 2010 DDR games only got a couple of DLC song-packs. And with so much content available, you could pick and choose your favourites to create your own custom Mix. But, I'll say the same thing I said about DDR 2010: if you have to pay extra to get the best content, then the game's just not worth it. Besides, that all-songs pack is a monster case of sticker-shock, you know?

And finally, there was DanceDanceRevolution Dance Wars (iOS, 14 February 2013). Dance Wars followed the example of all those free-to-play games that sprouted up over the past few years. First, a "stamina" system limited how many songs you could play in the main Battle Mode within a certain time frame. (A free-play mode was also available which doesn't include the stamina limit, but you could not unlock new songs this way.) And second, you could invite other players to your "Dance Crew" to unlock content faster. A total of 47 songs were available in-game, mostly revivals from all across the franchise, although only 4 were available without unlocking.

However, I've been using the past tense to describe all these games, because they have all suffered some degree of unavailability. DDR S was taken down from the iTunes Store at some point, perhaps because of S+, which is still available to this day, but recently I've had trouble getting the game's online store to open. And Dance Wars was not only taken down from the store as well, but the online service was shut down on 31 August 2013, barely six months after the game's debut. And with Dance Wars being one of those always-online games, this shutdown rendered the game literally unplayable. I never even got the chance to play it myself due to it not being compatible with my outdated iPod Touch model.

The last time we heard anything from DDR in the North American market was something called DanceDanceRevolution Pocket Edition, which is played on an Apple TV sling-box and an iPhone in your pocket as a motion-sensor, eschewing the physical dance-pad setup entirely. I don't have a lot of information on this edition; apparently it follows the S+ model of a free app with three songs, and about 300 more available as DLC. And it also appears to have been removed from the iTunes Store as of this writing.

And... that's all I've got.

So this is how it ends, huh? It looks like Dance Dance Revolution isn't coming back to the arcades or "traditional" home consoles anytime soon, especially now that we've got the new generation forcing its way onto the market. DDR has managed, of late, to gain a foothold in the mobile-platform market, and I'm just starting to come to grips with this reality. I mean, if other games like GTA: San Andreas and Bioshock can run on iOS or Android, what do I have to complain about? But Konami managed to screw that up too, what with them taking some of their games offline. And having read about Pocket Edition, I should be more supportive of that one, too. For one, they managed to solve the problem of wearing out countless dance pads by taking them out of the equation. And an Apple TV unit is bound to be cheaper than a PS4 or XBox One or what-not... Oh wait, I forgot the exorbitant cost of an iPhone or iPod -- one for each person who wishes to play -- so never mind.

But more so than anything else, my creeping sense of doom for the future of DDR franchise was brought on by the franchise itself. As you may have gathered by reading the past articles of Dance Dance Retrospective, the later games have somehow failed to capture my interest. Maybe it's my own tastes that are shifting towards other genres of gaming, maybe it's a case of running out of new ideas, or maybe they've gone so far from what I interpret as the essence of DDR that they've become irrelevant. And what I envision as the "essence of DDR" may vary from someone else's vision. Like, my vision involves a return to the musical styles of the first few games, with more modern conventions elsewhere, and to cap off a running gag from this series, how 'bout USB UNLOCKS FOR ONCE!! There's always the possibility of DDR making a major comeback, but with the gaming market shifting as it has these days, it may not be in the form we expect. But wherever there's good music, there will always be someone who wants to dance to it. Specifically, to Dance Dance to it.

...

Ah [verb] it, there's always StepMania.

Dance Dance Retrospective: DDR 2013

So it's come to this, huh. Not content with recycling the title "Dance Dance Revolution" for the 2010 PS3/X360/Wii release, or the 2001 PSone release based on 3rdMIX, or the first American/Asian arcade release based on 2ndMIX, Konami released a new arcade entry in their long-running dance simulation series, only to saddle it with the un-embellished title yet again. It is what will heretofore be referred to as DDR 2013 (JP: 14 March 2013, AS: 28 March 2013), and yet again it is, sadly, exclusive to Asia. Although I can say, for once, that I've played this game in person the last time I visited Japan, and I can tell you from my own experience that the game was... ...meh. What complaints I do have regarding about DDR 2013 are the same complaints might levy at such franchises as Call of Duty or Madden NFL. There's nothing mechanically wrong with DDR 2013, and if the new content doesn't entice you, there's still all that old material to fall back on. But whatever concerns I've had with this series have not been addressed, and all in all, it does practically nothing to excite me as a consumer. Oh well, maybe I'll go over the usual description routine and something will jump out at me.

Here's an idea of what the new cabinet design looks like.

Only five years and three games after their last cabinet redesign, Konami rolled out yet another machine design for DDR 2013. This new machine is painted predominantly in white, which combined with the game's light pink/blue colour scheme, gives off a sort of pastel aesthetic. Keeping in Konami's tradition of cutting costs, the USB ports for loading custom step charts AND STILL NOT USER PROFILES have been removed, although I doubt anyone was using them anyway, and the panels on the bottom no longer light up, which if nothing else useful to tell if something was wrong with the pads. Although they did add storage bins at the bottom of the cabinet for you to stash your bags and stuff, and as a veteran arcade connoisseur, trust me, that is a good thing to have. But all in all, what was the point of going through all that trouble? Is there some ground-breaking new feature in DDR 2013 that signifies a new era of this venerable yet long-in-the-tooth franchise?

The 2ndMIX Mode from the last game has been removed, although all the songs from it are available in the main game mode from the get-go. So has the Happy Mode from X2, but that was just some artificial limitation on the songs and difficulties available to the player, so no big loss on that one, I guess. And so have all the course modes. Okay, now that's a bad thing. And they made it so the game won't even run unless the machine is connected to the Internet and set up for eAmusement. Apparently it's all part of some scheme for properly sharing income between Konami and the arcade itself, but whatever it entails, it even further precludes the release of this game outside of Asia. Even worse, when you get right down to it it's a form of copy-protection. But there's an upside to this approach after all. Because of the game's always-online nature, a new handful of songs gets uploaded to DDR 2013 machines every month or so. One of these upgrades also changed the menu interface a bit, giving birth to the unofficially-titled "Dance Dance Revolution 2014".

Each player gets their own Groove Radar. That's... something, I guess.

I'm officially going to break with tradition and not include a notable songs section. For one, this game is new enough that I don't yet have a handle on what songs have stuck in the minds of the fandom. And besides, to be honest, none of the new songs stood out to me. There are no English-language pop licences, for example. Perhaps because Konami knew they weren't going to sell DDR 2013, and X3 before it, outside of Asia, they felt they could get away with just licencing J-pop and such. I could understand that argument, but even though this product was not intended for my personal consumption as an American, it's just disheartening to be left in the cold, so to speak, eh? And besides, in this Internet age, the Japanese gamers this game was marketed to might also be a little more worldly in their musical tastes, so what's the point of such exclusion? (Then again, this series didn't even have Japanese-language songs until 5thMIX, not including side games, so there goes that theory.)  Oh, I almost forgot: DDR 2013 does also feature "Caramelldansen (Speedycake Remix)", that Swedish song which spawned an Internet meme... back in 2007. I suppose in five years we can expect "Gangnam Style" to show up in a new DDR game. (Although given the current state of Japan-South Korea relations, that might not even happen.) Seriously though, that fact serves as a fitting metaphor for how relevant Dance Dance Revolution is with the gaming scene at large. In short: not much so anymore.

