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Dance Dance Revolution EXTREME is the eighth game in the Dance Dance Revolution series of Music Video Game s. It was released in arcades by Konami on December 25 , 2002 . Although only officially released in Japan , units exist worldwide. It features 240 songs, 14 of which are hidden and unlockable. 59 were new to DDR, and 23 were never seen before in any other Bemani game. It was speculated to be the final arcade version of Dance Dance Revolution, but with the release of Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA , Konami has proven this not to be the case. The interface uses a recoloring and smoothing of the song wheel interface first introduced in . The only addition was the creation of a "Beginner" mode, color-coded light blue, which similarly appeared first in Dance Dance Revolution USA as "Simple." "Challenge" [鬼 (''oni'') steps, color-coded dark blue and first seen in DDRMAX2, are also available for some songs, but it is not selectable before the game starts. GAMEPLAY The general premise of DDR EXTREME is the same as the previous Dance Dance Revolution games. One player can play using one dance pad (Single play style), two players can play using one dance pad each (Versus play style), or one player can play using both dance pads (Double play style). A player must step to the beat by pressing the arrows on the dance pad in correspondence to them overlapping the transparent arrows at the top of the screen to. Depending on the timing of each step the step is scored either with a "PERFECT," "GREAT," "GOOD," "BOO," "MISS," "O.K.," or "NG." A green health bar at the top of the screen increases based on PERFECT, GREAT, or O.K. steps, diminishes based on BOO, MISS, or NG steps, and remains neutral based on GOOD steps. If the health bar fully diminishes players receive a game over. Freeze Arrows, which were first introduced in DDRMAX, are also present in DDR EXTREME. Instead of just stepping on the arrow, players have to step on it for as long as the green arrow line remains on the screen. A player may play anywhere from three to seven songs (not including extra stages), depending on how many the arcade owner sets the machine to play each game. At the end of each song, the player sees their accumulated points and how many of each kind of step they stepped. They also receive a letter grade which range from an E (only seen in two player modes when one player fails but the other passes) to an AAA (all steps PERFECT), which are solely determined by the kind of steps they make. At the end of the game, they receive a cumulative score as well based on the last three songs they played plus any Extra Stages obtained. There are two systems for scoring each song: the long-score system, used to determine rankings, and an independent '''dance point''' system, used to determine the grade. The long-score system is the same as in DDRMAX2. The maximum score for a song is the foot-rating for that routine multiplied by 10 million. The highest number of points possible for a single song is 100 million points (for a 10-foot song). The dance-point system uses individual step values to determine the grade. It goes by the following formula: A PERFECT step adds two points, a GREAT step adds one point, a GOOD step is worth nothing, a BOO step takes away four points, and a MISS step takes away eight points. An O.K. freeze adds six points, and an N.G. freeze is worth nothing. The dance points are also tied to the health bar. As always, if a player makes too many bad steps and depletes the health bar, they will fail and the game will end immediately. In two-player games, if one player fails, they can continue dancing, but it ceases to accumulate dance points for the failed player and accumulates score points at only 10 points per PERFECT and 5 points per GREAT, and automatically gives the failed player an 'E' for the song. The grade is dependent on the number of dance points players accumulate: 100% dance points is 'AAA', at least 93% is 'AA', at least 80% is 'A', at least 65% is 'B', at least 45% is 'C' and anything below 45% is a 'D'. If players manage to get a net dance-point total of zero without depleting the life bar and, thus, failing, then the dancer gets an 'E'. The final grade for the entire game is an average of the grades from the last three songs and not derived from the actual dance points scored. If the first song is in Beginner or Light mode, then the game will allow a player to fail that song and continue, but will fail the player out if they fail a second song. In Beginner mode, it will fail only at the end of a song. In Light mode, it will fail as soon as the health bar is depleted. FMV backgrounds The arrows scroll over clips of Full Motion Video . The screen refreshes at a full speed of 60 frames per second. Groove Radar The Groove Radar is a graphical representation of the difficulty of a song based in five different areas. The five areas are as follows:
The Groove Radar displays up to two graphs, one for each player, depending on the difficulty they select. The classic foot-rating system is also used as a simpler (but rather arbitrary) method of determining a song's difficulty. A new rating, referred to as flashing 10, was introduced, and it signals that the steps are extraordinarily hard. Only three songs have stepsets rated flashing 10s:
Modifiers Modifiers are changes that can be made to modify the step routine. A menu is available to make these modifications easier to use. This menu can be accessed by holding the Green select button when the player chooses their song. Some of the available modifiers are as follows:
