One story that I heard, but cannot vouch for, is about the last days Akira Toriyama worked on the Dragon Ball series. According to the rumors, Toriyama was quite dissatisfied with the direction Dragon Ball Z was going, and the fans of the show were clamoring for him to keep going. So he decided to make a parody of everything the show had become, and that became the Cell Saga. His point, so the story goes, was to mock everyone who had become such big DBZ fans. However, that was lost on the general populace who ate it up. Toriyama left the series as he wanted to, and the studio just had everything pick up where he left off to make Dragon Ball GT.
Now, I don’t know if that story’s true. But I can certainly understand the sentiment. After all, I can’t think of any other reason to explain what Konami decided to do with the American release of Dance Dance Revolution Extreme. I’ve seen some pretty dumb moves by a company before. But never in my life have I seen the release of a major franchise so shortsighted and terrible. And this is coming from someone who believes that Final Fantasy 7 represents a nadir in role-playing games.
Now, as a service for those who live in a cave, as well as anthropologists looking into a series that demised with this title, here are the basics of the game. Arrows scroll on a screen while a ninety-seconds long song snippet plays. Using either a standard controller or a floor pad, you hit the arrows, conveniently timed with the music. The theory is simple, and addictive for two reasons. First, the music is a central part of the game, and it gets caught in your head. Second, playing on a floor pad is terrific exercise, and combining exercise and gaming is something that entices many (including myself) to the game.
Naturally, the game lives and dies by its hit detection. If it can’t tell precisely when you hit the arrow or button (the game allows you to use the action buttons for the arrows on a standard controller), then you’re simply sunk. In theory, DDRX should be the sharpest DDR ever. It’s using the same hit detection algorithm introduced in the arcades with Dance Dance Revolution 5th Mix, also used in the previous Playstation 2 incarnations. Moreover, Konami allows you to adjust the timing of the arrows and the music, to properly sync up both should your PS2 read either the arrows or music slowly. This was in previous games, but it’s been dramatically fine-tuned now. In theory, it should be the most solid Dance Dance Revolution game ever.
And yet, because of one little problem, it ends up being the worst ever. People who have never used the PS2 floor mats wouldn’t be aware of this, but the corners of the mats act as the action buttons (square, circle, triangle, and X), meaning that each pad has at least eight different zones that activate different buttons. In every single previous game, though, you could direct the game to not accept input from the corner buttons during a song. Thus, should you hit both the correct arrow and a corner at the same time, it would always register the arrow you stepped on, not the arrow that corresponds ordinarily with that corner. This is an incredibly simple option to put in the game. Every single previous incarnation on the Sony systems had this functionality. But Dance Dance Revolution Extreme does not.
Therefore, unless your aim is that precise, you will constantly step on the corners, triggering arrows you never meant to hit. This actually becomes worse as the difficulty rises, as more arrows come on screen and you’re able to confuse the game into all sorts of combinations. This invariably leads the game to think that you’re regularly hitting the wrong steps or the right steps at the wrong time. This results in constant failure at songs, and frustration mounts as you can’t clear songs that you should clear in your sleep.
There are only two workarounds to this problem. One is to download, using a USB memory card interface for your computer, a hacked save file that allows you to turn off the corners. The other is to spend at least $150 (if you get a great bargain) on a steel dancing stage that doesn’t have active corners. This is on top of whatever money you’ve already spent on pads for the previous games. You know, for that price, I could just import a Japanese Playstation 2 and the Japanese version, which does allow you to turn off the corners. When importing the Japanese version of the game, along with a Japanese system, is a more economical option, then you have totally failed as a developer, and there’s no other way to put it.
Oh, but wait, Konami wasn’t done screwing with us. They kept teasing gamers before E3 that this version would introduce something amazing. It turns out they meant Eye-Toy support. Oh boy, now this game functions with the biggest waste of time and money as possible. Moreover, they decide that making the game work with a junky peripheral that nobody rational likes is more important than making it work with the floor pads build especially for the game. I think this kind of logic led to the development of New Coke.
