Tag Archives: Konami

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night — Issue 54

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Castl­e­va­nia: Sym­pho­ny of the Night
Kon­a­mi, 1997

Sym­pho­ny of the Night plays a sweet song of woe

I ful­ly admit that I’m a lit­tle late for the Hal­loween par­ty that is Castl­e­va­nia: Sym­pho­ny of the Night. I real­ly stopped pay­ing atten­tion to the series after Super Castl­e­va­nia IV, most­ly because it’s a hard series and I have a lot of love for that game and the orig­i­nal. I did­n’t need any­more Castl­e­va­nia. But after coax­ing from friends, mak­ing the Metroid­Va­nia con­nec­tions and know­ing its leg­endary sta­tus, here we are, and it’s tak­en a bite out of me.

Sym­pho­ny of the Night, in all its goth­ic hor­ror, appeals to me on sev­er­al lev­els. The sto­ry is famil­iar in that Alu­card — son of Drac­u­la and a sup­port­ing char­ac­ter in the third game — is attempt­ing to stop his father once again. That famil­iar­i­ty is enough to get me going because it’s all I need to know about what’s going on. Sure, I’m kind of used to a Bel­mont lead­ing the way, but Sym­pho­ny of the Night does­n’t need to rely on that kind of tradition. 

The tra­di­tion that it does lean on is game­play. The com­bat and move­ment are excel­lent, and it feels sec­ond nature to move around. Keep­ing it sim­ple but adding the RPG ele­ments was a fan­tas­tic design choice. Most of the new weapons are cool, and fight­ing ene­mies is a beau­ti­ful­ly built song and dance. Best of all, there is an in-game map includ­ed. For a sprawl­ing game requir­ing mas­sive plat­form­ing, a map is required, and Sym­pho­ny hits the mark by auto­mat­i­cal­ly includ­ing this. 


Graph­i­cal­ly, the game is gor­geous. Kon­a­mi did some­thing beau­ti­ful here and Castl­e­va­nia looks bet­ter than ever. The goth­ic details are some­thing to behold and are eye-catch­ing as well as pleas­ing to some­one with a goth sen­si­bil­i­ty and yearn­ing for video games. The sound­track is just as beau­ti­ful, neces­si­tat­ing find­ing the sound­track to add to the col­lec­tion. There are famil­iar riffs (Vam­pire Killer makes a cameo) and new chords to strike that are mas­ter­pieces, which is expect­ed of the leg­endary Kon­a­mi sound.

Alas, while try­ing to think of any­thing wrong with it, I’ve con­clud­ed that Sym­pho­ny of the Night is a well-exe­cut­ed mas­ter­piece. It hits all the marks and pulls no punch­es in ele­gance, crafts­man­ship. It’s telling that most Castl­e­va­nia games lat­er in the series use Sym­pho­ny as the tem­plate on which they build. Sym­pho­ny is a build­ing crescen­do of great­ness, cul­mi­nat­ing in sol­id sto­ry­telling, game­play and world-building.

Dance Dance Revolution Extreme (JP) — Issue 53

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Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion Extreme (JP)
Kon­a­mi, 2003

Gold­en Age of DDR

I’m not ashamed to say I have a favorite Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion mix. For any­one who knows me, they know it’s the Japan­ese home ver­sion of DDR Extreme. While it’s the mix I played the least in the arcades, by the time it came home and I got a copy of it, it quick­ly grabbed the top spot in my heart.

There is a gold­en age of DDR and Extreme is the pin­na­cle. Hit­ting the sweet spot as the last game of the gold­en age, JP Extreme is a sol­id home port with the nec­es­sary arcade songs and a fan­tas­tic mix of con­sole old and new songs. All the per­ti­nent Extreme songs are on the ros­ter: 1998, A, Across the Night­mare, DDR, Saku­ra, Para­noia Sur­vivor & Sur­vivor Max, The leg­end of Max and V. Unlike the Amer­i­can port of Extreme, it’s as if some­one played the arcade ver­sion and thought an accu­rate port was the right thing to do.

The home ver­sion plays exact­ly like the arcade ver­sion and, if you’re savvy enough, you can find a way to enable Mar­velous tim­ing, arcade tim­ing win­dows and the Boost and Wave mods found in the arcade ver­sion only. Gen­er­al­ly, the Japan­ese ver­sions of DDR are spot on, and this port — even with­out the addi­tions — is still faithful.

