eHOLE rating: 58% (41/71)

This mix includes both Sandstorm and I Like to Move It, which gives it a higher meme quotient than any other NA home release on record.

Favorite song: INSERTiON. The grand tragedy of Naoki Maeda is that, despite having a larger fingerprint on Bemani than any of Konami's other in-house musicians, nearly all the DDR music he attached his name to and thus became widely known for was awful. This primarily applies to his "Eurobeat," which he ALWAYS seemed to claim credit for and which is as repetitive and lifeless as anything calling itself dance music could ever be. His trance, however, is pretty solid, and in cases like INSERTiON sometimes quite good. I like the dark rumbling bass, the dramatic jangly piano, and the way the synths come roaring back in at the end of the song after the slowdown. It's got atmosphere! The stepchart is also quite unique, super messy and full of dumb tempo changes but possessed of its own internal logic. A really fun cata (that's a 9-difficulty song, youngins!) that does something with the rating besides just nonstop stream.

Entering into the PS2 era of DDR entries, DDRMAX (US Version) is a fine enough entry to begin with despite being lackluster in content. The base song list is okay for the most part, but it is remarkably small compared to later entries. The unlockable songs help build it up, but you do end up repeating the whole list multiple times to get the good stuff. There is the Oni Challenge mode, but you only get 3 easy courses while the rest is gated until you unlock almost every song in the game. That's mostly all the game has to offer because by the 10th hour, you are pretty much exhausted by the monotony. This is exacerbated with a track list that has too many slow songs and little challenging step charts that aren't MAX 300 and CANDY. Konami does the bare minimum here as DDR enters the PS2 era. The only reason to pick it up nowadays is for nostalgia or if you really like the song selection here (which most doesn't return on later console entries)