It's been over four years, but with this article, I've finally finished detailing the "core series" Dance Dance Revolution games. There's just one more article to go, where I break down the mobile games. Perhaps this is where is where DDR might finally manage some relevance in this evolving games industry? Find out on the final installment of Dance Dance Retrospective!

Dance Dance Retrospective: X3 vs. 2ndMIX

Previously on the SDP, there was the 2010 DanceDanceRevolution. And it sucked. Well, inasmuch as a DDR game can suck. But earlier from that same year, there was a new arcade edition, DanceDanceRevolution X2. And it was good. But it would turn out that X2 was the last arcade DDR game, to date, to have been sold outside of Asia. But it wasn't the end of the series, for a year and a half later, Konami released DanceDanceRevolution X3 vs. 2ndMIX (JP: 16 November 2011, AS: 16 December 2011). I also have yet to play this edition in person, even during my latest trip to Japan back in March. But even though Konami did not sell X3 in North America or Europe, they did release a new home game suspiciously similar to it: DanceDanceRevolution II for the Wii (NA: 11 October 2011, EU: 16 November 2011).

X3 features a blue-and-white colour scheme, and many of the features from X2. Two new features are exclusive to eAmusement/PASELI users: they can view both machine and eAmusement high scores on the music menu, and, similar to X2's Marathon Mode option, pay per song in Quick Play Mode. As hinted at in its full title, X3 also includes a HD remake of Dance Dance Revolution 2ndMIX. It is entered through a button prompt on X3's title screen, just like the 2ndMIX mode from 3rdMIX. The songs from 2ndMIX Mode were eventually added to the main game in a later update. As to why they chose this entry to remake, I'm curious. Perhaps the first game had too little content, and the more popular 3rdMIX had too much content. And yes, you still have to enter a hidden panel code for the Maniac level.

2ndMIX Mode's menu screen in DDR X3.

DDR II, meanwhile, shares with X3 some songs, UI elements, and of course the core gameplay, but in other ways differs from it as well as the Wii DDR games before it. There are no alternate modes that use the Wii Remote, Nunchuck, or Balance Board, but they did bring back the Double mode from the core series. Also, the majority of songs come in two flavours: the traditional 1-to-2-minute edits, and the full-length versions. And this isn't like in 5thMIX or DDR X where only a scant handful of songs were long versions; this is done for all the licenced songs, and most of the Konami originals which weren't already from previous games. The unlock system also seems to have borrowed a page from the PS2 days. Unstead of a separate single-player campaign, you unlock new content by playing in the free-play mode and earning points. The "Replicant-D-Action" system also makes an appearance, but it's been simplified greatly from its appearance in X2. All you have to do is clear any three songs, and the Replicant-D-Action folder will become available. When you play any song therein, the folder disappears until you play another three songs, and so on.

Double mode in DDR II. A mainstay for most of the series finally makes its Wii debut.

DDR X3 features 515 songs, plus 30 songs in 2ndMIX Mode, and DDR II features 83 songs. In X3, you've got your usual stable of J-pop licences and Konami originals, including ones from DDR 2010, seeing as how that game was never released in Japan (lucky buggers). However I will admit that, apart from the boss songs, the "notable songs" section will be shorter this time around than the ones for previous games. Not including the revivals for 2ndMIX mode, there are only six new licenced songs, all of them Japanese, and they culled most of the licences left over from X and X2, just to add insult to injury (or is it the other way around?). And I've long since stopped keeping up-to-date with the other Bemani games -- which, I remind you, aren't made available outside of Asia -- so there's nothing in the selection of crossover songs that catch my eye. But maybe it's just me; if you absolutely must have material from jubeat Copious or Reflec Beat Collette, then go nuts, I guess.

As for DDR II, I feel a little conflicted. First, the bad news. There are two -- count 'em, two -- Justin Bieber songs in DDR II. And one by Miley Cyrus. And one by Selena Gomez. And one by Willow Smith -- you know, that "Whip My Hair" fellow. And two songs with Bruno Mars, who isn't nearly as embarrassing. Yeah, you can tell Konami of America courted the teen-pop crowd this time around. But it's not like those are bad songs to dance to; not like those boring slow songs from the last game. So now, the good news. Since (the 2010) X2 was never given a proper home port, the Konami originals (mainly Bemani crossovers) that weren't already included for the (the 2009) X2 and Hottest Party 3 have been revived for DDR II, including such assumed classics as "smooooch", "Gold Rush", and "Mei". Other notable songs include:

• "Connect", as made famous by Claris. (X3 only) The theme song from the anime series Puella Magi Madoka Magica. For some reason, X3 uses a cover version of this song, as well as with...
• "Heavy Rotation", as made famous by AKB48. (X3 only) Why Konami would need someone to cover one of the biggest names in J-Pop, I couldn't tell ya.
• "Say a Prayer" by Des-Row & Maxi Priest, and "Still Unbreakable" by Des-Row and Vanilla Ice. (II only) Unremarkable songs, but it's neat that they're collaborations between Bemani and non-Bemani artists.

Certain songs were made available later on for machines connected to the Internet, a form of DLC if you will, as tie-ins with certain events.

• Daily Special: Added five songs from other Bemani games. During the event, different ones were unlocked on each day of the week.
• Append Travel: Added four songs from jubeat Copius Append, another Bemani music game. Also let players earn Append Points to spend on items, however this feature expired in September 2012.
• Konami Arcade Championship 2012: Added seven songs. Five of them are remixes of Konami originals from 2ndMIX.
• Tsugidoka!: Added four songs from other Bemani games.
• Extra Tour: Gradually introduced the Evolved songs as selectable Extra Stages.

The new round of boss songs are:

• "Amalgamation" by Mystic Moon. (X3 only) A fairly high-speed (170 BPM) trance/techno song. Originally the Extra Stage on X3; replaced by "Unbelievable (Sparky Remix)" in an update.
• "Unbelievable (Sparky Remix)" by jun feat. Sarah Jane. (X3 and II) A happy-hardcore song in the vein of "Silver☆Dream" and "Kimono Princess". Originally the Encore Extra Stage in X3; later replaced by "Nephilim Delta" and demoted to Extra Stage in an update.
• "Nephilim Delta" by L.E.D-G. (X3 only) A darker-sounding gabba-techno song, its high-speed (220 BPM) eight-note runs play like an even more turned-up "Afronova" or "Arabiatta".
• "Silver☆Dream" by jun. (X3 only) A revival from Hottest Party 2.

Other boss songs include:

• X3 revived the "Tokyo Evolved", "Osaka Evolved", and "New York Evolved" series from Hottest Party, Hottest Party 2, and New Moves/Hottest Party 4 respectively, as part of the "Extra Tour" update. 
• DDR II revived "deltaMAX" and "888" from Universe 3, and the other boss songs from X2. 
• "PARANOiA Revolution" by Climax of Maxx 360, and "Trip Machine Evolution" by DE-JAVU. (X3 only) The latest remixes of these fan-favourite songs from the first game. These are playable in 2ndMIX Mode, as Extra Stages, and certain nonstop courses. 
• "Love Is the Power (Re:Born)" by NM. A remix of the end-credits songs from 2ndMIX. It's not a particularly hard song (only level 10 on Expert), but when played as an Encore Extra Stage, you have to get all Perfect marks or better; so much as one Great kicks you out of the song. 
• "London Evolved" by TAG Underground. (X3 and II) The new set of Evolved songs, bearing three variations, this one is more trance-like, specifically reminiscent of "Roppongi Evolved" from X2. 
• "Tohoku Evolved" by 2.1MB Underground. (X3 only) Yet another Evolved song, specifically a remix of "London Evolved". Technically there is only one version of "Tohoku Evolved", except that the last note is a randomised corner-jump. This song breaks the DDR speed record, with a certain passage reaching a whopping 1,020 BPM. A tribute to the victims of the natural disasters which hit north-eastern Japan earlier in 2011, this version incorporates voice samples such as "Our thoughts and prayers are with you". 

