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=== Dancing Stage EuroMix PSX FAQ ===
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by Tim Mannveille -
[email protected]
Last updated 27/4/3 - text Version 1.5
latest version always available at www.juggler.net/tim
Contents:
1) Introduction
2) Dancing Stage EuroMix PSX
2.1) EuroMix PSX Song List
2.2) EuroMix PSX Frequently Asked Questions
2.3) EuroMix PSX scoring
3) Previous and forthcoming updates
1) Introduction
First, note that by 'PSX' I mean the playstation version, as opposed to
the arcade!
There is plenty of information on the net about 'Dance Dance Revolution'
(DDR), which is great. In the UK we have the 'Dancing Stage' games, which
are essentially the same in all but name, but it is a lot harder to find
information about these. That's why I've written this FAQ (and others).
If you have any questions about the playstation version of Dancing Stage
EuroMix that I haven't covered here, please e-mail me them at
[email protected], and I'll try to find out the answer and include it. Also
please let me know about anything that puzzled you for a long time (but that
you eventually worked out!) that I don't already have here.
WARNING: I'm not totally infallible! Let me know if you find something here
to be wrong! Yes, even if you notice that I've got the difficulty of one song
wrong by just one foot!
Finally, thanks to the following organisations and people:
-www.ddruk.com for hosting this, and its forums for odds and ends.
-Mike of logiqx for the info on the original 'Dancing Stage' songs!
-www.aaroninjapan.com for explaining scoring in the DDR mixes
-Everyone that e-mails me new questions!
2.1) EuroMix PSX Song List
Here is the ordered songlist for EuroMix PSX, along with the difficulties.
There are 24 songs in total. 6 of these songs are not found on the Arcade
version of EuroMix: these have **asterisks** around them. (In fact, these were
the songs that featured on the very old 'Dancing Stage' Arcade machines that
you might still find in a few obscure places around the UK!)
The difficulties of the 8 and 9 foot songs on Single mode are given to one
decimal place - this is my own personal estimation of how hard these songs
are to pass if you've never passed them before (see below for more detail on
which 9-foot songs to try first).
Key: S-Standard D-Difficult E-Expert.
(All Beginner Songs are 1 foot difficulty.)
Single Double
Title Artist S D E S D E
---------------------------------------------------------------
So Good Boyzone 2 4 7 2 5 7
Word Up Cameo 3 5 7 3 5 8
More Than This '99 Emmie 3 5 7 3 5 6
Video Killed The Radio Star The Buggles 3 5 6 4 5 6
Make A Jam Konami Original 3 5 7 4 5 8
**Let Them Move** N. M. R. 3 6 7 3 6 7
Silent Hill Konami Original 2 6 7 4 5 7
**Put Your Faith In Me** Uzi-lay 3 4 6 4 5 6
Keep On Movin' Konami Original 4 5 6 4 6 7
**Make It Better** Mitsu-O 4 5 7 5 7 7
**Brilliant 2U** Naoki 4 5 6 4 5 7
La Senorita Konami Original 4 6 7 4 6 9
End of the Century Konami Original 4 7 8.8 5 6 9
Dynamite Rave Konami Original 5 7 9.0 5 6 8
Afronova Konami Original 5 7 9.6 6 7 9
Dead End Konami Original 5 7 9.4 6 7 8
**Paranoia** 180 6 7 8.2 7 8 9
Paranoia Rebirth Konami Original 6 7 9.2 6 8 9
**Trip Machine** De-Sire 6 7 8.0 7 8 8
Luv To Me Konami Original 4 7 8.6 5 6 8
Magic Alex Presents Resonance Magic Alex 4 6 7 4 6 7
(Mucho Mambo)Sway Shaft 3 5 7 3 5 7
Rushing Loni Clark 4 5 7 4 5 7
I Will Survive Gloria Gaynor 2 5 7 3 5 6
2.2) EuroMix PSX Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Which mat should I get?
A: If you want to know about mats, please check out my Dance Mat FAQ devoted
to that very subject, currently to be found at www.juggler.net/tim
Q: How do I unlock more songs?
A: There aren't any more! A lot of people think that since there were so many
songs on the EuroMix 1 arcade (and on the EuroMix 2 arcade... and in Dancing
Stage: Party Edition) there must be more than 24 on EuroMix 1 home version.
Not so. As proof, consider this; on the back of the box, it says 24 songs
are included. If there were any more, they would say so here, as it would
make you more likely to buy the game!
Q: How do I unlock more characters?
A: There aren't any more! To see the female characters in slightly different
outfits, play in training mode - their outfits also differ in this mode
depending on whether you are player 1 or player 2. The only other way to get
more characters is to buy Party Edition!
