Definitely a peak DDR game. DDRMAX is pretty much a soft reboot of the series in a lot of ways. The setlist is almost entirely brand new, the announcer dude has been replaced, the rendered dancers have been replaced by FMV shots of various vibes, and the game has a brand new focused goal of getting players to challenge themselves and push towards new limits.

The setlist, while actually smaller than 5thmix, is way more dense with bangers to make pretty much a quintessential DDR setlist. They got funky grooves, sugary speedcore, eurobeat, J-pop, penis music, whatever the fuck you'd classify telephone operator as, the setlist is just fuckin LOADED dude. quality over quantity for sure. My personal favorite song in the setlist is www.blonde girl, that shit goes directly into my bloodstream dude fuck yeah

The biggest tonal change of DDRMAX just comes from its difficulty. This game is HARD, dude. I'm still not that great at DDR with my skill mostly capping out around the high 8-low 9 mark for heavy charts, and I found I wasn't able to clear a lot of the heavy charts in this game. I've noticed that compared to the earlier generation of DDR, this game is much more punishing with misses and it was extremely common for me to slip up and watch my entire health meter just plummet right into danger booing territory. Considering the fact that this is the 6th mix in the series and I'm sure that the people living in arcades at an eternal DDR grind needed something new to eat so konami had to deliver the goods, but it does come at the cost of feeling like quite a difficulty spike. The game doesn't even have foot ratings anymore, so you just kinda have to eyeball a weird 5 point graph to predict how difficult the song might be. Honestly I am fine with the lack of foot ratings because that lack of info definitely made me more willing to experiment and try things that I otherwise might have been scared off by a high foot rating to try.

Self-improvement is the name of the game here, and DDRMAX actually is genius in how it very subtly leads dedicated players to its true goal that they should strive to clear: take the MAX 300 challenge. The game slowly leads you on through notifications that there's something hidden in this game, and only by mastering the game can you find and clear it. By getting a final stage full combo on any heavy-difficulty song, your game will be greeted by the EXTRA STAGE, where MAX 300, the legendary 10-foot boss song, will be your only selection. It's an incredibly difficult song, moving at ludicrous speed and requiring fast reading and faster footwork to actually stand a chance against. Unfortunately, try as I might, I couldn't clear it myself, though I one day hope to be able to. I can read the notes just fine, I just have slow-ass gamer legs that can't keep up with the heat that song demands. I could clear it in training with the speed set to 2/5 though!!!

This game basically marks where DDR starts cranking up the heat, both metaphorically and literally. Despite the arcade versions remaining on system 573 hardware based off the PS1, the console versions are now on 6th gen hardware. I will admit, the slower PS2 saving times definitely give me some time to breathe after hard songs, so that's pretty cool. I've already been deeply sunk into the DDR realm at this point, and these games just keep staying as fun to play now as they were when I was starting.




(that all being said, pour one out for the redoctane ignition 2.0 pad I was using for all of my DDR sessions up to this point, the DDRMAX heat caused a tear in the fabric that my attempts to recover only ended up worsening. Shoutouts to Tom James, legendary game localizer and the tony hawk of dating sims, for supplying me with the dance pad that got me this far down the rabbithole, and I'm glad I was able to use it to play tokimemomix, but alas, she has reached the end of her times. Now I am using a DDRgame bootleg TX-2000 hard pad that I've coupled with an assload of penny mods and controller converters to work across all my consoles at a tolerable level. It was actually one of the lead directors at Epic Games of all people that helped me get this replacement pad, so I guess my DDR pads are always going to have some sort of game industry connections, for some reason.)

This is the first numbered DDR game to receive a paired release in Japanese platforms and American consoles. As with earlier titles, though, these localized versions all have drastic differences in content and song licenses. This review will cover both individually.

-JP DDRMAX - DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION 6thMIX-

Konami's first of many DDR soft-reboots. The later revivals are all seen as contentious in the rhythm community, either for lack of innovation or outright destroying brand goodwill. Yet DDRMAX, despite having the most drastic changes and cuts from its predecessors, is foundational to everything that defines competitive DDR from this point forward. It makes some deep sacrifices with a strong payoff.

For the first time in mainline series history, all returning tracks have been removed from the game. It was inevitable, unfortunately: There were already signs of licensing and disc storage difficulties with 5th Mix, which cut most returning tracks from 1st-3rd. Max's songlist is microscopicly small and lacks staple mascot songs like Paranoia and Trip Machine. And with the overhaul to the game's graphics and engine tools, it probably would've been difficult to re-transcribe all the old songs and assign new FMV's to them. Removing any more than 5th already did would equally anger fans while pushing up devtime, so it was probably easier to just say 'fuck it' and start with a blank slate, take the heat and move on.

