eHOLE rating: 52% (36/69). This is a review of the NA CS release.
This release saw the franchise inching ever closer to a bid at mainstream commercial respectability; although many of the new licenses still remained techno-adjacent (with Get Down Tonight the sole outlier), they all did time on the Billboard Hot 100 or at least the offshoot dance chart. It was, of course, a fool's errand - there is no way to look respectable while playing Dance Dance Revolution, and not especially when playing a mix that includes The Whistle Song.
Favorite song: xenon. Yes, this is an incredibly basic-bitch pick, but once in a blue moon things get popular because they deserve to. Konami knew what they were doing putting this and Kakumei (a close second) at the very end of the unlockables list. This sort of manic chiptune didn't feel nearly as overexposed in 2002 as it does twenty years out; in its time, it felt like the ultimate realization of a track from one of the metropolitan Sonic the Hedgehog levels, slinky and funky and propulsive but with the added kind of big bass that the Genesis never could have dreamed of.
Fun Fact: Forever Sunshine, the corniest song in DDR and perhaps of all time, was composed by Castlevania mainstay Michiru Yamane.
This release saw the franchise inching ever closer to a bid at mainstream commercial respectability; although many of the new licenses still remained techno-adjacent (with Get Down Tonight the sole outlier), they all did time on the Billboard Hot 100 or at least the offshoot dance chart. It was, of course, a fool's errand - there is no way to look respectable while playing Dance Dance Revolution, and not especially when playing a mix that includes The Whistle Song.
Favorite song: xenon. Yes, this is an incredibly basic-bitch pick, but once in a blue moon things get popular because they deserve to. Konami knew what they were doing putting this and Kakumei (a close second) at the very end of the unlockables list. This sort of manic chiptune didn't feel nearly as overexposed in 2002 as it does twenty years out; in its time, it felt like the ultimate realization of a track from one of the metropolitan Sonic the Hedgehog levels, slinky and funky and propulsive but with the added kind of big bass that the Genesis never could have dreamed of.
Fun Fact: Forever Sunshine, the corniest song in DDR and perhaps of all time, was composed by Castlevania mainstay Michiru Yamane.