Q: I have two pads! How can I get Double Mode?
A: In the main menu, highlight Arcade Mode and hit the O button, then select
Double Mode from the menu that appears. The manual tells you to use the
X button, which is wrong. This probably happened because Japanese PS
controllers have the O and X button the other way around, so I'm told.
To get Double Mode In Training Mode, go to the bar that says 'single' and
go right twice to select 'double' there.
(Note this is nothing at all to do with the 'double mode' option under
Options/Button Configuration!)
Q: Why do I keep failing the last song in Non-Stop Mode / Arcade Mode?
A: In both modes, the penalty for missing a step gets bigger as you go along.
So on the first song, you can make quite a few mistakes, but still do okay
(which makes it well-suited for beating your scores in 'music records')
- whereas on the last song, a single miss will take the energy bar down by
about 1/4! This means it only takes a few misses to wipe you out, and if your
mat isn't working 100% accurately, you usually don't stand a chance!
Q: How do I quit out from the middle of a song / from selecting a song / from
anywhere?
A: Press Triangle. If that doesn't work, hold Select. If that doesn't work,
hold Select and Start together. You have to use the latter if you want to
quit mid-way through a song.
Q: How do I Fill in the blanks where song names ought to be in Records/Music
Records?
A: Get a D or better on that song in Single or Double mode, on at least
Standard difficulty.
Q: What does "This is a cool mode!" mean?
A: If you play the Non-Stop or All Songs modes, the excitable voice-over guy
tells you "This is a cool mode!". If you play Easy Mode, or Hard Mode, he
doesn't. As far as I can tell, these modes are only deemed 'cool' because
they recreate modes available on the Arcade version. There doesn't seem to
be any other difference - your best score for a song still goes into the
'Best Music' table if you do it in a non-cool mode, for example.
Q: What does 'Saved' mean?
A: After completing a song, you get a summary of how many of your steps were
perfect, great, etc. At the bottom of this list is 'saved', and this always
appears as a row of dashes. If you could activate 'Couple' mode, you would
get one point here for every step you hit but your partner missed.
Q: How do I get Couple Mode then?
A: You can't! This seems to be something they accidentally left in when they
were converting DDR 3rd mix into EuroMix. Unfortunately they didn't
accidentally leave in Couple Mode as well.
Q: How can I get on the darn scoreboard?!
A: Do well enough in Non-stop mode playing one of the sets called "Ranking 1",
"Ranking 2" or "Ranking 3"
Q: I did like you said in the last answer, got way more than the scores that
ship with the game, but still didn't get to put my name in! What's up with
that?
A: You only get to put your name in if you get all the way to the end. You can
force this to happen by going into Options, Game Options, and then setting
"Game over during song" to OFF... some people might count that as cheating,
but then others wouldn't, which is the whole point of having it as an option.
Q: How can I access different Modes like Hidden, Mirror, Flat etc, while in
Arcade Mode?
A: Press the Start button either just before or just after you have selected a
song. A small menu comes up with four items, all by default set to 'Off'. In
order, these allow you to activate the following modes:
Flat - Off-beat arrows usually flash a different colour. This stops them from
doing that, which makes it a little harder.
Little - Removes all off-beat arrows. Use this if you want two players of
different skill-levels to play together.
Left/Right/Mirror/Shuffle - 'Left' moves all arrows anti-clockwise, so Up
becomes Left etc. Right moves them clockwise. Mirror reverses Left and Right,
as well as Up and Down. Shuffle randomly allocates a new direction for each
arrow - so all the Ups, for example, could become Lefts, or Rights, or Downs,
or not change at all.
Hidden/Sudden/Stealth - Hidden makes the arrows disappear half way up the
screen. Sudden stops them from appearing until they reach the half-way point.
Both of these are good for practice. Stealth hides the arrows until after
they've gone past their beat, and is just silly.
Q: I seem to be stuck on (insert number here)-foot songs. How can I improve?
A: Use the Training Mode! Pick a song that you just can't quite survive. Slow
it down to speed 3 or 4 (speeds 1 and 2 often end up making the song harder
rather than easier). Put on the 'Assist' - I prefer Assist 4, in which you
hear the song and a handclap on every arrow when you're supposed to hit it.
Use the 'Start Bar' and 'End Bar' option to focus on parts of the song that
give you difficulty. Build up to Speed 5, remove the Assist, then go do it in
Arcade mode!
Also, go back to easier songs and try to improve your grade. Got an A? Try
to get AA (you'll need to get Perfects or Greats on every step). Then try for
AAA (get a lot of Perfects and a few Greats). If you're totally nuts, maybe
you could try for AAA-Perfect, which is self-explanatory, and also insane.
