DDR II & hottest party 5 (Wii) (International)

In what world would a non-remixed Need You Now work in a dance game? (Except maybe a country based one, like Country Dance...) But yeah, the licenses of 2010 were obviously made with the American consumer in mind, except for one problem: Most of the songs were not danceable. At all.


Maybe Konami's going to pull a Mario Party 3 and only release like 2,000 copies in the PAL regions, haha. (especially since the new non-GC Wiis have been out for a bout a month now.) But yeah, I agree that 19 tracks weren't enough to win casual gamers, in fact it may have hurt the "core" audience (you know, the uninformed people that refuse to buy this game on Facebook because it doesn't have songs that were already released like ten years ago). This year's licenses were actually appropriate, and some were actually decently fun (This Time I Know It's For Real is just one of the licenses that I keep playing every time I boot up the game). Kinda sad that this is probably the last DDR title for the Wii, but I guess it's a good sendoff for the next generation.

Also, deal alert for US gamers: This Black Friday ad for Best Buy http://bfads.net/Ad/Best-Buy-2011/Page9 states that the DDR II bundle is only 30 bucks during Friday (tomorrow online). 83 songs for 30 bucks with pad? Deal indeed.

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They did do a mix with another 10 more or so licenses than normal. That was HP3. It still got curb stomped by Just Dance, and I'm willing to bet that's why we haven't seen a license list as large as that since. DDR2010 was probably the "What the hell are we going to do about that damned Just Dance? Let's try this" mix, and this years release is probably the "The hell with that crowd, we're gonna do what we want" mix.

I had no idea about the slimmed-down consoles until now. Wow. People could actually buy one and HP5 as Christmas gifts and not be able to play the game. Weird. I wonder if they'll come up with a solution which will enable us to use our dance mats on the Wii U?

I agree that the licences are mostly good choices, I just think there should have been a few more of them. It's very much been aimed at American teenage girls, which is all well and good, but it's being released in Europe too and I imagine it will be unaltered apart from a new logo and 'Yaz' becoming 'Yazoo'. Some more British and European artists would have been good - The Saturdays, The Feeling, Take That, The Wanted, Eric Saade, September, etc.


Agreed. But I still would have liked to have seen some remixes and "Clubland"-style cover versions thrown in there.

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Covers? Please don't remind Konami of the Karaoke Revolution transplants and Faint from SN2 AC.

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I was think more along the lines of Akira Yamaoka's take on "I Will Survive", or something by Almighty or Saifam.

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Doesn't matter, people I knew knew that they were covers and even though I liked the direction that they took some of them overall people want the real thing and the real thing only. There's a reason we haven't really seen any since HP2/DDRX.

Any way you spin it, most of the covers in HP2 are horrible. Masters are the only way to go unless the covers are superior by an astronomical factor (Like those Friday covers for example.)

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I still think for US CS releases, when talking about licenses, the Universe series was by far the best (with Universe 3 being the best CS release this generation IMO). The other major problem with US audiences is that people/reviewers only look at the licenses to determine the quality of content and not any of the KOs. It is as if anything that isn't Top40 or a major artist is not worth acknowledgement.

Yet, even despite that I recall those games not selling all that hot regardless. It also didn't help that the Universe series had performance issues out the wazoo.

And it's pretty natural for most people to look at the license list first as a means to determine whether they'll buy the game or not. It's the one bit of content that most people who aren't Bemani heads are going to know about before anything else. If that sucks, the game is pretty screwed as the KO's are always going to be hit or miss. Even when they're good songs, for most people nothing is going to beat that familiarity unless they're more open minded with their music. Problem is, most people aren't. Reviewers know this instinctively as well, and review the games with that in mind as aside from that the gameplay hasn't changed in ages.

Any way you spin it, most of the covers in HP2 are horrible. Masters are the only way to go unless the covers are superior by an astronomical factor (Like those Friday covers for example.)

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Thinking about it they could have added a few X2 licences in there. Time After Time and Everytime We Touch both have commercial appeal and Captain Jack, Dam Dariram, Hero and If You Were Here would appeal to anyone who's played an arcade version of DDR, ever.

And the X2 interface would have been nice instead of that godawful one with the terrible fonts.

It's a fun game though, and I'm enjoying playing it through. The last time I liked a DDR game this much was probably Ultramix 2 or 3.

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Did they include a full color instruction manual for the European release???

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People read that thing?

In the bathroom.

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Everytime We Touch was in Universe 2. With arguably a better cut and better steps, which makes me wonder why X2 AC didn't use that instead. But I agree that Time After Time should be everywhere now.

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It arrived

Played a few songs and so far I like the steps and the graphics. I'll give more details after I PLAY THE GAME MORE!

Universe 1 not 2 and I never played arcade X2. Why would they have taken the time to redo the chart and cut when it was already done?

Also, Does anyone have the full CD art for Say a Prayer and Unbelievable? I want the songs on my iPod and just need to the CD images to make it perfect.

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Very good increase in sales this week

Last week: 3,060
This week: 6,638

Great, the link for your game save has been deleted, but can you re-uploaded the DanceDanceRevolution II Complete Save Data for me?