The home ver­sion fea­tures all the usu­al fea­tures that you’ve come to expect: Diet Mode, Edit Mode, Les­son Mode and Train­ing Mode. One of the best things about the mix, how­ev­er, comes in the options. If you have save data from Par­ty Col­lec­tion, you can unlock all the songs in Extreme, and if you need to, you can unlock all the songs in DDR Max and Max 2. That saves time and gets you to the meat and pota­toes of what you came here to do: play awe­some DDR songs.

And the ros­ter is awe­some. There is nary a repeat in sight that drags the mix down (ahem, we’re look­ing at you AM-3P and your var­i­ous remix­es). The qual­i­ty of songs is high, and a lot of the Kon­a­mi orig­i­nals added here are wel­come addi­tions and crossovers from Beat­ma­nia IIDX. Of note is Max.(period), which was new as of Extreme JP’s home release. Max.(period) is one of the new Boss Songs and is a great addi­tion. Boss Songs in this mix are indeed all the Boss Songs from the arcade ver­sion, which lends cred­i­bil­i­ty to the mix and its authenticity.

There isn’t much wrong with this mix. The unlock sys­tem, if you don’t have sup­port data from Par­ty Col­lec­tion, is kind of aggra­vat­ing but it’s not so ter­ri­ble that the mix isn’t worth your time. It’s time con­sum­ing but it only means play­ing more DDR.

If you’re going to play a home ver­sion and don’t have Step­ma­nia, take the time to import DDR Extreme JP. Extreme JP is the clos­est port of Extreme to the arcade short of Step­ma­nia and well worth the mon­ey to track down a copy, a PlaySta­tion 2 and swap discs.

A great ros­ter, sol­id mechan­ics and peak DDR in its gold­en age form makes it a must-buy if you’re at all into dance games and Bemani. DDR Extreme JP was a good final step in the series.

DDR Extreme JP ver­sus DDR Extreme NA

The DDR Extreme ver­sions released in Japan and Amer­i­ca are wild­ly dif­fer­ent. DDR Extreme JP is the clos­est port of the arcade ver­sion that you’re going to get unless you have Step­ma­nia and fine tune your instal­la­tion to match that arcade version. 
The Amer­i­can ver­sion, released in 2004, is not an accu­rate port. It fea­tures dif­fer­ent graph­ics that replace the well-known song wheel and Groove Radar fea­tured in DDR Max and Max 2 and a song ros­ter that did not resem­ble the arcade ver­sion with a lot of licensed songs and few Kon­a­mi orig­i­nals and Bemani crossovers that were intro­duced in the arcade ver­sion. Also, the com­bo and grad­ing sys­tems are dif­fer­ent: A com­bo break auto­mat­i­cal­ly results in a max A grade, Extra Stage requires clear­ing an 8‑footer on Heavy instead of AA grade on any song’s Heavy dif­fi­cul­ty, and Encore Extra Stage/One More Extra Stage was removed. 

To cor­rect the mis­steps of Extreme NA, Extreme 2 was released in 2005 for the PlaySta­tion 2 with a slight­ly more accu­rate song ros­ter to match the arcade ver­sion of Extreme.

Legend of the Mystical Ninja — Issue 50

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Leg­end has it Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja ori­gin is great

The quirky nin­ja series had a rous­ing start on the Super NES

Every­one must start some­where, even video games. Even the most suc­cess­ful video game series have hum­ble begin­nings, where new ideas are brought to the table to estab­lish a hope­ful­ly suc­cess­ful series. So, it goes with one of my favorite series, Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja. While it’s not super pop­u­lar here in the West, Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja opened the doors for the series to make an impres­sion on me in the late 1990s. It’s debat­able, though, if it cleared up the mys­tery sur­round­ing the appeal of the series for me.

Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja is weird and anachro­nis­tic in every­thing that it does. Set in an alter­nate feu­dal Japan, Goe­mon and Ebisumaru (Dr. Yang and Kid Ying renamed in game) real­ize there are some strange hap­pen­ings going on in Oedo. After some inves­ti­ga­tion, they dis­cov­er that Princess Yuki has been kid­napped and they set out to res­cue her. Along the way, they meet up with an ally in fel­low nin­ja Yae, fight future ally Sasuke and trav­el to dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate loca­tions in Japan. This should sound famil­iar because it’s basi­cal­ly the plot of the excel­lent GI favorite Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon. Swap some ele­ments and char­ac­ter names and you’ve got the basics of that game. 