Come to think of it, "Tohoku Evolved" would have been a poignant send-off to the Dance Dance Revolution series. Scratch that... it should have been the series' send-off. We've got only two more entries to go on Dance Dance Retrospective, and I have a bad feeling about them.

Dance Dance Retrospective: DDR 2010

Previously on Dance Dance Retrospective, there were DDR X2 for the PlayStation 2, and DDR Hottest Party 3 for the Wii. I thought little of them at the time, and still do, but their announcement earlier in 2009 came with promises of more advanced titles for the PS3 and XBox 360. Those, of course, never came to be... at least that year. But the following year, the seventh-generation consoles were finally (not including the Universe trilogy for XBox 360) graced with Dance Dance Revolution games to call their own: the simply-titled DanceDanceRevolution, which released first for the PS3 and Wii, with an XBox 360 port following shortly after.

And it sucked.

...

I assume. Yeah, as with the previous entries, I've yet to play this one, because it's not doing a heck of a whole lot to interest me. First of all, let's start with the title: no number, no subtitle, just "DanceDanceRevolution". I'd like to state for the record that I hate when people recycle a title with little to no changes when making a sequel to some form of media. I hate this practise so much that I might even write a top-ten list on the subject. To be fair, it is just one word in CamelCaps this time around, unlike the 1998 arcade game, its home port for Japan, and the 2001 home game which used a somewhat different engine. And yes, I guess they did it to ring in a new console generation... Oh wait, there was the DDR Universe series! ...Oh wait, that was an XBox 360 exclusive. Never mind. Meanwhile, over in Europe, the game was blessed with the subtitle "New Moves" on the PS3 and 360, and "Hottest Party 4" on the Wii. And I'm like, why couldn't you have done that over here!? *sigh* As it stands, I shall collectively refer to the new games as DDR 2010.

So enough about the title, what's the game itself like? Well, speaking at least for the "New Moves" versions, the interface colour scheme is dominated by reds and blacks, and the music-select screen brigns back the 5thMIX-through-SuperNOVA2 "music wheel" layout. Oh, and the rating scale is once again brought back to the old 1-to-10 standard. But not well, mind you. For example, the Basic chart for "Let's Get Away" is ranked a 4, but it's really more like a 2, 3 tops. After playing second-banana to the Guitar Hero / Rock Band duumvirate for some years, DDR 2010 attempts to incorporate some features from those games. "Groove Chains", or short sequences of notes that offer bonus points when completed without error, and "Groove Trigger", which you can activate at full health to get bonus points, both borrow elements of the Star Power/Overdrive systems from those rival games. In theory, I do admire these embellishments as attempts to liven up gameplay which has for the most part remained stale since 2001 (when they invented Freeze Arrows). But the execution leaves something to be desired. To use Groove Trigger, for example, you have to press Up and Up-Right or Up-Left immediately after, or flick the right analog stick on a separate controller. And the game still tallies the bonus points earned from these gimmicks separately from your base score (out of 1 million), so in the end it's kind of pointless.

Club Mode in the PS3 version.

DDR 2010 game lacks a Nonstop course mode in the traditional sense, but the PS3 and 360 versions do feature a Club Mode, which has you playing a random selection of 4 to 20 songs without breaks, and is the primary method of unlocking new songs. The only problem, at least for experienced players, is that it always starts you out on Beginner-level charts. The "Hands and Feet" mode from the later PS2 entries has been reincarnated as "Step and Move", which uses the dance pad along with the Move camera and wand (PS3 only). This time around, there are targets on all four corners of the screen, and you use your wand to trigger them for the appropriate note markers. From what I've seen of this mode, it has an unfortunate tendency of forcing you to twist your upper body at odd angles to hit the right markers, as if you were playing high-speed Twister with no tactile feedback. And you know that 8-panel mode that was teased in the 2009 trailer? Yeah, it's still in this game -- the new dance pads finally have eight panels, after all -- but like the Shock Arrows in DDR X, they're only used for a scant handful of Challenge-level charts. Meanwhile, the Wii version has carried over the Balance Board-supported Choreography Mode from Hottest Party 3.

Choreography Mode in the Wii version.

But if you were to ask me, and by reading this blog you implicitly did so, the make-or-break feature for any music game is, duh, the music. And it is in this arena that DDR 2010 sucks a fat one. Of the licenced songs chosen for this game, which would I characterise the whole thing with? "Hey, Soul Sister" by Train. "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz. "Battlefield" by Jordin Sparks. And "Need You Now" by Lady Antebellum. You see the problem, don't you? If you're not familair with those songs, I'll give it to you straight: they're too slow and dull for a dancing game! Oh, and you read that last one right: there's now a country-western song in a Dance Dance Revolution game. A really good country-western song mind you, but not something I'd want to dance to. Okay, to be fair, there have been slow songs in the older games which I didn't mind, but those were Konami originals for the most part. And there are more... active choices in this game -- I guess I'd highlight "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga, "crushcrushcrush" by Paramore, "Rio" by Duran Duran, and "Venus" by Bananarama -- but the damage was done by the lower end of the quality spectrum.

As for the Konami originals, well, I guess they're okay; they're pretty much going through the same motions by now. For the bosses, there's another level-10 happy-hardcore song, and another "Evolved" song. Also "MAX 300" again. Oh right, I forgot to mention, there are 5 revival songs in this game, the other four being "Afronova" from 3rdMIX, "Sweet Sweet Magic" and "Tsugaru" from MAX2, and "Hana Ranman (Flowers)" from SuperNOVA. Plus, there are even more songs available as downloadable content: 30 songs across 6 packs, all revivals spanning the classic through the SuperNOVA eras. This arguably makes for the most interesting material in the game, but if that's so, it's pretty sad when you think about it. For one, you have to pay extra for the best content, and two, the best content is stuff you've already seen before. So is the 2010 DanceDanceRevolution the worst game in the series? It'd be hard to say that for certain, what with all those pint-sized spin-off releases Japan got back in the day, but at least among the full-budget, worldwide (at least for more than one region) releases, it'd be easier to make that accusation. And for what we were promised in 2009, it's easily the most disappointing.

Next episode is on both an arcade and a home game... I do hope this next installment of Dance Dance Retrospective will bring something more interesting to the table.

Dance Dance Retrospective: DDR X2

The advent of a new decade (get it, "New Decade" is a song from this game... read on) brought with it a chance for the Dance Dance Revolution franchise to redeem itself. On the one hand, there was the arcade release of DDR X, an otherwise okay entry which got shafted by poor machine construction outside of Japan. And on the other hand, there was the one-two punch of the home games X2 and Hottest Party 3, which couldn't decide whether they wanted to appeal to casual or hardcore DDR players. Well, with such stakes as I've described just now, I'm proud to announce that the arcade sequel DanceDanceRevolution X2 (not to be confused with the 2009 PS2 entry of the same name) was good.

...

