Dance Dance Revolution (Japan)

"Konami's First Shot"

Welcome to the world of Dance Dance Revolution.
This is the very first official Dance Dance Revolution game ever released. This was the start of a brand new series of Dance Simulation games. For the most part, it was a great success. Fans were born and the popularity of DDR spawned greatly across Japan. This is the game where you use your feet!!

Now for the review:

Graphics - 7/10

For the very first DDR game to ever be made for the Playstation console, the graphics were pretty ''acceptable'' since the arcade version's graphics were basically the same as the home version. The graphics aren't really too important when it comes to these games. The only thing is that the background animations are almost the exact same for every song on this game, making it a bit more dull. Remember, this was the very first DDR game.

Music - 9/10

The music on this game is actually pretty good. It has a nice balance of Konami Originals and Dancemania covers in it, which makes it quite comparable to the US version of this game. This game has very nice and popular songs like Butterfly, Boys, and Little B****. The overall music selection is nice, but kinda limited with the few songs to choose from. Looking at a few technical aspects of the game, I found something to my liking that resembles the true arcade-style sound; when you choose a song, the intro of the song still plays for about a second, making it more arcade-like. :)

Gameplay - 7/10

The gameplay factors of this game is quite different from the newer Dance Dance Revolution games mainly because it was the first DDR game. The options are very limited and controlling a few things are somewhat a bit frustrating at times. The Training Mode is in a very ''proto-typical'' state with very limited options. The Edit Mode seems to be the most advanced of features in this game.

This game has both an Arcade Mode and an Arrange Mode. The Arrange mode is ''supposed'' to make things a bit more challenging than Arcade Mode by implementing the use of the ''OUCH!'' penalization, which is worse than a ''MISS''; that way, you can deplete your entire Dance Meter before the song starts.
This mode can be very aggravating when using a regular Soft Pad or a Pad that doesn't work too well.

Unlocking songs on this game isn't too nice either because it takes forever to unlock songs...we're talking about playing over 100 songs to unlock stuff here. Good thing the later DDR games like DDR 2ndReMix and DDR 3rdMix has support information for this game for unlocks.
Difficulty levels like Basic, Trick, and Maniac must be chosen prior to choosing your songs and cannot be changed on the song selection screen, making it a bit more strict on the player, but I grew up in DDR on a machine like that. :)

Overall - 8/10

Overall, Dance Dance Revolution (Japanese) is a great DDR game to start on even with the limited and rather strict features. I am a Dance Dance Revolution fan and I've bought this game not just for collective purposes, but for fun purposes too. It's good to have and it is kinda ''re-emphasized'' on the newest DDR game of the year 2003.
I enjoy playing this game when I do and I also like Linking it to the other home versions for cooler features.

BUY OR RENT?
-Personally, I don't know where you're going to rent this rare out-of-print game, so I suggest that you buy it on eBay or another online store unless you know a local import dealer. Buy this game....now it's only like $10-$30 on eBay. Enjoy! :)

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/03