Dance Dance Revolution (1998 video game)


Dance Dance Revolution, is a music video game, developed by Konami, released in arcades on September 26, 1998 in Japan. Dance Dance Revolution is a unique game involving dance and rhythm that defined the genre. It involves timing and balance by having players use their feet instead of their hands like typical video games. In March 1999, the game was released for North American arcades, and for European arcades under the name Dancing Stage. Players and game critics were caught off-guard by the game's addictive qualities winning the new franchise many merits to its design.
On Saturday, April 10, 1999, Dance Dance Revolution was released for the Japanese PlayStation, adding new music and gameplay elements. A console release was not made for any other region until 2001.

Gameplay

The objective of Dance Dance Revolution is to move one's feet to a set pattern. One player can play using one dance pad, two players can play using one dance pad each, or one player can play using both dance pads.
Players must step to the beat, matching their beat to the arrows presented to them on screen by stepping on arrows on a dance pad. A judgment is displayed for each step, depending on the player's timing; Perfect!!, Great!, Good, Boo or Miss.... An on-screen life meter, known as the Dance Gauge, begins halfway full at the start of each song. Perfect and Great steps slowly fill the Gauge, while Boo and Miss steps quickly deplete it. Good steps have no effect either way. If a player accumulates too many Boos or Misses, and the Dance Gauge becomes empty, the song fails and the game ends.
Players may play anywhere from one to five songs, depending on how many the arcade operator sets the machine to play each game. At the end of each song, players see their accumulated points, bonus points, and how many of each kind of step they made. They also get a letter grade that is dependent on the judgments received during play, ranging from SS, all steps Perfect, to E, failure, which is only seen in Versus mode when the other player passes. If players manage to pass all their songs a cumulative results screen is given, totaling the stats from all played stages.

Interface and graphics

The song selection interface of Dance Dance Revolution is a jukebox-like menu of CDs that represent the available songs. On this screen, various step codes can be entered on the dance stage to modify the arrangement and appearance of arrows during gameplay. On the arcade version of Dance Dance Revolution step codes must be entered to switch between difficulty levels.
During gameplay, 3D dancing characters appear in the background of each song. Different characters can be selected at the main title screen by standing on either the left or right arrow panels while pressing the select button.

Home version

The home version was released in Japan on April 10, 1999 for the PlayStation. It includes all 11 songs from the original arcade version along with 5 new songs, three of which are from the arcade version of Dance Dance Revolution 2ndMIX and the rest being console-exclusive songs for a total of 16 songs. It also includes Edit Mode and Arrange Mode.

Music

The following lists the tracklists featured in Dance Dance Revolution 3rdMix, Dance Dance Revolution 4thMix, and Dance Dance Revolution 5thMix. Unless noted, successive arcade games feature all songs featured in the preceding arcade games. For more information about the tracklists of the first two games, refer to the two links above. Note that 4thMix received two console ports; the second port, Dance Dance Revolution Extra Mix, essentially doubles as a console port of the Dance Dance Revolution Solo spin-off series by including nearly all of their songs, both licensed and Konami Original, plus tracks added in 4thMix Plus as well as new tracks.
The original soundtracks for all the arcade games up to Dance Dance Revolution Extreme were produced by Toshiba EMI under their Dancemania dance music brand. They also feature second Nonstop Megamix discs with the various songs in the games mixed together in succession.

''Dance Dance Revolution 2ndMix''

Dance Dance Revolution 2ndMix, sometimes abbreviated as 2ndMix, is the second game in the Dance Dance Revolution series of music video games. It was released as an arcade game by Konami in Japan on January 29, 1999. It has a total of 32 songs: ten from the original Dance Dance Revolution arcade game and 26 all-new songs. An updated version, Dance Dance Revolution 2ndMix Link Version, was released to Japanese arcades on April 28, 1999. This version came with a PlayStation memory card reader, installed in the middle of the arcade cabinet. It supports cards that have Link Data from the home version of Dance Dance Revolution, allowing each player to save high scores and play custom step edits. 2ndMix Link Version adds five new songs to the game, two from the home version and three new licenses, for a total of 37 songs. Future Dance Dance Revolution releases in Japan, up to and including Dance Dance Revolution Extreme, integrated Link Data functionality in-game. However, these required different home games to produce different Link Data formats: 3rdMix, 4thMix, 4thMix Plus, 5thMix and New Version.
Dance Dance Revolution 2ndReMix, the home version of 2ndMix, was released in Japan on April 20, 2000, for the Sony PlayStation. It includes 35 songs, 3 of which are new to this version and are hidden and unlockable. Two of the hidden songs were previews of the next arcade version, Dance Dance Revolution 3rdMix and can only be played on Basic difficulty. The home version has the ability to Disc Change to 1st and Append Club Version. It also allows to unlock features in previous mixes such as the Nonstop Ranking from 3rd Mix. The interface is still the same as the one used in 2ndMix.
On April 20, 2000, Konami released a version of Dance Dance Revolution 2ndMix for the Dreamcast console. It features 47 songs, seven of which are hidden and unlockable. The song list includes seven songs from Dance Dance Revolution 3rdMix.
Most of the new songs in 2ndMix were included in the North American version of Dance Dance Revolution for the PlayStation.