Extra Stages If, on the final stage, a player gets the grade of AA or better on any Heavy step routine, the game gives the message "Try Extra Stage." Unlike previous versions, a player can choose any song for their Extra Stage. Players are forced to play Heavy steps in a Reverse Scroll modifier and a x1.5 Speed modifier. On top of all that, Extra Stage is played in "Pressure" mode, which means the health bar starts full and does not regenerate if it depletes with missed steps. Challenge-only songs may also be used for Extra Stage. If, by choice or chance, a dancer chooses The legend of MAX (a flashing 10 in Heavy difficulty) for their Extra Stage and scores a grade of AA or better, then they are forced to play "One More Extra Stage." This time, the Song Wheel is locked on '''Dance Dance Revolution'''. The player is forced to play its Oni steps in a Reverse Scroll modifier and a x3 Speed modifier. On One More Extra Stage, it is in sudden-death mode, which means just one step that is not scored "Perfect" or "Great" or one freeze that is scored "NG" ends the game. Nonstop Mode Nonstop Mode, which appeared in DDR 3rdMIX and DDR 4thMIX , is also present in DDR EXTREME. Players must choose a course of four songs and play through it to the end (or until the player fails). The course '''Pop 4''' is used to determine rankings. A player's base score is used to determine their rank. Base scores are always a maximum of 100 million points. Since a base score is always graduated, the first song is generally worth up to 10 million, the second song 20 million, the third song 30 million, and the fourth song 40 million. Each Nonstop course has two difficulty settings, Normal and Difficult. In Normal difficulty, songs are typically Light or Standard difficulty, and in Difficult they are one level above, so Light songs become Standard and Standard songs become Heavy. In addition to a number of courses with pre-set songs and difficulties, there are 10 courses where the songs vary. Six of these courses are named Player's Worst, '''Player's Best 1-4''', '''Player's Best 5-8''', and so forth to '''Player's Best 17-20''', and they contain the four least popular and twenty most popular songs respectively. The method for deciding a song's popularity is based on how often and how recently a song is played, and songs with equal popularity are chosen in alphabetical order (evident as the songs in Player's Worst typically include the least popular songs starting with numbers or the letter A). For the '''Player's Best/Worst''' courses, the Normal difficulty is Standard and Difficult is Heavy for all songs, except where the song only has Oni/Challenge difficulty. The remaining four courses with variable songlists are named Random Dancemania, '''Random Bemani''', '''Random All''' and '''Random Caprice'''.
With the exception of Random Caprice, the songs selected for the random Nonstop courses are not known to the player until play begins. Like the '''Player's Best/Worst''' courses, the songs are typically Standard in the Normal difficulty course and Heavy in the Difficult course, but under certain conditions (such as the song only having an Oni difficulty) the difficulty may be Oni/Challenge. Since the colour of the song title (or the question marks that replace it) reflects the difficulty - pink for Standard, green for Heavy, and blue for Oni - this is the only clue towards what songs are in each course, since not every song has Oni steps. Some songs have well-hidden secret Oni steps that can only be played through Nonstop mode, as a result of exploiting a bug. If a player has one course selected, then changes to an adjacent course and presses the start button the split second after the previous songlist collapses, but before the new songlist expands, the newly selected course will inherit the difficulties of the previous course. For example, if one of the song's difficulties of the previous course is Oni, the song in that slot of the new course will be played on Oni, regardless of what it actually should be. Performing this trick on ''Love <3 Shine'' gives the player access to its hidden challenge steps, which are considered to be quite challenging and fun. A few other songs have secret Oni stepcharts as well, though most of them seem unfinished, and some songs can crash the machine if the bug is used on them. The player must also not enter the mod screen before playing the course, otherwise the course's proper difficulties will load, rendering the exploit void. A new timing, "MARVELOUS," is used in Nonstop Mode. It is stricter than "PERFECT" timing, and a MARVELOUS step is worth three points in determining a player's letter grade. Challenge/Oni Mode The Nonstop Challenge feature from DDRMAX2, also referred to as '''Oni Mode''', returned and was officially renamed '''Challenge Mode''' to avoid confusion with Nonstop Mode. It can be selected when a player selects a difficulty before choosing their first song. Players have to complete a set course of anywhere from five to nine songs, with difficulties set and, in some cases, different modifiers. Players cannot mod any songs in Oni Mode, and must play them all at native scroll and whatever modifiers the machine deems as part of the course. Unlike '''Nonstop Mode''', players have to be perfect with the steps they make. The health bar is replaced with a battery. If a player gets a GOOD, BOO, MISS or NG up to four times in any one song, it fails the player out and the game ends. As before, players can regain 1-3 battery pieces after every song. A player's score is based on the number of dance points accumulated in the song, unlike DDRMAX2, which shows the percentage of available dance points instead. BOOs and MISSes do not take away from dance points. The courses Naoki Neo-Standard and '''Dancemania''' are used for rankings. Both the dance points and how long a player lasts, if no one has passed