But what sets it apart from some of the lat­er entries is the pre­sen­ta­tion. Leg­end, unlike Star­ring Goe­mon, is a side-scrolling affair. The health meter and the pur­chase of dam­age-negat­ing items are the same, but instead of being an over-the-shoul­der 3D romp, this plays more like The Leg­end of Zel­da: A Link to the Past. And that works well in its favor. The game looks nice and has charm. It’s bright and col­or­ful with big sprites and inter­est­ing ani­ma­tions. For an ear­ly Super Nin­ten­do title, you can’t go wrong with look­ing like a nice hop ‘n’ bop. The sound­track is suit­ably nice as well. It’s no Star­ring Goe­mon but it has a few decent tracks that will remind you of the sound the lat­er games are known for.


Because it’s like Link to the Past in looks, it’s a lot like that game in playstyle as well. The con­trols work well with the SNES lay­out, and it’s easy to get things going when you want to move around the play­field. My only gripe is that it’s a lit­tle hard to remem­ber which but­ton con­trols spe­cial moves. Oth­er­wise, it’s a stan­dard action plat­former for the SNES, which means it’s going to play clean­ly and make no fuss about its mechanics.
Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja is a decent West­ern begin­ning for the Goe­mon fran­chise. It has a lot of charm, it looks good, plays well and does­n’t for­get its roots. As the intro­duc­tion to the series in North Amer­i­ca, it made a good first impres­sion with its quirky sen­si­bil­i­ties and gave birth to a legend. 

Goemon’s Great Adventure — Issue 50

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Lat­est, great­est adventure

Goe­mon’s Great Adven­ture has always had the unfor­tu­nate posi­tion in gam­ing of com­ing after the excel­lent Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon. It can’t help but fol­low in the shad­ow of the game as its direct sequel, and it’s nev­er going to stand up to make itself the pre­mier entry in the series. What it does have going for it though are two things: Rar­i­ty and some improve­ments in areas where the oth­er entries struggled.

Based on real-life fig­ure Goe­mon Ishikawa, the tit­u­lar hero stays sav­ing the day in an alter­nate Edo with his allies Ebisumaru, Yae and Sasuke. In this tale, the gang wit­ness­es an Ebisumaru looka­like steal the Old Wise Man’s new dead-res­ur­rect­ing device and wreak hav­oc on the land. It’s a cute set­up and it does­n’t take much to get into the sto­ry of the two zany nin­jas. Where this entry excels is the much-improved inter­face. Though it seems less per­son­al and plot­ted out like Super Mario World with a world map, it’s a wel­come relief from the some­times-con­fus­ing lay­out of Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon. It’s nice to just choose a loca­tion on the map and go there with­out hav­ing to remem­ber how to get there.

Also improved are the mechan­ics. The biggest change in the game is arguably the switch from over-the-shoul­der view la Mario 64 back to a side-scroller in the vein of Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja. Despite how jar­ring it may have seemed at first, even­tu­al­ly I came to love the fact that it’s slight­ly eas­i­er to move around and get a feel for the char­ac­ters than it was in Star­ring Goe­mon. Move­ment seems more sub­stan­tial and there’s no more fight­ing with the wonky cam­era that won’t cooperate. 

The way it looks is bet­ter also in Great Adven­ture. Every­thing is cleaned up and less polyg­o­nal, though some char­ac­ters retain that blocky look no mat­ter what. How­ev­er, the glow up is most notice­able in the envi­ron­ment. Edo looks fan­tas­tic, with the beau­ti­ful recre­ation of feu­dal Japan­ese archi­tec­ture stand­ing out the most. I was always impressed with the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja series in what it tried to do graph­i­cal­ly, and this is a sol­id-look­ing entry.

Just as good as the graph­ics is the sound. Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja, as a series, is known for its sub­lime sound­track and Great Adven­ture does­n’t dis­ap­point. We’ve cov­ered this in our review of the game’s tracks (Edi­tor’s Note: See Issue 39) for Beat.Trip.Game, and it’s so good it’s worth men­tion­ing mul­ti­ple times. 

