Dance Dance Revolution

Dance Dance Revolution (ダンスダンスレボリューション, Dansu Dansu Reboryūshon), abbreviated DDR and also known as Dancing Stage in earlier games in Europe and Australasia, and some other games in Japan, is a music video game series produced by Konami. Introduced in Japan in 1998 as part of the Bemani series, and released in North America and Europe in 1999, Dance Dance Revolution is the pioneering series of the rhythm and dance genre in video games. Players stand on a "dance platform" or stage and hit colored arrows laid out in a cross with their feet to musical and visual cues. Players are judged by how well they time their dance to the patterns presented to them and are allowed to choose more music to play to if they receive a passing score.

Dance Dance Revolution has been given much critical acclaim for its originality and stamina in the video game market. There have been dozens of arcade-based releases across several countries and hundreds of home video game console releases, promoting a music library of original songs produced by Konami's in-house artists and an eclectic set of licensed music from many different genres. The DDR series has inspired similar games such as Pump It Up by Andamiro and In the Groove by Roxor.

Dance Dance Revolution (Windows video games)

To date, two official home versions of Dance Dance Revolution have been released for personal computers, with a third title currently in production. One title, Dancing Karaoke DKara, was released exclusively in Japan in 2001 and the other, Groove Motion DDR was released exclusively in North America in 2008. In contrast, dozens of programs with similar gameplay to Dance Dance Revolution have been released on multiple computer platforms by fans of the series.

Dancing Karaoke DKara

Released on January 16, 2001, Dancing Karaoke DKara combined the gameplay of Dance Dance Revolution with Karaoke style singing. Konami had previously released two titles with similar gameplay in the past as very rare arcade machines. The song selection was primarily download driven and features a unique set of music that has not been repeated in any other DDR game. The downloadable songs were sold for ¥150 a song and released in packs of varying size a week or so apart from each other. As of August 9, 2001 the total number of songs available for DKara including the original game and downloadable content was 80, however an undetermined number of songs have been released since then.

Music of Dance Dance Revolution Extreme

The music of Dance Dance Revolution Extreme is a greatest hits of sorts across the Dance Dance Revolution series as well as the entire Bemani franchise. The 240 song soundtrack is composed largely of Konami Originals, in-house music written and performed by Konami staff. It also contains many licensed tracks from Toshiba EMI's Dancemania catalog giving DDR Extreme one of the largest soundtracks of any DDR game to date.

Lists of songs

Arcade

The arcade release of Dance Dance Revolution Extreme contains 240 tracks, most of them revivals from previous Dance Dance Revolution games. Songs that are not initially available for play are represented with a padlock icon and are only accessible through the use of codes entered into the game's operator menu. The song "Legend of Max" appears on the end credits when the songs are locked.

PlayStation 2

The PlayStation 2 release of Dance Dance Revolution Extreme contains 111 tracks. In the same vein as the arcade release, the PlayStation 2 release contains a number of popular songs from past games which is uncommon in Japanese console releases. New to the series songs are in green, songs from other Bemani series are in yellow, songs originally from Dance Dance Revolution Solo are in purple, songs from previous DDR games are in blue, and Boss songs are in red. New Konami Originals that are not on the arcade soundtrack receive special coloring: DDR Originals are in pink, while BEMANI crossover songs are in orange. Songs that are not initially available are represented with a padlock icon and require certain conditions in-game to be met before they can be played.