What does Eye-Toy support add? Besides torrents of blood emitting from my eyeballs? Well, you can watch yourself dance as the background instead of the usual backgrounds – because DDR players aren’t self-conscious enough, thank you very much. I don’t need to be reminded of how fat and goofy I look while I stare at the arrows. You can also play several games that involve waving your arms as well as dancing – but this ends up dividing your attention too much in addition to wearing you out too quickly. And finally, yes, there are games that could have been on their own stand-alone lousy Eye-Toy game selection. In other words, there’s nothing you’d ever really want to bother with. I’m sure glad Konami spent time working for Eye-Toy functionality. As opposed to floor mat functionality, which was probably deemed too useful.
So what this amounts to is a game that is a bait and switch. It tries to lure you in with a gimmick that isn’t worth using, and sticks you with controls that are substandard and awkward unless you move with the precision of Baryshnikov. The only explanation I can think of is that Konami figured that Bemani fans would be stupid enough to buy anything. Either that or they colluded with peripheral makers to sell as many extremely expensive metal dance pads as possible. Overall, it’s just not fair.
About the only fair part about the controls is that the instruction manual details all of them, including the tricks to alter how songs are sorted and how to put modifiers on songs. These tricks are quite well known to arcade Bemani freaks, but home users often don’t know about them in previous games. Now, a simple tour through the instructions tells gamers at home how to increase scroll speed, put songs in order of beats per minute, and the like. This does even out the playing field somewhat, even if most of the DDR-playing populace already knew how to do that.
One thing that takes quite a bit of adjustment, though, is that the game’s rating system has been overhauled. It has become in some ways easier and harder. It’s easier to qualify for some letter grades – I know not all of those performances were worth an A. But it’s also easier to fail out. Also, you must get a full combo on a song to get the coveted AA rating – you could fudge that a bit in previous versions. However, should you get the full combo, it’s much more lenient than the arcade in what percentage of Perfect scores you need for AA. Not really good or bad, but it does force you to adjust your style a bit.
The music, which is the vertebrae to the control scheme’s spine, is an absolute travesty. First off, we’ll note that once again, Konami has proved unable or unwilling to negotiate many classic license tunes for the American version. Smile .dk, Bambee, Joga, and Jenny ROM are all still foreign to people who haven’t gotten out to arcades, and many of their songs are just begging for a home release. Given some of the licenses Konami did secure, I know they have the money to convince them to put their songs on American releases. Why they continue to fail at this, despite much begging from fans, is beyond me.
So naturally, they can’t bring over every song that’s in the Japanese version. But they should add and replace in the rough same proportions. Do you like the Japanese pop music and the European dance that permeates much of the arcade song list? Sorry, but you will find this game almost totally unrecognizable. Despite the complaints of myself and countless others, Konami continues to force-feed the American audience an abundance of lousy rap, weak house, and terrible disco. Seriously, isn’t disco dead? And if not, how do I go about remedying this problem? It was bad enough that the previous game had one Village People song (“In The Navy,” saved partly because Captain Jack gave it a Eurobeat remix). But this game has two – including the original “YMCA.” Now, I know that there are a minimum number of gay anthems that have to be in there, but couldn’t we have gotten the two Queen songs found in the arcade version?
The song list is littered with mistakes, including the worst remakes of “Bizarre Love Triangle” and “Like A Virgin” I’ve ever heard. The music also has its complete brain farts, like the Pet Shop Boys’ remake of “Go West” and the positively droning “Jane Jana.” And I would be doing you a disservice If I didn’t mention the absolutely horrifying, like “Don’t Clock Me,” (the worst rap song ever to grace a video game,) “I’m For Real,” (the worst gibberish in the game,) and “Peace Out,” which manages to beat out every rendition of “Paranoia” as the worst song to ever appear in a video game. Unless of course, you think the drum track of a cheap Casio combined with a raspy whisper and the occasional note doesn’t count as a song.
Oh, that reminds me, good old “Paranoia.” If the previous two paragraphs didn’t bother you enough, you should see what Konami decided to do with many originals that they have total rights to. You won’t see DDR classics like “Afronova,” “Dynamite Rave,” or “Brilliant 2U” at all in this. You won’t see the specialty songs made for the original DDRX, like either “Paranoia Survivor” or the awesome “Dance Dance Revolution” (which remixes interstitial music from the previous 7 DDR games). None of Riyu Kosaka’s work is there, even though she is under contract with Konami. No “bag,” easily the best use ever of a bagpipe. You won’t see "Max (period)," the hardest song ever made for any Dance Dance Revolution mix (Americans instead see the highly inferior "Maximizer"). You don’t even get to see the classic versions of “Paranoia.” They do include “Paranoia Rebirth,” easily the worst of the series (it doesn’t even include the classic “Paranoia” riff – anyone who has played at least two “Paranoia’s” know what I mean). “Peace-Out,” of course, is still stinking up a storm. “Mobo Moga” isn’t too bad, I suppose. But really, not too much worthwhile appears here.
