Dance Dance Revolution (1998 video game)

Lore & Background

The objective of Dance Dance Revolution is to move one's feet to rhythms and patterns displayed on a screen. Players must step to the beat, matching the arrows presented to them on screen by stepping on arrows on a dance pad. Arrows come from the bottom to the top towards a set of stationary arrows known as the 'Step Zone'. If they reach it, players step on the pad and the game will then judge the accuracy of the timing, ranging from 'Perfect', 'Great', 'Good', 'Boo', to '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 decrease the Gauge slightly. If a player accumulates too many Boos or Misses, and the Dance Gauge becomes empty, the song fails and the game ends. The game also tracks a combo tally from 4 combos upward, which will continue but not increase on a Good step, and only breaks on a Boo, Miss, or N.G. 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 D for failing a song. E does not appear in the original game's grading system. If players manage to pass all their songs a cumulative results screen is given, totaling the stats from all played stages. The game offers three play styles: Single (one player plays on a single dance pad), Couple (two players play with a unified stepchart spread over two separate dance pads), and Double (one player plays on two dance pads, stepcharts are different compared to Single), the last of which requires a step code to be entered. After selecting a play style, players will be prompted to select a game mode out of three: Easy, Normal, and Hard. Normal and Hard are the main bulk of the game and offer different set of songs. Easy, which has the same song selection as Normal, limits players to one stage but enables them to play to the end of the song even if the dance meter is completely depleted. After choosing a mode, players will be taken to the song selection, which takes the form of 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 adjust the game. Single Play offers two different di

Reader's Guide

An update, titled 'Internet Ranking Version' and popularly known as 'DDR 1.5', was released on November 18, 1998 and is by far the most common version of the game. As the name suggests, the game's main purpose is to rank scores online. After a playthrough ends, the game gives a code which can be inputted to the official website for high score purposes. The game also adds two new songs and numerous different changes to the gameplay. A new addition is Versus Play, which requires two credits and a step code to activate. It is a two-player mode, similar to Couple, but rather than playing on a unified stepchart, each player plays their own stepchart, though they still have to select the same difficulty level. Two difficulty levels are added: 'Maniac' for Single Play and 'Another' for Double Play. It is possible to access Extra Stage by clearing Final Stage on Single Another or Double Basic, which will lead Extra Stage to be played on Single Maniac and Double Another, respectively. The difficulty scale is increased to 8, labeled 'Exorbitant', and some of the other labels are renamed; Moderate (2), Ordinary (3), Superior (4), Marvelous (5), and Paramount (7). Finally, arrows now disappear within the Step Zone if players score Perfect or Great (the original version made no distinction regardless of timing), which has since become a staple in the series. The home version was released in Japan on Saturday 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 (which would be added in DDR 2ndMIX Link Version) for a total of 16 songs. It also includes Edit Mode (for editing stepcharts) and Arrange Mode (a mode where if the player step on direction the arrows not meant to appear, they will get a miss).

Did You Know?

• The original 1998 arcade game used a difficulty scale of Basic, Another, and Maniac, with later versions adding more.
• Extra Stage in the original game is triggered by achievin