I assume. Regrettably, I've never played on an X2 machine, ever since its rollout in 2010 (Asia: 7 July, NA: 31 December). Sure, I've played its new songs on other DDR games, but the nearest X2 machine to where I am is up around New York, and we all know what I think about the Big Apple. Even worse, I took a vacation to Japan just weeks before its launch over there, leaving me stuck to play on those crummy old deluxe X cabinets. And even worse worse, I'm planning to visit again early next year, but by now all the arcades in Tokyo have replaced their X2 machines with newer entries in the series (if the arcade listings on zenius-i-vanisher.com are to be believed). Edit 16 September 2014: Never mind, I've finally managed to play on a real X2 machine. And it was good. But enough about my personal anecdotes, let's talk about the game.

The new music menu screen with the Cover Flow layout.

DDR X2 -- that is, the real DDR X2 -- has a green-dominated colour scheme and (re-)introduces the Cover Flow format on its music select screen. As far as actual gameplay is concerned, X2 introduces new gameplay options which I'd say are useful for pro players. First are the Hidden+ and Sudden+ modifiers, which like the original Hidden and Sudden mods hide the arrows at the bottom or top of the screen. The difference with the "plus" versions is that you can adjust how far you want to hide the arrows by pressing the Up or Down buttons on the console during gameplay. (Arrow-speed mods can also be adjusted on the fly in this fashion.) And second is the Risky option, where missing one step or Freeze Arrow will kick you out of the song instantly, except you can still play any stages you have left. On the flip side, beginner players can eschew the traditional, full-featured Pro Mode in favour of Happy Mode, which features a limited songlist focusing on easier charts, so if that makes you comfortable, then go nuts.

Hidden+ and Sudden+ look something like this.

(From Beatmania IIDX 12: Happy Sky.)

Once again, X2's hidden content requires an e-Amusement profile to unlock. And once again, Konami released unlock codes for regions that were never graced with the presence of e-Amuse (read: America and Europe). Furthermore, X2 is the first arcade DDR game to support PASELI, a debit card which can pay for games coinlessly. In fact, there's also a Marathon Mode in which PASELI users can pay to play up to seven songs in a row. As with e-Amuse, it's only available in Japan, and you can't even set up a PASELI account over the Internet if you don't live in Japan, so don't get your hopes up. Fortuantely, the international versions of X2 bring back the ability to save high scores for each song and chart on the machine itself, a feature which was created for SuperNOVA but dropped from the sequel in favour of doing so with e-Amuse.


DDR X2 features a total of 444 songs, including the following:

• A handful of classic Dancemania licences (including "If You Were Here" from 2ndMIX, and "Captain Jack" and "Dam Dariram" from 3rdMIX) have been revived, in the fashion of the X-Edits from the last game, including Challenge charts with Shock Arrows. This time, however, they actually stuck to the original cut of the song and just stretched that out a bit at both ends.
• "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice. Yup, the same cruddy version I tore down in my last entry.
• Since Konami also sold X2 in the rest of Asia, they threw in unlockable Mandarin Chinese-language versions of a few songs, including "iFuturelist" and "Nijiiro" from SuperNOVA.
• "Gold Rush" by DJ Yoshitaka-G feat. Michael a la Mode, a crossover from Beatmania IIDX 14: Gold. A lovably infamous song recogniseable by fans for its energy, stupid lyrics (like the recurring reprise of "Make it make money"), and the sequential name-dropping of the Beatmania games mid-song. In X2, it is joined by two alternate versions, the "DDR AC" and "DDR CS" versions, which replace those references with the arcade and console DDR games, but otherwise use the same charts.
• "smooooch" by Kors K, a crossover from Beatmania IIDX 16: Empress. A bouncy happy-hardcore track whose background video, with three cartoon princesses bouncing about, has inspired parodies and tributes from both sides of the Pacific.
• "Mei" by Amuro. Not a boss song, but it should be. In its IIDX appearance, the hardest chart on this two-minute track had two thousand notes, and whilst its DDR counterpart is nowhere near as complicated, with a level-18 Challenge chart, it's still among the hardest songs in X2.
• "ΔMAX" (read: "Delta Max") by DM Ashura, a revival from DDR Universe 3. Not a boss song in this game, but its tempo starts out at 100 and, throughout the song, gradually increases to a blistering 573.
• Fun Fact: The number 573 appears elsewhere in DDR, namely the default high score in certain versions, and other Konami games as well. That's because the name Konami can be "translated" to "573" through a system of Japanese wordplay known as "goroawase".
• The boss songs are revivals from the 2009 series:
• The Extra Stage is "Kimono Princess" by jun.
• The Encore Extra Stage is "Roppongi Evolved" by TAG Underground. The first time an Evolved song was used in an arcade release, this one boasts an exclusive fourth version not found in the 2009 home games.
• In addition, X2 introduces a new system for boss songs called "Replicant-D Action", lifted from the newer Beatmania IIDX games. For all intents and purposes, this doesn't work without an e-Amusement profile. The songs in RDA and their requirements are:
• "Pierce the Sky" by JAKAZiD feat. JN. Unlocked by clearing any 20 songs from the X2 folder.
• "Sakura Sunrise" by Ryu☆ (Ryutaro Nakahara). Unlocked by clearing any 2 songs from each of the 12 folders.
• "Shiny World" by Capacity Gate. Unlocked by clearing 6 courses and one Drill Course.
• "Posession" by TAG Underground. Unlocked by clearing any 100 Challenge charts, and getting an AA grade or better on "Pierce the Sky" and "Sakura Sunrise". The difficulty level on which those AAs were achieved determines which difficulty "Possession" can be played on.
• "New Decade" by Sota F. Unlocked by getting a full combo on any 15 charts, and getting AA or better on and "Sakura Sunrise" and "Shiny World".
• "Anti-Matter" by Orbit1 & Milo. Unlocked by playing Trial Mode (where two players can play one song for the price of a single-player game) three times, and getting AA or better on "Pierce the Sky" and "Shiny World".
• Getting AA or better on each of the above songs earns a medal. When all six medals are earned, the song "Valkyrie Dimension" by Spriggan (Yoshitaka Nishimura) is automatically selected as an Encore Extra Stage. When this song is finished, pass or fail, all six medals are erased from the player's profile and can be earned again. Rinse and repeat.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Well... remember how I said that X2 machines were few and far between in my sphere of experience? What hurts matters more is that there was never a home port of X2. Sure, the individual songs showed up in other games, but this was Konami's big chance to bring Dance Dance Revolution into the seventh generation, and they blew it. Again. But think about it from their point of view: by 2010 the last console generation was for all intents and purposes dead, and the Guitar Hero/Rock Band craze was about to fade as well, so perhaps consumers wouldn't have the stomach to purchase another plastic peripheral for another system. Konami did bite the bullet after all and make a DDR game for the latest and greatest systems, but... ah... that's a story for next time on Dance Dance Retrospective!

Dance Dance Retrospective: Class of 2009

It's almost as if Konami was afraid to make the jump into the seventh console generation as far as Dance Dance Revolution was concerned. Sure, there was the Universe series on XBox 360 and Hottest Party on Wii, but the core series remained solely in the domain of the PlayStation 2, even after its successor console came onto the market. That was all set to change in 2009, when they released a trailer trumpeting a new DDR entry for all the consoles that mattered at the time. With features such as Balance Board support for the Wii, and eight-panel modes for PlayStation 3 and 360, it was set to inject some much-needed fresh blood into our franchise.

Except... it never happened.

Sort of.

2009 did indeed see new DDR titles, namely DanceDanceRevolution X2 for the PS2 and DanceDanceRevolution Hottest Party 3 for the Wii, both released in North America on 27 October 2009. But its PS3 and 360 counterparts took their sweet time until eventually they were unofficially declared as cancelled. Well actually, they did come out in some form later on, but that's another story. But at the time, the games we did get felt like the opening act for a main event which never showed up. So now that time has passed, let's analyse the games on their own merits.

