Come on baby....Let's do the dance...
Everybody loves to dance, don't they? BEMANI's got a game for just that, dancing. Introducing Dance Dance Revolution, the child BEMANI created at the fall of 1998 at the Tokyo
Game Show for that year. It's practically the company's greatest worldwide success because it has over 90 official versions of it and when combined, hosts over 1000 songs, enough to handsomely fill an iPod by a reasonable amount. They have it all over Jakarta's malls, it's one of the more popular games to play to the point that they have their own groups/clans just for it, and so does the rest of the world. They have it on Gameboy, Playstation, Xbox, and now they have it on mobile. Crazy, huh?
The machine consists of two parts, the dancing pad for two and the machine cabinet with the screen. the dancing pad itself has four arrows in an arrow cross formation: up, down, left, and right. In a special version called DDR (the abbreviation) Solo Mix, there's two extra arrows in the top-right and top-left directions, diagonally. Iou press them with your feet if the upcoming arrows at the screen scrolling upwards tells you so, just like other BEMANI games. The arrows represent the general rhythm or beat of a song you choose and you succeed if you time and position your movements correctly. It also has a life bar that decreases as you miss the arrows coming at you, and you can get a game over when it's empty. When you pass the songs the results, score and grade will be shown. The ranking ranges from AAA to an E, generally similar to beatmania. There are modes of play to choose, whether you want to play single or double player, or single player using two pads for one. This mode is for freestyle people who incorporate and choreograph other body movements while playing the game, although they can do that in single player too.
The music is yet again, a completely different universe. The difficulty ratings as per DDR Supernova, the newest version up to date, range from Beginner, Light, Standard, and Heavy, and in some specific songs there is also Challenge added. In some versions (for example DDRMAX), when you pass your last songs at an AA rating on Heavy mode, you have a chance to play an extra song, usually with preset gameplay modifiers that you can't change, and on top on that the song is very hard to pass even without modifiers, coined as boss songs.
So that's that for the basic gameplay. As for the social impacts, it's a phenomena by itself. for example, other than freestyle players who literally dance with their whole body, there also players who better focus in timing and reading the notes and avoid any extraneous movements, and they are called "technical" or "perfect attack" players, as they aim to make each of their steps perfect. Some can even dance facing away from the display. Maybe they have photographic memory.....
And then there are some who play DDR for burning their oh so worrying calories. There are schools who offer DDR machines as exercise beside their weights, and in Norway, DDR has been considered an official sport. There have been players who reported a weight loss of 5-20 kg when they include DDR in their day-to-day lives. There are home versions that include workout mode to measure how many calories have been burned in each song, and the results are recorded like a training program. Sadly our school does not hold true to these beliefs and decided that as good welfare students, we must do away with the original weights and exercise machines already available. But of course, there's always the Supermall nearby so that wouldn't hurt....
Besides that, there are also dozens of websites dedicated to the game. they offer discussion boards and live updates of the latest DDR news, stepcharts of songs and databases of songs and machine locations. There is also a website that is appealing to the "tech" players that offer discussions and strategies on specific timing and techniques on songs, as well as reverse engineering of the grading systems. There is also an open-source software in PC called Stepmania which simulates the machines using the keyboard or the dance pad, and in addition, you can play many other songs not featured in DDR.
Artist of the Day : Naoki Maeda
One is a DDR novice when one has not recognized the fame of Naoki Maeda in DDR. He is the single most influential artist for DDr with over 30 pseudonyms to phenominize himself. He also has a much hidden identity because little is known about him and his personal life; there are very few photos of him and his information (that's what I sometimes hate about really good artists who deliberately conceal themselves). Some of his pseudonyms are simply the beats per minute (BPM), or speed of that particular song. He also collaborates with other people, usually as vocals, and he is also producer and composer for the band BeForU, who also makes songs for the DDR series. One time he collaborated with DJ TAKA, who makes songs mainly for beatmania, to make the song titled "Kakumei", which means revolution, which is based on Chopin's Revolutionary Etude.....Opus 10 No.12 in C minor, as far as I can remember...
Other than that, his songs are largely instrumental.
One of his major artworks are the PARANOiA series, in which he uses the speed of the song as his pseudonym; from 180, 190, 200, 270, and 290. Another song series worth nothing are the MAX series, which he created as super fast boss songs at 300 BPM, namely, MAX 300, MAXX UNLIMITED, and The Legend of MAX.
There is also one more MAX song titled "MAX. (period)" by 2MB, another mysterious artist, but just as cool as Naoki (He remixes some of Naoki's songs, mind you). It appeared on the home version of DDR Extreme. Theories suggest that it had a period because of the following reasons:
(by the way I adapted this info from various sources)
-First, let's analyze the picture above. There is a dance pad in the background, and there seems like some sort of stains of blood. It can probably mean one can and will pay with blood to pass this song on Heavy mode. It can also appear as a dancepad with sign of wearing out and decay, signifying the milestones of DDR overall these years since 1998. the home dance pad is also to signify that this song is ONLY for home version of DDR EXTREME (darn, I lost the disc...where can it be?)
-And then there's someone who says "Why do you need...? KONAMI original songs..." in the song, my source say that true DDR players can answer that, and my answer is that there are too many licensed songs from artists outside the BEMANI circle the more versions of DDR are being made, and the real feeling of the original DDR is gradually losing, just in order to attract or entice other people to play DDR with the songs they know. That is probably the reason why you need songs original and genuine from KONAMI.
-Halfway around the song, the video shows the original (1st mix) version of DDR, showing its final stage. Final stage reminds me of final song....for DDR.... and it selects PARANOiA, the song that started it all...and there's a clock ticking....maybe showing how time has passed by...
-and then there's pictures of the producers making songs, I think that's a tribute to all the hard work those people have put in since the beginning of the series..
-In the end someone says "Thank you for playing" and they have always said that when you completed 3 songs successfully in every single DDR mix. Maybe they're telling us that this is really goodbye....
But then, despite all the analysis, DDR still lives on. Maybe it was just to get the attention of true DDR players. I myself have been a good devout player, although my skills say otherwise.
By the way 2 MB is the maximum amount of disk space for any given DDR song in the arcade or home version...
That ends the milestones of BEMANI....for now, I repeat, FOR NOW. There are still other machines I have not discussed yet, and I shall find a time for that later.
Oh yeah, forgot a funny picture.
Cheerio.
Regards from the schizophrenically psychotic retard,
Yoga Pradana A.K.A. Dr VoltsPerSecond
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