the course on that machine yet, determine the player's rank on each. MARVELOUS timing is also used in Challenge Mode. It is worth three points in this mode. The "difficulty bug" described in the Nonstop section works in Oni mode as well. This can make most Oni courses considerably more or less difficult, and can result in impossibly high scores for a particular course. The "Trick" Oni course is home to three unique mods that are not available in any other mode. The ''Ecstacy'' remix uses "Brake", which causes the arrows to ''decelerate'' as they reach the target; basically the exact opposite of "Boost". The ''AM-3P'' remix uses "Fuwa-Fuwa", which causes the arrows to expand and contract like an accordion. ''MAX 300'' is on x0.25 speed. Also, the "Neo-RevenG" course has Sakura on x0.5 speed. Some DDR Extreme machines have been hacked to make these mods available at all times. Link Data Some machines have the ports to insert PlayStation memory cards. Such memory cards have to be PlayStation 1 (not PS2) memory cards with Link Data from the home version of DDR 5th Mix (the home version of DDR Extreme cannot create arcade-compatible Link Data). 5th Mix can create two different kinds of arcade link data; the Link Data file for DDR Extreme is known as "New Version" Link Data, and unlike the previous two games, is not backward-compatible with DDRMAX or DDRMAX2 arcade machines due to a small technical bug. The machine will use all scores previously saved in the file by DDRMAX or DDRMAX2, but when the data is saved, the file is re-written in such a way that the previous arcade games will not recognize it. With the appropriate hardware to read/write PlayStation 1 memory cards on a Windows-based PC such as a DexDrive , a player can easily correct the file and make it usable in all three arcade games (though subsequent uses of DDR Extreme requires the link data file to be fixed again prior to use in DDRMAX or DDRMAX2). Cutriss of DDR Freak wrote a Windows-based program which performs the modifications to a save file in the .mcs format. Link Data serves two primary purposes: Score-saving and Internet Ranking. The player can save his or her scores from arcade performances, and whenever the game is played in the future, the arcade game will load the scores for each user and show them on the song-selection screen to show the player's best performances. These scores can also be viewed at home with DDR 5th Mix. DDR Extreme also provides Internet Ranking codes based on the user's performance in a given set of Challenge or Nonstop courses. As with all of Konami's Internet Ranking events, the webpage for the game would allow users to enter in a generated password which contains their initials and scores for that session, and the webpage would display the rankings for those who have submitted codes. Link Data saves these passwords so that they may be entered much more conveniently. The arcade game can exchange custom stepchart data with DDR Extreme, as well as any earlier version that has songs that are in DDR Extreme, though this requires special steps to be taken in DDR Extreme to write a PlayStation 1-formatted save file, which must then be copied to the PlayStation 1 memory card by the player. BOOTLEGS As with other DDR versions, Bootleg s are fairly common. However, bootleggers of DDR EXTREME went beyond the standard practice of releasing the same game as Konami. Two modified versions were produced, DDR EXTREME PLUS and DDR MEGAMIX. Dance Dance Revolution MegaMix Dance Dance Revolution MegaMix was the first of the two bootlegs. It was advertised as an " Upgrade " to DDR EXTREME, and many arcade operators paid to install it over DDR EXTREME. To their chagrin, it turned out to be a Scam in which the gameplay was exactly the same; only a few interface elements were tweaked, including the removal of the original songwheel background with a blank blue screen and the replacement of freeze arrows with "freeze blocks," where the whole area of the freeze arrow is simply a filled rectangle (likely a Bug ), and the replacement of the Japanese warning screen with the words "'''DONT FALL OFF !!'''. Dance Dance Revolution EXTREME Plus! Dance Dance Revolution EXTREME Plus! was the second of the two bootlegs. It also featured some graphical changes, but it had one gameplay addition - the ability to increase the song Tempo by 10% or 20% by increasing the clockspeed ( Overclocking ) which in turn damages the machine's internal CPU. In addition, the tempo cannot be changed if one selects "Heavy" at the beginning, although this can be worked around by choosing any other difficulty, then switching to heavy. Also, the speed increase remains in effect even after the game ends, a machine that is left on 20% speed for extended periods of time will be damaged very quickly. However, there have been some arcade operators that have installed fans over the CPU to stop them from overheating though this is not common. HOME VERSIONS The home version of Dance Dance Revolution EXTREME was released in Japan in September 2003 for the Sony PlayStation 2 Video Game Console . It featured 111 songs, and had all the features of the arcade version, but is missing one song which is new to the arcade version: Senorita (Speedy Mix) by JENNY ROM. The North American home version of ''. Additionally, the US edition of DDR EXTREME has a completely re-worked player interface which bears no resemblance to any arcade version, making it quite difficult to navigate for veterans of the arcade versions. MUSIC Notable songs from this version include:
Soundtrack The Original Soundtrack for DDR EXTREME was produced by Toshiba-EMI under their Dancemania dance music brand. It contains 30 of the new songs. TRIVIA
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