Though it’s an improve­ment in most areas, there are some spots where it could be pol­ished a lit­tle more. Some of the trans­la­tion is rough and there are fre­quent gram­mar errors in the text. For a game that relies on text to get the point across, that’s too jar­ring and takes me out of the expe­ri­ence. Anoth­er gripe is that, while most of the mechan­ics are improved, some of the new mechan­ics — such as the pole vault — need some work. It’s not hard to do — once you fig­ure it out. The prob­lem is that it takes much too long to fig­ure out. If I have to watch a playthrough video to get the con­cept, it’s doing too much.
Goe­mon’s Great Adven­ture is a tech­ni­cal­ly sound and com­pe­tent entry in a much-loved series. Despite my ini­tial annoy­ance with it 25 years ago, it’s grown on me with anoth­er replay. While it’s not as great as the stel­lar Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon, it’s defin­i­tive­ly a wel­come entry in the series. One thing we’re going to do is let Goe­mon be great, and he achieves it with this sol­id entry in the franchise.

DanceDance Revolution Konamix — Issue 48

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Dev­il­ish danc­ing demon
There’s blood on the dance floor with Konamix

As a devout Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion fan, I’ve made it clear that qual­i­ty DDR is non-nego­tiable. And what I mean by that is, a mix has to be good. It has to have DDR orig­i­nals, maybe a few qual­i­ty licens­es and the inter­face has to be work­able. DDR Kon­amix, a North Amer­i­can port of DDR 4th Mix, is a semi-decent solu­tion to a real problem.

Kon­amix plays like every oth­er ear­ly pre-Super­No­va ver­sion of DDR. Step­ping on arrows in time to a song is refined by this point, so it’s noth­ing new, and scor­ing also remains the same as DDR 1st Mix through 3rd Mix. So, real­ly the most impor­tant aspect of this mix is the songlist, and there are some gems here. Some of our favorites appeared here for the first time in a North Amer­i­can release, such as PARA­NOiA Rebirth and SUPER STAR. The 52 songs in the track­list are all Kon­a­mi orig­i­nals, hence the name, and that’s a boon because that imme­di­ate­ly makes the list worth play­ing and makes up for a few weird issues.


But how does it play? In terms of DDR mix playa­bil­i­ty, it’s not user friend­ly like lat­er mix­es. The tim­ing is high­ly sus­pect, and adjust­ing that fea­ture in the options is stil­luse­less. Because of the dif­fer­ences in frame rates and mod­ern tele­vi­sions, try­ing to play this is a fool’s errand because it’s almost so off that you’re nev­er going to do well. The weird tim­ing issues mean a lot of Goods, Greats and Boos. Also, the inter­face is obnox­ious until you choose to use All Music. With every­thing unlocked, the All Music option makes the game tolerable. 

With a lot of flawed options and playa­bil­i­ty issues, DDR Kon­amix isn’t exact­ly a must-have. How­ev­er, only because of the Kon­a­mi orig­i­nals should you buy this; some of these beau­ties are rare enough that you’d need to import Japan­ese mix­es to see them again. While I have a nos­tal­gic fond­ness for Kon­amix because it was my first expo­sure to mod­ern DDR, I would only con­sid­er this mix if you want to be called a DDR master.

Batman Returns — 4Q2020 issue

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Dark Knight’s sec­ond out­ing a rous­ing adventure

As a Bat­man fan, I hold a spe­cial place in my heart for most of the big-screen adap­ta­tions of the Caped Crusader’s fight to clean up Gotham. Bat­man Returns, despite its prob­lems, is at the top of the list in terms of favorite aes­thet­ics in a Bat­man film. That said, I wasn’t sure if I felt the same affec­tion for the game version.

The sto­ry is the same as the film: You, as the Dark Knight, bat­tle the nefar­i­ous Pen­guin and his equal­ly fool­ish part­ner Cat­woman as they join forces to take over Gotham and wreak hav­oc. Because you are tech­ni­cal­ly supe­ri­or (and rich­er) than your foes, you have an arse­nal at your dis­pos­al that helps you take out the crim­i­nal ele­ment that is doing the bid­ding of the med­dle­some bird man and trou­ble­some minx. Real­ly, if you’ve watched the superb film, you shouldn’t be at a loss here as to what you need to do. It fol­lows the plot exact­ly, includ­ing the encoun­ters that Bat­man has with less­er hench­men. Being a game based on a movie prop­er­ty some­times has its perks.