We shall start with DDR X2. Not to be confused with the future arcade edition of the same name (again, another story), the 2009 X2 is essentially a direct sequel to DDR X, inasmuch as a rhythm game with no plot can have a direct sequel. Its interface is a re-skinned version of X's, focusing on violet and gold colours and funky city motifs. The new single-player modes are Dice Master Mode, a pseudo-board-game interface for playing missions and unlocking new content, and Request Mode, a simpler affair more like the Mission Mode in Extreme. I couldn't tell you more about these modes because I never bothered to play this game -- I know, shocking. Maybe it's the music setlist: with a total of 62 songs split between licences, new Konami originals, leftover Konami originals from X, and a smattering of revival songs which no one cared about. Seriously, "Tierra Buena"!? Oh, and the Groove Radar Specials from SuperNOVA2.

Meanwhile, Hottest Party 3 made significant changes in both design and gameplay, compared to its own predecessor. HP3 is the first DDR game to use a "Cover Flow" layout (popularised by iTunes) in its music select screen, displaying album artwork in a 3D-ish line. And in addition to the traditional dance-pad gameplay, there's a separate mode where you use the Wii Balance Board, swinging your centre of balance to hit notes. I've never owned a Balance Board, so again I couldn't be bothered to try this game. The song list is also 62 large and shares many of the tracks from X2, but instead of pre-existing Konami originals, they threw in new licenced songs not found in X2, thus trapping fans (myself excluded) in a proverbial rock-and-a-hard-place quandary. And a (not so) Fun Fact: the Japanese version of HP3, Dance Dance Revolution Music Fit, is as of this post the last home DDR game made for Japan.

I know what you're thinking (and if I'm wrong, allow me to put words in your mouth): "Kevin not buying the new Dance Dance Revolution game? What has this world come to?" Well, I've grown a lot more cynical for one thing, especially since SuperNOVA came about and Konami decided to stop innovating. (As a matter of fact, SuperNOVA2 was the first game in a while which I didn't pick up within the first few days of its release, if you want to split hairs.) But it's not just the unchanging experience which turned me off. Content is nine-tenths of the law when it comes to music game sequels, and neither did I feel a connection in this area. Whereas the licenced songs in X were in short supply and generally the products of lesser-known artists, X2 and HP3 reversed this trend by shifting the focus onto top-40 hits from the past year or two. Acts like Ne-Yo, Pitbull, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna are represented in both games. However, this approach sometimes lends itself to picking less-than-danceable selections. Seriously Konami, I like Coldplay's "Viva La Vida", but it doesn't have the kind of energy that I could step to.

Also, I'd like to discuss a certain trend which really became noticeable around this time: the edited versions of licenced songs appearing in DDR games, mostly the American and European home versions, are generally bollocks. As you might know by now, most songs in DDR run for about a minute and a half, less than half of their original runtimes. A good editor would excise verses and choruses to get to the target length, and leave no indication that anything was cut unless you were familiar with the full version. However, the approach Konami has taken as of late is to just run the song from the beginning and just fade out whenever it felt "right", usually in the middle of the second verse. Does the song have any profanities, even mild ones? Just skip over the offending verse and use the next one, they would say, no need to track down the clean version. And then there's Vanilla Ice's sarcastic-quotes magnum-opus end-sarcastic-quotes "Ice Ice Baby", which possibly has the worst edit out of all licenced songs in DDR. For some reason they used only the first verse, avoided the chorus whenever possible, and ended with thirty seconds of a lyricless outro. See for yourself:

And it gets even worse: X2 and HP3 also introduce* remakes of some classic Konami originals, such as "Brilliant 2U", "Keep On Movin'", and "Dynamite Rave". And by "remakes", I mean they cheapened up the production, wrote new lyrics, and got their in-house singers du jour to give a half-hearted performance. Now, I'm not equating the original versions with the best records out right now, but they did have their own nostalgic charm because that '90s-flavoured camp is what I grew up with as a DDR player. And being offered something that's presented as one of those old favourites but turns out to be something completely different is disappointing, like when you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca cherry cola. And even worse worse (didn't know how to phrase that), they had the ballsy temerity to make new stepcharts for them as well. Again, charts like "Dynamite Rave" expert had a familiar hardness to them, and when they get replaced with something easier and more generic, well, allow me to redirect you to my previous comparison. Yeah, they might've had to remake these songs because of rights issues involving the original recordings... somehow... but knowing that doesn't lessen the hurt for us consumers.

Konami, I am disappoint. Oh well, looks like it's up to the arcade series to karmically balance out this franchise. Find out if they make it happen, next time on Dance Dance Retrospective!

*NB: These remakes first appeared in the Japanese version of Hottest Party 2. That is except for "Dynamite Rave", which was used in the arcade version of DDR X , but with the old stepcharts untouched.

Dance Dance Retrospective: DDR X

It took me until the 15th anniversary of Dance Dance Revolution to talk about its 10th. Go figure. But whatevs, the time is right to talk about the game that took DDR into its second decade: 2008's DanceDanceRevolution X.

The new DDR X cabinet. ...In Japan.

For the first time in ten years and goodness knows how many games, Konami designed a new cabinet for the arcade version of X. The machine boasted a HD widescreen display, a new external light patterns, including LED bars along the sides, and USB ports which, rather than support profiles as I would've hoped :-(, replace the PlayStation Memory Card ports for the purposes of transferring edit charts from the home versions. At least... in Japan. In order to cut costs, the machines sold in America and Europe were co-manufactured by Raw Thrills... Seriously!? It's not bad enough that Raw Thrills produces inferior games in genres already conquered by the Japanese; now they have to go and ruin one of their franchises directly!? The result is that the HD monitor tends to lag behind the sound, throwing off timing (results may vary), the pads were constructed out of a single piece of metal instead of the "grid" pattern used before, thus being easier to break (again, results may vary), and those pretty light-bars on the sides were taken out. And the USB ports, while still present, were not supported by the home version, but instead a Web browser-based program which only supported a selection of songs from SuperNOVA on, and I couldn't even get the darn thing to work. As in SuperNOVA2, an e-Amusement kit is required for unlocking songs, and unlock codes were unveiled for regions in which the kit was unavailable.

So enough about the outside of the machine, what's going on inside? DDR X makes its own little attempts at modernising the experience, starting with a new difficulty rating scale. The old 1-to-10 scale from the MAX and SuperNOVA eras has been replaced with a scale going from 1 to a possible 20. All difficulties using the old scale have been adjusted, by a roughly 1 1/2-times increase. For example, "PARANOiA" Expert has gone from level 8 to 12, and "MAX 300" Expert from 10 to 15. As of 2013, the highest level ever achieved on this scale by an official chart is 19. And for those of you migrating to this series from Pump It Up!, this scale is also roughly analogous to the scale they introduced in PIU Exceed, back in 2004. It appears that Konami was only now trying to catch up with its competition... specifically, where its competition was that many years ago.

Want proof? DDR X also marks the debut of the Shock Arrow, which damages your Groove Gauge if you're stepping on any of the panels as it crosses the Step Zone. If this sounds like the mines from In The Groove (refresher), they are indeed similar, but with two differences. Shock Arrows always cover all four step directions, and if you hit them, all the arrows on screen will flash invisible for a brief moment. Sadly, the Shock Arrows are a bit under-used, only appearing on Challenge-level charts (themselves copies of other charts with Shock Arrows replacing some notes) for a scant number of songs, and you can't add them to edit data. At least it's fun to play with them every once in a while, and they would return for the next few games.