On the other side of the coin, try songs perhaps a couple of feet ahead of
you. You won't pass, put try as hard as you can - and notice your score at
the end, not your grade. Try to improve that score. Then go back to the songs
you were having difficulty with... they should seem much easier now!
Q: I'm just about ready for 9-foot (Catastrophic) songs.
Which should I try first?
A: That depends on what you're best at. If you can read fast arrows and have
a lot of stamina, then Dead End or Afronova should prove easiest. If you can
also do 'turns' (that's when you get steps like R, D, L, D, R and you turn
your body to the right in order to hit all the Downs with your right foot and
all the others with your left), then Paranoia Rebirth should be fun.
On the other hand, if you can't stand the pace but you've got rhythm, go for
Dynamite Rave - use Assist 4 in training mode to work out the unusually timed
steps, and then it's a piece of cake!
You might start having trouble with your mat at this level - see my Dance
Mat FAQ at www.juggler.net/tim to see what to do about that.
Finally, it's good to know that on the EuroMix 2 arcade machine, End of the
Century expert is classed as a 9-foot song, but has just the same steps. Quite
right too - it's fast, confusing and exhausting! I'd say Dead End is easier.
Q: What about my question that you haven't included here?!
A: E-mail me it at
[email protected], and I'll see what I can do!
2.3) EuroMix PSX scoring
If you're interested in how the scoring is worked out, then you've probably
already noticed that the score for each step is scaled so that the maximum
score for any song is 10,000,000. In non-stop mode, each song is worth it's
number times 10,000,000 (so the third song is worth 30,000,000 and so on). That
makes the maximum score for any non-stop course
(1+2+3+4)*(10,000,000) = 100,000,000.
Other points to note are that only Perfects and Greats give you any points,
and the combo makes no difference (unlike in Party Edition where the max combo
pretty much determines the entire score). Also each step is precisely as
important as its number: the 100th step is worth 100 times as much as the 1st,
and the last step is worth the most points of all. Make sure you get it!
If you're mathematically inclined and you really want to know exactly how
the score is calculated, well, it's just like DDR 3rd mix but with no score
awarded for Goods. If that doesn't mean anything to you then this is the
in-depth explanation:
-Every step gets a score for how accurate it was, multiplied by its step
number and also by the 'scaling factor' which ensures that if you get all
perfects then you'll score 10,000,000.
-Perfects are worth 10 points.
-Greats are worth 5 points.
-All other steps are worth 0 points.
-When you have to hit two arrows at once, only the one you hit worst counts.
-If 'N' is the total number of steps in the song (double arrows only count for
one), then the 'scaling factor' which we'll call 'S' is given by:
S = 1,000,000 / [ N(N+1)/2 ], rounded down.
-If your life bar has run out, you just score 10 for perfects and 5 for
greats; no multiplication takes place. So don't die!
-Finally, due to the rounding down in the value of S, each step misses out on
a bit of its score. These bits are saved up and only awarded if you hit the
very last step, so make sure you do!
Just to clarify, I'll do a quick example. Supposing you do a song with 75
steps in it (i.e. N = 75). That would mean that the scaling factor for that
song would be:
S = 1,000,000 / [75(75+1)]/2 ] = 1,000,000 / 2,850 = 350.877...
This is then rounded down to give the final figure of S = 350. So, if you get
a perfect on the 5th step, you score:
10[perfect]*5[step number]*350[scaling factor] = 17,500.
Because of the rounding, this amount:
10*5*0.877... = 43.859...
is added to the 'hidden score' which you only get if you hit the last step.
So there you have it! Don't die, get lots of perfects, and make sure you do
especially well towards the end of the song. Kind of obvious really...
3) Previous and forthcoming updates
24/4/3:
Version 1.5 - finally worked out and added the scoring! Also added the bit
about which Catastrophic songs to try first.
27/2/3:
With version 1.4, I've split the original FAQ into the individual games -
so this now only refers to Dancing Stage EuroMix for the playstation.
There do not appear to be any secret unlockable songs or characters or
anything like that at all, although if I hear of any they will of course appear
here immediately.
Any questions I get asked will be added, as will anything else relevant that I
think of. Thanks again to everyone that has helped my research, and to everyone
that has sent me questions!
Send comments, suggestions, questions, mistakes etc to:
[email protected]
Feedback makes the world go round!
This document copyright Tim Mannveille 2003, and if you want to reproduce or
distribute it, ask me first (
[email protected]) and then I'll almost
certainly say yes. Right now it should only appear at the following:
-www.juggler.net/tim
-www.gamefaqs.com
-www.ddruk.com
-www.gamesdomain.com
-www.ddrfreak.com