''Dance Dance Revolution 3rdMix''

Dance Dance Revolution 3rdMix, sometimes abbreviated as 3rdMix, is the third game in the Dance Dance Revolution series of music video games. It was released in Japanese arcades by Konami on Saturday October 30, 1999. It has a total of 72 songs, 35 of which are new to the arcade series. The game offers a 2ndMix mode, which only includes the 37 songs available in 2ndMix Link. 3rdMix was reissued as Dance Dance Revolution 3rdMix Plus on June 21, 2000. This title, exclusive to Japan, adds 17 songs: three new DanceMania licenses, seven K-Pop tracks from VER.KOREA and seven Konami Originals. Two of these Konami Originals made their arcade premiere in Dancing Stage EuroMix. 3rdMix Plus removes SSR mode and adds Maniac difficulty in 3rdMix mode.
Different versions of Dance Dance Revolution 3rdMix were released for other countries in Asia. The first release in 1999 removed four new songs, made "Strictly Business" unavailable outside of 2ndMix mode and had a bug when trying to enter the Shuffle modification. Two versions of the game were later released exclusively in South Korea: VER.KOREA on April 1, 2000 and VER.KOREA2 on May 1, 2000. VER.KOREA features the same song changes found in the Asia version, but fixes the Shuffle bug and adds seven new Korean pop songs in 3rdMix and SSR modes. VER.KOREA2 is identical to VER.KOREA, but adds 9 more K-Pop songs.
International variants include Dancing Stage EuroMix and Dance Dance Revolution USA. EuroMix was released in European arcades on August 2000. It has a reduced song list of 28 songs, half which are Konami Originals and half which are licenses. Of the licenses, eight are from Universal Music Group and are only available in this arcade release. Six Konami Originals can be added by activating Internet Ranking, for a total of 34 songs. USA was released in North American arcades in October 2000. It has a reduced song list of 26 songs: six licenses and 20 Konami Originals. EuroMix with Internet Ranking and USA share four licenses and 15 Konami Originals in common, including two 3rdMix Plus tracks: "Love This Feelin'" and "TRIP MACHINE ～luv mix～".

''Dance Dance Revolution 4thMix''

Dance Dance Revolution 4thMix, or 4thMix, is the 4th game in the main Dance Dance Revolution series of music video games. It was released as an arcade game by Konami on August 24, 2000. 4thMix features 136 songs, 49 of which are new to this mix. Twelve of the songs are initially hidden and must be unlocked by the arcade operator. 14 songs were added on 4th Mix Plus, giving them 150 songs in total. In DDR 4thMix, new songs that first appears in DDR 3rdMix Plus, DDR 3rdMix Korea and DDR Solo appears in this mix.

''Dance Dance Revolution 5thMix''

Dance Dance Revolution 5thMIX, or DDR 5th Mix, is the 5th game in the Dance Dance Revolution series of music video games. It was released to the arcades by Konami on March 27, 2001. Although only officially released in Japan, units exist worldwide. DDR 5th Mix contains a total of 122 songs, nine of which are hidden and unlockable. Of those songs, 40 of them are brand new to Dance Dance Revolution.

''DDRMAX'', ''DDRMAX2'' and ''DDR Extreme''

Current ''Dance Dance Revolution'' releases

Dance Dance Revolution A was released on March 30, 2016 in Asia, with a North American release later in 2016, and a European release on December 15, 2017. It is the first international arcade release of Dance Dance Revolution since Dance Dance Revolution X2.
Dance Dance Revolution A20 was released on new, golden cabinets on March 20, 2019, and a United States release imported later on May 15, 2019.

Reception

In Japan, Game Machine listed Dance Dance Revolution on their December 1, 1998 issue as being the most-successful dedicated arcade game of the year.
Blake Fischer reviewed the PlayStation version of the game for Next Generation, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "If you're looking for a fresh new experience with your PlayStation that's tons of fun and will make you the life of the party, this is your game. Just expect a rough learning curve."
On release, Famitsu magazine scored the PlayStation version of the game a 31 out of 40, and the Dreamcast version a 30 out of 40.
On release, Famitsu magazine scored the game a 34 out of 40. The successful DDR series began with the 1998/1999 release of this game, and its popularity can be attributed to the innovative connection between a dancing stage and the need for the player to move their body to match the instructions on the screen.