DDR X employs a new art direction for its background stages.

In contrast to the wide variety of colourful, computer-esque settings that the SuperNOVA games offered as backdrops, there are only six to be found in X. Some are grungy cityscapes, which tie in to urban elements like chain-link fences and masking-tape tags used in the predominantly yellow-orange UI. And then you lay eyes on the birthday cake stage and things start to get more complicated... They brought in new announcers, too: Justin and Wil-Dog from the band Ozomatli, who also contributed a song to the home version. Aaand... they suck. Their uncomfortable mixture of American street slang and gratuitous Japanese makes them the most grating out of all the announcers this series has ever had. On the bright side (figuratively, anyway), DDR X also adds a handful of new modifiers. The Screen Filter option darkens part of the background, making the arrows easier to see, which is a Godsend if sun glare has been a problem wherever you've been playing (in my case, the Jersey shore). You can also change the design of the arrows from the options menu, similar to what the later home games allow.

Notable new songs include:

• "30 Lives (Up-Up-Down-Dance Mix)" by The Motion Sick. An alt-rock love song built around the Konami Code, of all things. And yes, they do work the code into the stepcharts. Made for the DDR Song Contest 2008.
• "A Geisha's Dream" by Naoki & SMiLE.dk. Pretty groundbreaking in that it's a collab between Konami and non-Konami acts, but in the end it just serves to cement SMiLE.dk's association with the DDR franchise.
• "Always On My Mind" by the Pet Shop Boys. This country classic was re-worked into a post-New Wave version by the band in 1987.
• "Here It Goes Again" by OK Go. And yes, it does use the "OK Go on Treadmills" music video.
• "U Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer. And yes, it does pause at the "Stop, Hammertime" line.
• A selection of old licences from 1st and 2ndMIX have been revived in the form of "2008 X-Edits". The steps bear plenty of resemblance to their original charts, all of them boast Shock Arrows on Challenge, but unfortunately, the edits made to the songs themselves kinda suck. It's like they tried to avoid using any passages from the original cuts. I realise that the cuts from older games are shorter than nowadays, but these are just jarring to anyone familiar with them. The following songs have been revived in this manner:
• "Butterfly" by SMiLE.dk (1st)
• "Boys" by SMiLE.dk (2ndMIX)
• "Dub-I-Dub" by Me & My (2ndMIX)
• "Get Up'n Move" by S&K (2ndMIX)
• "Hero" by Papaya (2ndMIX) (Only available on home version)
• In addition to the X-Edits, Shock Arrow charts are available for the following songs:
• "Dance Celebration" by Bill Hamel feat. kevens
• "Flight of the Phoenix" by Jena Rose
• "Horatio" by OR-IF-IS
• "On the Bounce" by Neuras
• "Saber Wing" by TAG
• The five X-Mixes, which are medleys of new songs. Like the Nonstop mixes from the Solo games and the Long Versions from 5thMIX, these require 2 stages to play.
• The following songs have been revived from the Hottest Party games, making their core series debut: 
• "Beautiful Inside (Cube::Hard Mix)" by NM feat. Alison Wade (HP)
• "Super Samurai" by jun (HP)
• "will" by Naoki (HP)
• "Into Your Heart (Ruffage Mix)" by Naoki feat. Yasmine (HP2)
• "Loving You (Epidemik Remix)" by Toni Leo (HP2)
• The new boss songs are listed below. In the arcade version, depending on the total difficulty ratings of the songs you chose before, you may get different songs.
• "On the Break" by Darwin. First available as a Final Stage.
• "Saber Wing" by TAG. First available as an Extra Stage.
• "Horatio" by OR-IF-IS. First available as an Extra Stage.
• "Saber Wing (Akira Ishihara Headshot Mix)" by TAG. First available as an Extra Stage.
• "On the Bounce" by Neuras. First available as an Encore Extra Stage.
• "Trigger" by sonic-coll. First available as an Encore Extra Stage.
• In addition to the boss songs, X also features "X-Special" charts, new Challenge-level charts for numerous classic songs, similar to the Groove Radar Specials from SuperNOVA2, but instead of trying to max out any one element of the Groove Radar, they're just all-around challenging. X-Special charts are available for:
• "PARANOiA" (1st)
• "Trip Machine" (1st)
• "PARANOiA Max (Dirty Mix)" (2ndMIX)
• "PARANOiA KCET (Clean Mix)" (2ndMIX)
• "SP-Trip Machine (Jungle Mix)" (2ndMIX)
• "Afronova" (3rdMIX)
• "PARANOiA Rebirth" (3rdMIX)
• "PARANOiA Evolution" (4thMIX)
• "Trip Machine Climax" (4thMIX)
• "Healing Vision" (5thMIX)
• "Candy" (MAX)
• "MAX 300" (MAX)
• "Kakumei" (MAX2)
• "MaxX Unlimited" (MAX2)
• "Dance Dance Revolution" (Extreme)
• "The Legend of MAX" (Extreme)

The home version of DDR X was, yet again, made for PlayStation 2. Thankfully (IMO), the shop system from the Extreme and SuperNOVA games has been scrapped; instead, you unlock most songs and content by playing through the Street Master Mode, which deals out missions in the context of stories for each of the game's characters. In practice, these are simple text-box vignettes which provide the most transparent excuses for getting them to dance against one another -- think the DDR equivalent of Professor Layton. Although I did enjoy the quiz missions where you choose an answer by getting the corresponding grade in a song. Don't take it too seriously, and you'll find it a fun way to see all the game has to offer.

With its anniversary out of the way, Dance Dance Revolution will now join the 7th console generation! ...Or not. Read what happens next time on the Dance Dance Retrospective!

Dance Dance Retrospective: Hottest Party

It's no secret... that is, secretly-held opinion... that the Dance Dance Revolution franchise got stuck in a rut by not presenting innovative mechanics often enough.  I for one place the turning point right around SuperNOVA.  But where the franchise floundered in the arcades and on the PlayStation 2, its star rose on a new platform: the Nintendo Wii.  In 2007, Konami produced a spin-off entry entitled Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party, and molded into the formula several welcome changes which instilled a renewed sense of fun even into jaded fans like myself.  In fact, it was so well-received that Konami saw fit to bestow upon us a total of five games bearing the Hottest Party nameplate (depending on which region you live in).  But were the games themselves anything to write home about?  Let's find out.

Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party (2007)

First off, anyone remember the last time Konami attempted to put a DDR game on a Nintendo console?  Yeah, DDR Mario Mix (GameCube, 2005).  You can go ahead and forget about that one.  Except the fact that the dance pads they made for that are also used by Hottest Party.  Unless you've got one of the newer models that left out the GameCube ports, in which case sorry, but there's kind of no way to play this.

Four players and Hand Markers.  (From Hottest Party.)

As for everyone else, you'll be pleased to know that Hottest Party uses the Wii's exclusive features to great effect.  You can play with the regular four-panel setup, or you can turn on optional Hand Markers, notes in which you must shake the Wii Remote or Nunchuck to catch.  In effect, this is the next evolution of the six-panel mode from the DDR Solo series, or more recently, the EyeToy-powered Hands and Feet mode from the PlayStation 2 games.  In addition, you can also turn on optional Gimmick notes, which do anything from expanding into more notes to penalizing you for hitting them.  And while a new roster of characters has replaced old standbys like Disco, Rage, and Emi, you can also use your Mii characters in-game.  Yeah, that isn't creepy at all, I said in sarcasm mode.