Con­trol­ling the Dark Knight is much like you would expect from watch­ing the movie. Bat­man is easy to guide around, though there are a few spots where the direc­tions and what to do could be a lit­tle more clear­ly point­ed out. How­ev­er, Bat­man is flu­id and moves quick­ly enough that get­ting around Gotham to take on the Pen­guin and Cat­woman isn’t much of a problem.

Returns, fore­most, is stun­ning visu­al­ly. Much like the film, the game’s graph­ics are top-notch and evoke that well-known Tim Bur­ton feel. The graph­ics are so well done that it almost appears that they were tak­en direct­ly from the movie and insert­ed into the game. The col­ors are rich and pop when nec­es­sary in the game’s col­or palette, though it doesn’t stray far from the movie’s mut­ed col­or­ing too much.

Much like the graph­ics, the sound is also spot on and close to the movie’s back­ing tracks. Of course, there are a few appro­pri­a­tions because you’re not get­ting a full orches­tra with com­pos­er Dan­ny Elf­man on the SNES chip, but the music is suf­fi­cient and gets the job done.

Bat­man Returns is a decent adven­ture set to the tune of the pop­u­lar sequel on the sil­ver screen. It’s a paint-by-the-num­bers sequel with gor­geous, rich visu­als that some­how man­age to do the movie ver­sion jus­tice in the 16-bit era. It’s com­fort­able and easy going, so you’re not miss­ing any­thing if you’re look­ing for the best fol­low up that fea­tures Bat­man. The Bat, the Cat and the Pen­guin have a good adap­ta­tion on their hands with this 16-bit recre­ation of Gotham.

Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse — 4Q2020 issue

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Drac­u­la slays in thirds

Castl­e­va­nia. The name alone is well renowned to vet­er­an gamers world­wide as one of Konami’s mas­ter­piece fran­chis­es, hav­ing expand­ed from the NES to var­i­ous gam­ing con­soles and a glo­ri­ous revival in ani­me form thanks to Net­flix. As a video game vet­er­an myself, I know of the many bat­tles between the GOAT vam­pire hunt­ing Bel­mont fam­i­ly and the infa­mous prince of hor­ror mon­sters, Count Drac­u­la. Ever since I was exposed to the first Castl­e­va­nia game, I fell under its spell, want­i­ng my chance to place a stake into Dracula’s chest. I final­ly got my chance to do so when I got my first game, Castl­e­va­nia III: Dracula’s Curse for the NES.

In Dracula’s Curse, you take on the role of Trevor C. Bel­mont, fore­fa­ther of series hero Simon Bel­mont, who is called upon to save his vil­lage of Warakiya from Drac­u­la and his res­ur­rect­ed army of dark­ness. Trevor has one small but pow­er­ful advan­tage with him: the abil­i­ty to trans­form into three part­ner spir­its: Alu­card, Dracula’s for­got­ten son; Grant Denasty, pirate ter­ror of the seas; and, Sypha Bel­nades, vam­pire hunter/mystic war­lord. Along with this shaper-shifter abil­i­ty and equipped with the mys­tic whip and Pol­ter­geist ax bequeathed by the Pol­ter­geist King, Trevor sets off into the night ready to do bat­tle against Dracula.

Game­play is basic like most action-plat­form­ing games with sim­ple moves such as mov­ing left and right with the con­trol pad, jump­ing with a but­ton, and attack­ing with basic weapons by using com­bi­na­tions for spe­cial weapons. These con­trols have spe­cial des­ig­na­tions for Grant, con­trol­ling how high he can jump and climb walls, and for Alu­card, who can trans­form into a bat. To give this team of vam­pire hunters an extra advan­tage, Trevor can upgrade his mys­tic whip to a long-ranged chain whip and can use var­i­ous Warakiya items such as the ban­shee boomerang, bat­tle ax and a pock­et watch that tem­porar­i­ly freezes ene­mies. Sypha has her mag­ic staff as her main weapon in addi­tion to using ele­men­tal orbs that can pro­duce fire, ice and thun­der attacks. Grant has use of the dag­ger, but he can only use the mys­tic ax as his sec­ondary weapon. Alu­card has use of a destruc­tive ball that can be upgrad­ed to shoot three directions.