To tell the truth, I can only think of 10 songs exclusive to this mix that I’d consider worth playing. If you expand the list to include non-exclusives, that creeps up to around 15. That’s barely worth a mix CD, let alone a DDR game. Sure, “Simply Being Loved/Somnambulist” is an awesome song, and it was really cool to not only play the original “Kids In America,” but to see the original video play in the background. That’s enough to get me to drop about three bucks at the arcade. This is not enough to justify a fifty-dollar video game purchase. So while I do love that Silent Hill 3’s “You’re Not Here” appears in the game (credited to Heather, even though her voice actress should be credited), the overall feeling if you play this game at all is that you’ve been cheated. It doesn’t help that the best songs in the mix, like “Absolute” and “Frozen Ray,” require unlocking by a tedious slog through the lousy songs the game starts with.
Also, I have to mention here, as there’s no other appropriate place to do so – this game does not deserve an E rating. Konami totally hoodwinked the ESRB again. The songs in several points are suggestive of sex acts, including the hilariously blatant “YMCA.” There are a few mentions of violence: despite the protestations in the early part of the song, “Drop The Bomb” does advocate “let[ting] the real thing wipe them out.” But not only does the game argue to drop a bomb, it literally drops the F-bomb. It’s not even in a song that’s hard to find – it’s unlocked right off the bat. Apparently, it learned from “I (Heart) Huckabees” – don’t stick your filthy language in the front of the piece. I know this paragraph is only for the parents, but I figured they’d appreciate the warning.
The game’s graphics are about the only solid part. The colors are a bit brighter and easier to distinguish in this game, and it’s actually fairly easy to tell the difference between a gallop step and a jump step in this version. The backgrounds have been faithfully rendered from the arcade version, and the videos are mostly clean when they appear. For the parts where you use an on-screen avatar, they finally designed them to keep from inadvertently clipping themselves (which did happen frequently and was pretty embarrassing). Of course, the Eye-Toy isn’t even useful here – the graphics are a bit grainy with it, and it occasionally has a real problem with red shift. Of course, Sony would probably say that a red ghost image blurring the screen counts as a feature for the lousy piece of junk. All the same, the graphics, for as much as they’re needed, are solid.
There is one other part that the game does manage to nail – the game modes available. For the first time, you have access to both Nonstop mode (take a run through a bunch of songs with no breaks) and Challenge mode (similar to Nonstop mode, but less forgiving of mistakes) in the same game. You can still unlock Endless Mode, allowing you to play until you drop, and the brand new Mission Mode. This last one is interesting, as you have to perform certain objectives in certain truncated song clips. It’s not all “clear the stage” or “get 20 Perfect” steps, either. You’ll see really odd missions asking for mediocrity, like trying to score between 2.5 and 3 million points. Or earning exactly a C rating on a song. Clearing all 100 missions even earns you a nice reward – it functions as a master unlock for all the game’s features.
Of course, if this game had something worth unlocking, that would mean much more. However, unless you decide to blow huge amounts of cash on the nicest floor pads available (and I mean the top-of-the-line metal ones, not the excellent Ignition pads that RedOctane puts out), this game is unplayable except with a standard controller. And let’s face it, this game is Dance Dance Revolution, not Finger Tap Revolution. That alone makes this a betrayal to every fan who proudly calls themselves a Beatmaniac (what did you think Bemani freak meant?). But even should you splurge, or mess around with hacks, to get the game remotely playable, you’ll find that this is easily the weakest Dance Dance Revolution lineup ever. It’s probably too late to warn all the Bemani fans; many have already wasted their money on this atrocity. So I’m going to beg you all: until Konami stops messing around with wastes like this, don’t buy any more Dance Dance Revolution games in this country. Don’t tell me that this boycott will keep us from getting quality releases – we’re already not getting those. I’m tired of feeding off of scraps of good games, and other DDR fans should as well.