The music selection, on the other hand, might not fulfill the excitement you built up for yourself in reading the above paragraph.  Whilst they did licence a decent array of hit songs from recent and past eras, they're all covers done by some of Konami's in-house bands.  Their results are generally nothing to be proud of, although at least they tried reworking stuff like Janet Jackson and Nelly's "Call On Me" and JoJo's "Too Little Too Late" to be more danceable.  Strangely, not even Konami's own songs are immune, as franchise classics like "B4U" and "Break Down!!" also got the cover treatment, and call it a case of "They Changed It, Now It Sucks", but... they suck.  I mean, seriously, I know the lyrics don't really matter, but at least get them right!  At least the brand-new songs are halfway decent, primarily the ones coming from the usual suspects like Naoki, DJ Taka, and Jun.

I know I told you to forget about Mario Mix, but I'm bringing it up one more time to illustrate one more point.  Mario Mix was easy; the hardest charts in that game would be lucky to be classified as Standard-level charts in the main series.  Hottest Party does not have this problem; it utilizes the same scale of difficulty as the Max and SuperNOVA games.  If you see a chart ranked at level 10, they MEAN level 10.  Fittingly, Hottest Party introduces a new paradigm for the "boss" songs, which eventually got carried over to the rest of the series:

• A fast Happy-Hardcore song with relatively straightforward charts, usually performed by Jun.  In Hottest Party it is "Super Samurai".
• Something known as an "Evolved" song, having plenty of tempo changes and multiple randomly-chosen versions.  In Hottest Party it is "Tokyo Evolved" by Naoki Underground.
• In addition, the Japanese version of Hottest Party boasts a third boss song, "Pluto the First" by White Wall.  As the title suggests, this is another remix of "Pluto" from SuperNOVA2, and has more in common with the original than "Pluto Relinquish".  This was eventually ported abroad in Hottest Party 3 / X2.

Even more (easier to define) Hand Markers.  (From Hottest Party 2.)

Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 2 (2008)

Also known as Dance Dance Revolution: Furu-furu Party in Japan.  Again, many of the licenced songs are covers, although they did get some original versions here and there.  The features and style are similar to the original, so you feel like giving the Hottest Party series a try, you could do well with either one or the other.  Preferably this one.  The new boss songs are:

• "Silver Wing" by Jun.  The happy-hardcore song.
• "Osaka Evolved" by Naoki Underground.  The Evolved song.

Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 3 (2009)

Also known as Dance Dance Revolution: Music Fit in Japan.  Unlike the previous two entries, all the licenced songs in HP3 are the original recordings, with an emphasis on top-40 hits form 2008  A tie-in with the PS2 game Dance Dance Revolution X2 (not to be confused with the arcade game of the same name); more on DDR HP3 will follow in the article for that game.

DanceDanceRevolution (2010)

Also known as Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 4 in Europe.  Added a Choreography Mode which used the Wii Balance Board and remotes, perhaps to compete with the likes of Ubisoft's Just Dance series.  A tie-in with the game of the same name for PlayStation 3 and XBox 360; more on DDR 2010 will follow in the article for those games.

DanceDanceRevolution II (2011)

Also known as Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 5 in Europe.  The final DDR title released for the Wii, DDR II eschewed the functions and modes brought on by the previous Wii-exclusive entries, in order to bring itself more in line with the arcade/PlayStation paradigm.  Fitting, as this was a tie-in with the arcade game Dance Dance Revolution X3 vs. 2ndMIX.  More on DDR II will follow in the article for that game.

So yeah, there's lots I didn't want to spoil before I spoke about some other games, for being too similar to them.  That only stands as a testament to how much the Hottest Party series was accepted by new and hardcore fans alike.  So now that I've got that out of the way, it's time to revisit the arcade series for a little anniversary party, next time on Dance Dance Retrospective.

Dance Dance Retrospective: The Spin-Offs

When a franchise reaches a certain level of popularity, like Dance Dance Revolution did in Japan at the turn of the millenium, its creators will expand on its popularity beyond the canon entries.  And you know what that means: spin-off games.  Fandom must work differently in Japan.  How else could you explain that there were so many DDR titles released within the span of only a couple of years?  (Seriously, it makes Guitar Hero look like Mega Man Legends in that regard.)  And yet despite only packing a dozen or two songs each, they sold most of them for 5,000 yen* a pop?  I've brought up the 2ndMIX Club Version games and the Solo games in previous entries, and I have let slip that even these games pioneered certain tweaks which would become commonplace in the core series.  So let's explore the rest of the... rest, and see if they have anything worthwhile to contribute.  Please bear in mind that very, very few of these were released outside of Japan and as such, I've never seen any of them in person.  I gathered much of my research on these topics from the website DDRer's Stomping Ground, so if you can read Japanese or have a translator handy, I invite you to read up for yourself.

*5000 JPY = 47.52 USD in Jan. 2000

Until 2008, the Dance Dance Revolution series was known by the name "Dancing Stage" in Europe.  I don’t know, maybe repeating the word "Dance" in the title was too Japanese.  But for some reason, Konami used the Dancing Stage name for a couple of small-name releases in Japan, too. Dancing Stage featuring Disney’s Rave is, as you might expect, a tie-in with Disney, and as such features arrangements of songs from their films and theme parks.  The game also features covers of other licenced songs as well, and not very good covers if I say so myself.  But it did include the "Dance Magic" mode, an extention of versus play where both players can "attack" their opponents with modifiers in the hopes of messing them up.  For 2006's SuperNOVA, this feature was brought into canon as Battle mode.  Oddly, Disney's Rave was one of the few spin-offs that got published in America, as Dance Dance Revolution Disney Mix (PlayStation, 2001).  It replaced some of the licenced songs with Konami originals from the core series, including the mighty "B4U", of all things, and added the Single Maniac difficulty missing in the original.

But say Disney isn’t your thing, maybe you need your licenced games to be a bit more… Japanese in flavour.  They’ve got you guys covered too, with the subsequent releases of  Dancing Stage featuring True Kiss Destination, in 1999, and Dancing Stage featuring Dreams Come True in 2000. Both games feature tracks from their respective J-pop bands, but with only about a dozen songs each, I’d just barely recommend them for fans only.  The same goes with Dance Dance Revolution Oha-Sta, which was a tie-in with the childrens' variety show Oha-Sta (short for "Ohayo Studio", or "Good-morning Studio").  DDR Oha-Sta is yet another game based on the 3rdMIX engine and boasts the standard Basic, Another, and Maniac levels, but as expected from its target demographic, the charts are easier than most of their core series peers.  Taking this concept further is Dance Dance Revolution Kids.  The songs here include TV and anime theme songs, including those from Pokemon and Digimon Adventure.  So, in case you've been dreaming of some sort of Pokemon/Digimon crossover, then sorry, this is the closest you're going to get.

By this point, nearly all the home DDR releases were made for the PlayStation. But that changed with the release of DDR GB for the Game Boy Color.  One wouldn’t think the Game Boy Color was a natural choice to serve as a home for DDR.  Think about it: the 8-bit sound processor is forced to beat the songs beyond recognition, and the traditional dance pad is not an option.  But apparently portable gaming is a bigger deal in Japan than I could've imagined, because somehow it caught on.  Japan got a total of five games for the DDR GB series, including ports of Disney's Rave and Oha-Sta.  And what's more, they even made a dedicated DDR controller that plugged into the GBC's headphone port.  For the longest time, the only other releases for Nintendo platforms were Dance Dance Revolution: Disney's Dancing Museum (Nintendo 64, 2001, Japan only), and Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix (Gamecube, 2005).