While I appre­ci­ate these effec­tive tech­niques to dis­patch the undead, there were flaws such as learn­ing to time each attack or risk falling off a stage. Also, whichev­er part­ner spir­it Trevor teams up with, the part­ner takes dam­age, cre­at­ing a strug­gle to sur­vive in cer­tain stages. I also learned that you col­lect stone hearts to pow­er weapons and if Alu­card is your part­ner, he would turn into a bat. That’s fine but that skill eats up your hearts and if you run out, he could turn back into human form putting him and Trevor in a MAJOR bind.

Adding to the frus­tra­tion, there is a time lim­it to com­plete each stage, adding either chal­lenge to game­play or mak­ing you curse and smash your con­troller to pieces.

A word to the wise: Dracula’s Curse is chal­leng­ing but LOOK hard for spe­cial items such as leg of were­wolf, which refills your life meter; and, the invis­i­bil­i­ty potion that also gives tem­po­rary pro­tec­tion to give you the upper hand. Also, if you must go up a row of stairs, ALWAYS press up on the con­trol pad to walk oth­er­wise you will fall and lose a life.

The game’s music is excel­lent, stay­ing true to the series’ theme of clas­si­cal hor­ror. If you heard a Castl­e­va­nia theme before, you won’t hear any­thing new here. This isn’t Castl­e­va­nia IV just yet, after all. The replay val­ue is there although it will require you to have patience to and excel­lent strate­gic skills when choos­ing paths to take and part­ner spir­its to work with.

Castl­e­va­nia III: Dracula’s Curse is an exam­ple of how Kon­a­mi built a respect­ed fran­chise in its ear­ly days with­out dis­re­spect­ing their devel­op­ment staff and let­ting them do what they do best. Dracula’s Curse is good but not with­out its quirks and flaws. If you love old-school plat­form­ing in the Castl­e­va­nia con­trol vein, jump in and part­ner up to take on Drac­u­la once more.

Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2 — 4Q2020 issue

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DDR Extreme bet­ter sec­ond time around

I’m a DanceDanceRev­o­lu­tion fan from way back when, in that time and space before the U.S. real­ly dis­cov­ered the series and when we dealt with hasti­ly put-togeth­er mix­es that didn’t real­ly cap­ture the feel of DDR. Ah, those were the heady days of 2002. Alas, DDR final­ly blew up in the U.S., and we final­ly start­ed receiv­ing mix­es much like Japan. The prob­lem was, we were get­ting them years after the fact, and when we did get them, they were most­ly lack­ing — bro­ken, incom­plete mess­es that you were bet­ter off pre­tend­ing didn’t exist. That, my friends, is where we join our sto­ry already in progress with Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion Extreme 2.

Nev­er mind that there is no DDR Extreme 2 in Japan. We’re going to set that aside for a minute to focus on the fact of why it exists in the U.S. DDR Extreme 2 is borne of the fail­ure of Kon­a­mi to do right by its fans out­side of Japan. We received DDR Extreme in 2004, a full two years after the orig­i­nal was released in arcades and for PlaySta­tion 2 in Japan. That game is absolute garbage: It’s noth­ing like what Japan received, which is a game that’s much clos­er to the arcade ver­sion of Extreme. We received a bro­ken and changed-for-the-worse song inter­face, miss­ing and weird songlist and grad­ing mechan­ics that were excised as of DDR 5th Mix. Now that you’re all caught up, you should see the rea­son why we need­ed a do-over game of sorts. That’s where Extreme 2 comes in.

Extreme 2 is a decent addi­tion to the U.S. con­sole DDR library of games. It fea­tures the song wheel inter­face and restores the 5th Mix grad­ing mechan­ics. The song list is great, too, final­ly fea­tur­ing at least some of the songs found in the Japan­ese ver­sion such as Car­toon Heroes (Speedy Mix), Irre­sistible­ment, Speed Over Beethoven and Para­noia Survivor/Survivor Max, which were all new to Japan­ese Extreme when it was released. It close­ly mir­rors the home release of Japan­ese Extreme, which meant Kon­a­mi was final­ly tak­ing the U.S. mar­ket seriously.

