Dance Dance Revolution Extreme (Japan)

Dance Dance Revolution Extreme is the eighth release in the main Dance Dance Revolution series, released for Japanese arcades and Japanese PlayStation 2. Despite the game being released only in Japan, 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.

DDR Extreme like same from DDRMAX2 7th mix, but 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 greatest change was the extra stage and the color, and that 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 passed, a special ending was unlocked. A new brand of new songs was 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.

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.

The home is a copy of the preceding game DDR Party Collection and featured those 58 characters, but also includes 2 new characters, Bus and Train, the dancer helpers in beginner mode. DDR Extreme includes a lesson mode, 4 new bemani songs, 6 CS Extreme songs, and a HELL song. You can unlock characters to play the nonstop mode.

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, cueing the player when and where to step with visual aids. 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 despite failure. Players can exit or enter Beginners mode any time during stage selection.

The Challenge difficulty level is above Heavy, although the complexity of Challenge step patterns is 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.

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.

Source: Wikipedia, "Dance Dance Revolution Extreme", available under the CC-BY-SA License.