You may have noticed that many of these games were released around the turn of the millenium.  For better or worse, these habits died out around 2002, the year when games like Dance Dance Revolution Extreme and Beatmania the Final more or less swept away the old generation.  But the spinoff games never stopped, far from it.  There's the Ultramix and Universe series, which I've mentioned before, and licenced titles like DDR Disney Channel Edition and DDR High School Musical in America, and DDR Winx Club in Europe.  To think I've come this far and I haven't even made a passing reference to the Hottest Party series on Wii...  That's because it deserves its own entry, next time on Dance Dance Retrospective.

Dance Dance Retrospective: SuperNOVA 2

After SuperNOVA, Konami kept the ball rolling with the arcade release of Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA 2, for Japan on 22 August 2007 and North America on 17 January 2008.  (Europe was left out, due to EU sanctions preventing the import of the PlayStation 2 hardware on which the game was based.)  As per the name, SuperNOVA 2 keeps most of the features from its predecessor, including the Tutorial, Battle, Nonstop, and Challenge Modes.  As such, I had by this point in time noticed the lack of innovation this series had to offer, and the game left me with a lukewarm opinion at best.  However, this game offers a couple of neat points if you do the research.

Sometimes, character graphics flash on-screen with good performance.  (Europe PS2 version)

First off, we have the inclusion of the e-Amusement system which Konami had used in its other Bemani arcade games over the past couple of years.  Basically, it combines stat tracking and internet ranking.  The player gets a card which stores data on calories burned, performance trends, and "Enjoy Points", which serve to unlock songs and features.  Machines connected to the Internet can also compare the player's scores with those from players around the world.  While DDR first got e-Amuse support with the Japanese version of SuperNOVA, Konami tried to put it out to the rest of the world for SuperNOVA 2.  But there was one problem: apparently, setting up a DDR machine to use e-Amuse requires a hardware upgrade, and a US$50/month subscription fee, presumably for the online functionality.  So, it never caught on abroad.  (The only known DDR machine to use e-Amuse outside of Asia can be found in Naperville, Illinois, where they held a location test for SuperNOVA 2.)  And that's where trouble started: since the game was designed to use e-Amuse to control song unlocks, there was no work-around to access the hidden content, at least until Konami released a series of unlock codes from their website.  This also meant that the ability to save local high scores, which was one of my favourite parts of the arcade SuperNOVA, was taken out.

I'd like to jump back into the Pump It Up! series for a moment here.  Around the time of the SuperNOVA games, Andamiro was adding campaign modes to their arcade PIU titles, starting with World Tour from 2005's Zero, and hitting their stride with WorldMax from 2008's NX2.  WorldMax mode presented players with challenges laid out in a map format, like Dance Master Mode from DDR Extreme 2.  Each credit paid would let the player play three stages, depending on the machine's settings, regardless of whether the player won or failed each mission.  Given the massive scale of the mode, progress could be saved onto USB devices.  Now, this would be the ideal alternative to how Konami forced e-Amuse upon us.  On the consumer's side, USB is a widely-used format, as opposed to a proprietary card which players would have to buy for one purpose.  And while the operator would have to buy the USB drive directly from Andamiro, or buy a new machine with one built-in, there's no mucking about with subscription fees and all that jazz.  So, in conclusion...  KONAMI!!  Y U NO USE USB UNLOCKS!?

*ahem* Moving on.  Whereas the Marvelous timing mark had previously been relegated to Challenge Mode, since its introduction in Extreme, this time around it was introduced into the rest of the game.  As such, the scoring system has been changed once again.  The maximum possible score is now 1 million points for all Marvelous marks, while all Perfects or better is good for at least 999,000.  For whatever reason, the AAA grade, previously reserved for a full Perfect combo, is awarded for a score over 990,000, so you can still get a AAA with at least one lower mark on most charts, but the game still keeps track of full combos and Perfect-full combos separately.  Apart from that, there's nothing else that sets SuperNOVA 2 apart from the previous game.  Oh, except the music.  Notable songs include:

• "Angelus" by Hitomi Shimatani.  A latin/house-flavoured J-pop song.  This song was also used as the opening for season 6 of Inuyasha.
• "Arrabiatta" by RevenG Kai.  A cyber-Arabian song and crossover from Pop'n Music 10.  The Expert chart is only level 9, but it's very hard and draining, given its tempo of 225 BPM.  Among the not-quite-10-footers, it's worse than "Healing Vision (Angelic Mix)" in that regard.
• "Music In The Rhythm" by nc feat. Electric Touch.  An electro-rock song with a fun beat and charts, and pauses throughout the track.  One of my favourite songs from SN2.
• "My Favorite Things" by Sloth Music Project feat. Alison Wade.  Seriously?  They remade a showtune from The Sound of Music!?
• "Trust -DanceDanceRevolution Mix-" by Tatsh feat. Yoko.  A tie-in with the anime Gurren Lagann.
• "Unreal" by Black Rose Garden.  This rock song only shows up as the final stage until it is unlocked proper.  The charts are full of jumps; even I have trouble passing the level-9 Expert chart.

The new round of boss songs:

• "NGO" by Keiichi Nabeshima.  A guitar-driven rock song with lots of irregular step patterns.
• "PARANOiA Hades" by α-Type 300.  This new remix of PARANOiA has more in common with "MAX300".  And a really scary background video.  Fun fact: This remix was composed by Junko Karashima, a.k.a. "Jun", a Bemani artist who is better known for much brighter happy-hardcore fare.  So, this is a serious case of mood whiplash we've got on our hands! ^_^
• "Pluto" by Black∞Hole.  A piano-techno song with lots of tempo changes and pauses.
• "Pluto Relinquish" by 2MB, a remix of "Pluto".  This song set a new speed record for the DDR franchise: some brief passages run at quadruple-speed of 800 BPM.

There's also another set of unlockable songs called the "Groove Radar Specials".  These are new charts for old songs, which emphasise one or more of the Groove Radar elements (offbeat steps, jumps, Freeze Arrows, etc.).  They are pretty self-explanatory, and are as follows:

• "AM-3P (Chaos Special)" by kTZ (from 2ndMIX)
• "B4U (Voltage Special)" by Naoki (from 4thMIX)
• "Brilliant 2U (Stream Special)" by Naoki (from 2ndMIX)
• "D2R (Freeze Special)" by Naoki (from MAX2)
• "Dynamite Rave (Air Special)" by Naoki
• "Dead End (Groove Radar Special)" by N&S (from 3rdMIX).  This one has all five ratings maxed out, plus tempo changes that weren't in the original charts, and as such this chart is one of the hardest in the entire franchise.  Have fun.

Modules can change your score in
Hyper Master Mode. (PS2 version)

The PlayStation 2 version of SuperNOVA2 was released for North America and Europe on 25 September 2007, and Japan on 21 February 2008.  The new single-player mode in this game is called Hyper Master Mode.  It's just a series of levels, each with a series of missions, but oddly, you only need to clear the last mission in each level to move on.  But Hyper Master Mode does mix it up through the use of Modules, which are essentially modifiers that you can buy in-game and use in the missions.  Some are helpful, and some add to the challenge and the "Hyper Score" you can earn on top of your regular score.  This is a nice idea, and I do wish it was better implemented, since both the Module system and Hyper Master Mode on the whole have plenty of potential.  But because the core gameplay has remained stagnant since 2001, my interest in the series began to wane by this point.  Perhaps some spin-off series could spice things up?  Find out next time, on Dance Dance Retrospective!