Because it’s so close to the Japan­ese ver­sion of Extreme (editor’s note: We reviewed this title in the 2Q2013 issue), we’re going to skip the focus on how it plays oth­er than to tell you that the tim­ing win­dows remain loose as they always are in the U.S. ver­sions, if you care about that sort of thing. From expe­ri­ence, it’s much eas­i­er for me to get an A grade on Para­noia Sur­vivor in the Amer­i­can ver­sion than in the Japan­ese ver­sion. The Amer­i­can ver­sions always have had more loose tim­ing win­dows, and it makes play­ing a lot eas­i­er. The options are pret­ty much the same, though you will have to spend time unlock­ing songs because, as with pre­vi­ous U.S. releas­es, it’s miss­ing the Sys­tem Data Sup­port fea­ture found in the Japan­ese ver­sions. That fea­ture unlocks a pre­vi­ous game’s data using the cur­rent game. While this would have been help­ful in Extreme 2, it’s not so bad to have to play through the Event mode or Dance Mas­ter mode, though you will be tired of cer­tain songs after the fifth time through.

And Dance Mas­ter mode is where you may spend a decent amount of time try­ing to unlock cer­tain things. Dance Mas­ter is not a ter­ri­ble mode but some of the con­di­tions are not easy and require an inti­mate knowl­edge of DDR. If you’ve bought this ver­sion, chances are you are expe­ri­enced enough with DDR for this not to be a prob­lem, but for the unex­pe­ri­enced this might be a tedious exer­cise in, well, exercise.

And, because many of the servers are now down, we can’t real­ly com­ment on the online modes. While active they were inter­est­ing and fun to play against oth­ers using the ear­ly pre­cur­sor to PlaySta­tion Net­work, but alas, 15 years lat­er there are no servers for Extreme 2, so that’s a loss. You aren’t real­ly miss­ing any­thing there because there is always the lat­est ver­sion of DDR and Step­ma­nia, which are imme­di­ate­ly supe­ri­or to a 15-year-old game.

DDR Extreme 2, an anom­aly itself, is an OK addi­tion to the U.S. library. Though I fault Kon­a­mi and its U.S. branch heav­i­ly for screw­ing up DDR Extreme enough to have to do a sec­ond go-round, the well-round­ed redone songlist kind of makes up for the extreme­ly bor­ing mess that pre­ced­ed Extreme 2.

Track & Field II — 3Q2015 issue

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Spir­it of an Olympic champion

Hear­ing the name Track & Field II eas­i­ly cre­ates pow­er­ful nos­tal­gia in me. I was a young girl learn­ing the ins and outs of an NES in 1989 when my old­er broth­er, Tony, brought home the Olympic con­test title. It was the last year that we lived in the same house and had time to sit down and play video games togeth­er. That was the year that I learned what it meant to duel an old­er sib­ling who had far bet­ter hand-and-eye coor­di­na­tion and reflex­es and why teenagers seem to do much bet­ter at games than lit­tle kids.
I’m no Olympic ath­lete so I’d rather try my hand at the dig­i­tal ver­sions. Track & Field II offers a vir­tu­al boun­ty of events from which to choose, and all of them are pret­ty faith­ful­ly recre­at­ed from their orig­i­nal coun­ter­parts. There are 12 events to choose from, with three that can be cho­sen in dif­fer­ent modes or as spe­cial events.
The events, rang­ing from hur­dles to gym­nas­tics and swim­ming, are fun to try but frus­trat­ing to learn the nuances. It took con­sul­ta­tion with Tony, an NES Max con­troller and many years to get the hang of cer­tain events. This is most­ly because there wasn’t a lot of info out there in the days before the Inter­net and because, again, I had ter­ri­ble untrained coor­di­na­tion and reflex­es. Even today, with a wealth of tips out there, it’s still hard to get a bull’s‑eye in the archery, and it’s been near­ly 30 years. Graph­i­cal­ly, there’s a few things to look at, espe­cial­ly for an NES title. It’s not going to set the world on fire but the graph­ics are fine for the time peri­od and don’t detract from the over­all experience.
The music, while not espe­cial­ly mem­o­rable, is still ser­vice­able. It’s not some­thing you’re going to be hum­ming well after you’ve put down that tur­bo con­troller, but it’s not bad, either. A lot of the tracks are well done and fit the gen­er­al mood of the event you’re par­tic­i­pat­ing in. There are a lot of sound effects in the game and they are gen­er­al­ly what make the game what it is.
The nos­tal­gic fac­tor is what keeps me com­ing back to what is a gen­er­al­ly frus­trat­ing game. That nos­tal­gia is what turns a poten­tial­ly con­troller-throw­ing hur­dles event into a first-place tri­umph over a noto­ri­ous­ly hard A.I. that likes to pun­ish at every chance.
It’s my chance to feel like the Olympic cham­pi­on that I will nev­er be.