So what makes up for the huge concession? A lot imo

1. USABILITY

Classic DDR is admittedly style or substance - all the flashy backgrounds and dancer animations make the game a nightmare for readability, only worsened by the lack of proper speed and note color mods. Different spinoffs incorporated this features in batches - Disney Mix uses a hardcoded 1.33x speed mod, Solo lets you toggle a 2x and Solo/Rainbow colors, - but this is the first mainline entry to standardize these options. On top of that, dancers and background animations have been replaced with FMV's. Each track is assigned a 'collage' of BG videos selected from a larger archive. There's a lot of overlap between the featured animations per song, but the way they're timed to the music and paired always makes them stand out. This has always been my favorite visual style of DDR; experimental but rarely at the cost of playability.

2. SONG SELECTION

I think MAX has the strongest selection of licensed tracks of any DDR, if purely on how good they are as songs. It's the peak of DDR's symphonic essence, a perfectly-distributed blend of techno, euro, disco and more, with a specific electrosonic edge that makes you scream "FUCK YEAH VIDEOGAMES". My lightning round of favorites has to be Lovin' You, Highs Off U, Miracle, Groove, Do It Right, Telephone Operator, Let's Groove, Flash In The Night, So Deep, Healing Vision Angelic Mix, and the console-exclusive icon, Kind Lady.

The only reason I make the distinction of the 'songs' being my fav is because their stepchart quality can very wildly. Lots of MAX tracks have this problem where the challenge is very poorly distributed across its runtime. The most infamous example I can think of is Flash In The Night on Heavy, which starts and stops with these insane 632BPM triplet chains, but the middle portion of the song is just filler streams and jumps. It makes playing these tracks in a standard session a little clumsy (they make sense in the larger game design scheme tho).

Also, this is totally subjective, but MAX's songlist evokes a very subtle aura of melancholy and mourning that feels totally symbolic of the harsh removal of the old songs. A precursory glance at the song names validates this (BYE BYE BABY BALLOON, DO YOU REMEMBER ME, Look To The Sky), but it especially comes through in the heavily emphasis on Even the graphics reflect this with the way dancing characters are gone, but they still make cameos in the FMV's and menus.

3. BOSS SONGS

DDRMAX introduces the series first formal level 10 song, Max 300. TECHNICALLY, Disney's Rave has songs that are rated as 10's, but their actual difficulty is barely above an 8. They are False Gods and can't compete with MAX.

Now, by modern standards, Max 300 isn't even close to the hardest song in the game anymore; there's at least 100-200 tracks from the current version that usurp it and then some. To modern pros, Max 300 is a qualifier, not an achievement. But in 2001, it totally surpassed the hardest charts by miles. At 100BPM faster than the usual 200 cap for level 9 songs, there were few tracks that could prepare you for passing it. And it's still a perfect challenge chart to play now - the rushing 600BPM streams, triplet waves, and gnashing stomps will never escape my memory. In rhythm and chart design, it perfectly communicates what makes DDR hard to everyone.

4. AIMING FOR MAX

I said before I disliked some of MAX's stepcharts, but I do respect them for one big thing: They're all written to help you practice the skills you need to beat Max 300. Healing Vision and Exotic Ethnic are here for practicing streams w/ double steps and crossovers, teaching you how to keep stamina consistent across a whole track. Fantasy and Flash In The Night have isolated hard sections with speeds comparable to Max 300, but with ample time between waves to regain your energy. So Deep and Twilight Zone are ideal for learning gallops and 16ths. And then Witch Doctor has similar speed to Max 300 across the whole song, but with simplified step complexity.

My point being, if you threw Max 300 into a DDR with difficulty more akin to the PS1 mixes, there wouldn't be enough of an on-ramp to learn the speed.

CONCLUSION. DDRMAX is cool, it deserves a lot of love and praise even if other mixes have way more meat on their bones.

-US DDRMAX - DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION-

Like with prior localized games, US DDRMAX is an entirely different songlist from the JP version, due to licensing issues. However, this is the one case where it works in the series favor. There's nearly 30 more songs here compared to JP, spanning the Konami originals from MAX, a small smattering of Dancemania, returning tracks from 4th/5th/Link Version, and a host of console exclusives. It's such a 'cool' selection, spanning a lot of industrial and underground vibes with a heavy dose of level 9 charts. This was my first DDR game I bought after getting back into the series, and tracks like Matsuri Japan and Sana Molette Ne Ente absolutely did not disappoint. It's the one case where you could argue the localized version is better. I think the only thing wrong with it is that most of the charts they intended you to practice in anticipation of MAX 300 aren't here, so you're taking that hard cut from 200BPM to 300BPM if you don't have other DDR games to practice with.

Arcade DDRMAX was a reboot of the series, with a new announcer, a mod menu that finally gave DDR speed mods, a new difficulty rating system involving reading a complicated chart which was helpful but not a good replacement for the foot rating system, and a songlist that only had new-to-the-arcade songs and nothing else. Oh, and MAX 300.

I only played arcade DDRMAX a few times, but I did play the US PS2 release a lot. It is just as much of a leap from Konamix as Konamix was from the 1st US release, with some good license choices (especially Dark Black Forest!), some new Bemani crossovers, and just a overall great song selection in general. It also makes some improvements on the arcade release, including adding back that foot rating system, and adding the Oni mode from DDRMAX2. Good!