Dance Dance Revolution Extreme

Dance Dance Revolution Extreme is a music video game by Konami and is the eighth release in the main Dance Dance Revolution series. It was released on December 25, 2002 for Japanese arcades and on October 9, 2003 for the Japanese PlayStation 2. Despite the game being released only in a single region, the overall popularity of DDR caused the arcade release to be exported or pirated and placed in game rooms worldwide. The arcade release contains one of the largest soundtracks of any DDR game featuring 240 songs from across the entire series up to DDR Extreme as well as music from other Bemani music titles. Konami issued an in-game thank you to the fans of Dance Dance Revolution and announced that they were starting the series over but did not go into details. This led people to believe that DDR Extreme might be the final DDR game released or that the series might be rebooted as with Beatmania and Beatmania IIDX. However the series continued on video game consoles and in 2006 Dance Dance Revolution SuperNova was released to the arcades worldwide.

Development

Gameplay

DDR Extreme like same from DDRMAX2 7th mix, but a change are begin. The game introduced the Beginner mode, Nonstop mode, a mode like Challenge mode but with the life bar and a grade at the end of course, and a random banner. The most change are the extra stage and the color, the color are green and you can pick your own song to try extra stage, but you can play THE LEGEND OF THE MAX if you want. At ONE MORE EXTRA STAGE, the banner of Dance Dance Revoloution locked access of other songs. If you pass, a special ending are unlocked. A new brand of new songs are introduced, the bemani revival songs, like Beatmania IIDX, pop'n music or Keyboardmania, and an outside DDR series, DDR Solo, Home DDR and DDR Club version songs created by DDR Extreme. A cheat code revealed the real number of the songs, 240 songs. when you press left and right button, series, abc, bpm, player best and default sort are unlocked.

Extra Stage

DDR Extreme uses a slightly different rule for Extra Stage although the basic remains the same. If the player gets AA or better on HEAVY/CHALLENGE difficulty, they access the Extra Stage. However, the player can choose any song for Extra Stage, though the regular ES modifiers (1.5x (speed), Reverse (scroll), Heavy (difficulty), No Recovery dance meter) still used. The legend of MAX will be added on ES. If the player gets AA on The legend of MAX as ES, the player access One More Extra Stage (OMES), where Dance Dance Revolution will be the sole choice (using 3x (speed), Reverse (scroll), Challenge (difficulty), and Sudden Death dance meter).

Though not related, the other three "boss" songs may unlocked on different stages. TRIP MACHINE Survivor is unlocked on the second-to last stage. PARANOIA Survivor is unlocked on Final Stage. PARANOIA Survivor MAX is unlocked on Final Stage with special requirements;the player must AA specific PARANOiA songs during their play.

Home version

The home version are released in October 9 2003. This are a copy of a procceding game DDR Party Collection and featured his 58 characters, but the next version included 2 new characters. Bus and Train, the dancer helpers in beginner mode. DDR Extreme included lesson mode and credits too. He included 4 new bemani songs, 6 CS Extreme songs and a HELL song, Max. (period). You can unlocked characters to play all nonstop mode and you can made your Nonstop orders, oni orders and in diet mode, orders just.

Difficulty

Dance Dance Revolution Extreme uses two new difficulty levels in addition to Light, Standard and Heavy. Beginners mode, which has been in previous releases of Dance Dance Revolution under the name of Simple and is also featured in Dancing Stage EuroMix 2 as Beginner, is an easier setting than Light and represented by the color light blue. The background animations are replaced with an on-screen dancer that follows the actual step patterns of the song, cuing the player when and where to step with visual aid. Players will also be given a brief tutorial on how to play Dance Dance Revolution after selecting their first stage. By default, Beginner will automatically pass players on their first stage regardless of accuracy and subsequent stages will play to end of the song even if failed. Players can exit or enter Beginners mode anytime during stage selection.

The Challenge difficulty level is above Heavy, although the complexity of Challenge step patterns are not always more difficult. Challenge cannot be selected at the start of the game, instead players must enter the Challenge difficulty during stage selection and is represented by the color navy blue. Unlike the other difficulty levels, relatively few songs have a Challenge level. In contrast some songs contain only Challenge step patterns and highlighting them put players on the Challenge difficulty level automatically for those songs. In the arcade release of DDR Extreme there is no visual indication that a song has Challenge step patterns. In the PlayStation 2 release, icons representing each difficulty level including Beginner and Challenge light up when a highlighted song is playable on those levels. During normal gameplay Challenge uses the same rules as every other difficulty level.

Marvelous

In Nonstop and Challenge modes, a new step judgment is used called Marvelous. The judgment uses a stricter timing window than Perfect, representing very accurate steps made by players. Marvelous is displayed after each such step in white, and is not displayed during normal gameplay.

Nonstop mode

Challenge mode

Music

Green songs means songs that appears from DDR EXTREME. Blue songs means songs that appears from DDR through DDRMAX2. Purple songs means songs that appears from DDR Solo, home versions and DDR Club Version. Yellow Songs means songs that appears outside of DDR. The red song "The Legend of MAX" appears to be listed at the end credits after playing without any songs unlocked.

Soundtrack

The official soundtrack for Dance Dance Revolution Extreme was released on Toshiba EMI's Dancemania series of albums and contains two discs. The first disc contains a portion of the new music featured on the arcade and PlayStation 2 game along with the game's menu music and an uncut version of Graduation ~それぞれの明日^?~ performed by BeForU. The second disc is a nonstop megamix of the tracks from the first disc into a single uninterrupted performance. The nonstop megamix features the game's menu music and the in-game announcer mimicking the feel of playing the arcade game.

V-Rare

References

External links

• Konami Digital Entertainment (Japanese)
• Dance Dance Revolution Global Gateway (Japanese)
• Dance Dance Revolution Extreme arcade website (Japanese)
• Dance Dance Revolution Extreme PlayStation 2 website (Japanese)
• Dance Dance Revolution Extreme weekly journal (Japanese)
• Dancemania (Japanese)
• Dance Dance Revolution Extreme Original Soundtrack (Japanese)