DDR Max Dance Dance Revolution 6th Mix — 2Q2015 issue

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A new era of DDR

Let’s have a quick his­to­ry review, shall we? Kon­a­mi cre­at­ed the Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion series in 1998 and by 2002, there were at least six entries in the main series. I’d gath­er that this meant DDR was pret­ty pop­u­lar, but you would nev­er hear Kon­a­mi say that too loud. At some point, how­ev­er, some­one real­ized the mag­ic that was DDR need­ed to come into the mod­ern era. So, every­thing that was relat­ed to the first five entries in the series — with the excep­tion of the song wheel and dif­fi­cul­ty cat­e­gories — was thrown out in favor of a com­plete over­haul. DDR Max was the result and with it comes a mixed bag of mod­ern and old DDR.

Graph­i­cal­ly, Max rep­re­sents the begin­ning of a new era. Sure, it resem­bles cur­rent DDR games because they use the song wheel, but the col­ors became a lit­tle brighter and the lit­tle touch­es used to illus­trate the dif­fer­ent dif­fi­cul­ties and cat­e­gories are empha­sized more. The inter­face is much eas­i­er to read, though the addi­tion of the Groove Radar still has some ways to go here. It’s not exact­ly help­ful in pro­vid­ing digestible infor­ma­tion that helps make quick informed deci­sions. That’s a com­plaint that still stands today, so much so that I tend to ignore the meter alto­geth­er. Also, the foot rat­ing is miss­ing and song dif­fi­cul­ty rat­ing num­bers have yet to come (that’s not until Max 2). But the song wheel has been fresh­ened up so it looks a lot bet­ter and is a lit­tle more palatable.

Musi­cal­ly, the selec­tion is among the best in the series. The one thing about Max that’s notable about the music is the lack of a Para­noia mix. For a series trade­mark song, its absence is imme­di­ate­ly notice­able, and quite frankly, drags the mix down a few notch­es. There’s a few throw away songs like Share My Love and Dive, but over­all it’s quite a few excel­lent choic­es thrown togeth­er to make a good song list. The vari­ety is nice and it feels like a good fresh start for a series that had a lot of repeats in the first five games.

I don’t go back and play 6th Mix often, most­ly because I can’t deal with a lack of Para­noia in my life at this point. As a DDR old head and one who owns the Amer­i­can ver­sion as well as the Japan­ese ver­sion, I applaud the change up that Kon­a­mi pur­sued. It was a bold move that paid off in the long run: DDR still looks like a lot like this form, even with at least eight more games under its belt as a series. Some­times, a change in pace is need­ed to keep the dance groove going.

DanceDance Rev­o­lu­tion trivia

* DDR Max is the first game to fea­ture a 10-foot dif­fi­cul­ty song. Max 300 was offi­cial­ly the first 10-foot­er in the his­to­ry of the series, though it would­n’t receive its offi­cial rat­ing until Max 2 was released.

* Max 300, the boss song of the mix, fea­tures 573 steps in its Heavy dif­fi­cul­ty chart. 573 is known as the Kon­a­mi num­ber, a num­ber that relates to the roman­ized pro­nun­ci­a­tion of the com­pa­ny’s name.

* Max is the first DDR game to fea­ture the Light/Standard/Heavy dif­fi­cul­ty scheme, dance point sys­tem, speed mods, Extra Stage/One More Extra Stage and freeze arrows. The dif­fi­cul­ty scheme would stay in place until the release of DDR Super­NO­VA in 2006.

* Two songs intro­duced in the mix, Flash in the Night and Fol­low Me, are the only two songs in the series that do not have an offi­cial foot rat­ing. These two songs were intro­duced in 6th Mix, which is the only mix that does not use the foot rat­ing sys­tem. They have nev­er appeared in lat­er mix­es, which gave offi­cial Kon­a­mi num­bered rat­ings to all songs.