Holic Heavy

I'm thinking exotic ethnic, FANTASY, HVAM or ORION.78~civilization mix~

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ETERNAL is 5thMIX, MY FIRE's new chart is from 4th PLUS. Vanilla 4th had DROP OUT, PARANOIA EVOLUTION and maybe TRIP MACHINE CLIMAX.

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Half the people here are listing the hardest songs on the game. I don't think the exact question here is very
clear, and the real answer isn't really possible to find since people of different difficulty areas had different standards.

Meant to say Evolution *facepalm*

I wasn't aware that My Fire was in Plus. Well, I learned more about a video game I'll never be able to play.

Yeah, it's really hard to look back now and understand how people rationalised things.

Back when 1st Mix and Internet Ranking Version came out, very few people played DDR, and there weren't any establised internet forums, so people didn't really share their opinions until Dancegames.com and DDRFreak showed up. From what I remember, I think Make It Better was considered to be on-par with Paranoia. Uh La La La was probably the hardest song, but so few people had ever seen it, that the majority of people considered it Paranoia or Make It Better, depending on how easy you found each one to read.

2nd Mix was definitely Get Up N Move. People really hated that song because of the weird rhythms or off-beat sections, and preferred to show off by playing faster songs, because they were easier to read, and looked more impressive to onlookers. Get Up N Move was so hard and un-fun to play, that people avoided playing it completely unless they were challenged to prove that they could actually full combo it.

3rd Mix had Captain Jack, as Noob_Saibot pointed out.

After 3rd Mix, Dancing Stage featuring Dreams Came True came out, and The Monster Is Coming became the absolute hardest song in DDR. A *LOT* of people would often use The Monster Is Coming as a measuring stick of how good a player you were., until DDRMAX came out. I don't know if those players genuinely thought it was harder than any of the songs in 4th Mix and 5th Mix, or if they just used that to impress people, knowing that very few machines meant fewer people could practice it enough to pass it.

When 5th Mix came out, everyone I spoke to was disappointed that the new songs were all much, much easier than the 9-footers in 3rd and 4th Mix. Nothing in 5th Mix was a challenge to anyone who could already pass 9s.

When DDRMAX came out, a lot of people ignored Max 300 and Candy completely, because they either cared about passing hard songs instead of AAing songs, or they didn't like the mods they forced onto you (Candy scrolled 3 times faster than any song before it). It was a bit like Over The Period, where 5 or 6 people worked really hard to pass Max 300 and Candy, while everyone else largely ignored them. The measuring stick for a good player was probably Flash In The Night or Justify My Love. So Deep was definitely hard at first, but once ID Music posted an MP3 file of it, a lot of people 'got it', and then found they could easily pass it every time.

The Monster Is Coming was once the hardest song? I don't know, AFRONOVA is harder imo...

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Candy* OMES was on 1.5x. Kakumei was the first 3x OMES, and Max2 is the only game to use Dark for ES and OMES.


Oh the subject of The Monster is Coming, I don't remember anyone considering that a benchmark, but that might have just been the Phoenix scene. Most people didn't even know about it, this was pre-youtube after all and that was a Europe exclusive game. Until you said machines were rare, I thought it was strictly a PSone game. I had the simfile though and never really thought it was THAT bad. To this day I think Paranoia Evolution is harder. Then again, Paranoia Evolution killed my father, raped my mother, and kicked my dog so my hatred for it is irrational.

Also, I feel like people are getting nit picky about the difference between 4th and 4th Plus. All the 4th Plus songs sort under 4th in later games with a series sort, and really it's like getting uppity if someone says Q is a Street Fighter 3 character by responding "he is a Street Fighter 3 Third Strike character". No one does that in the FGC, I kinda feel like we shouldn't do that either since, you know, Konami doesn't. Did you e-mail Konami about their "mistake" in putting Rhythm and Police in the 4th Mix folder in Extreme? Then don't point it out here, either.

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I think it only matters because we're talking about what songs were considered harder at certain points in time? Most people went six months between 4th Mix and 4th Mix Plus, and that was when DDR was probably hitting the height of it's popularity. The 20 weekends I spent at the arcade playing 4th Mix were different from the 20 weeks I spent playing 4th Mix Plus, because when 4th Mix Plus actually hit, there was almost a game and a half worth of new content aimed specifically at 9-foot players.

4th Mix was like a Dark Age, where we could only pick 2 songs we actually wanted to play on each credit, and then struggle to find 2 other songs to play for the remaining stages. All of the hard content in 4th Mix was either very slow songs like My Summer Love and Orion, or songs with tons of noise and weird rhythms, like Leading Cyber or Hypnotic Crisis. We had that for 5 or 6 months, and then BAM, a new game absolutely filled with catchy 180BPM songs with lovely streamy charts, and you could play 3 or 4 of them on a single credit. It was a huge deal at the time, because 4th Mix Plus was like a written appology to 9-foot players

Furuhata's Theme

You're also describing how players felt with New Generation in arcades before Second Impact, and later Third Strike, came out. Look at this character select screen.


At least 4th Mix had the vast majority of 1st-3rd included. Yes, 4th Plus was infinitely better with the new songs, new charts, 3rd Korean and Solo content added. I get that. But 4th Mix was better to old players than New Generation was with all of 2 returning characters with a total of 10 when Capcom had over 30 to choose from at the time between Super Turbo and Alpha 2's rosters. And the characters weren't even interesting either, unlike 6th Mix which dropped everything (sans some home version songs that had not debuted in arcades yet) but was pure quality.

I get that vanilla 4th Mix was a let down, but in the end 4th Mix is 4th Mix, World of Warcraft is World of Warcraft, Street Fighter 3 is Street Fighter 3, Street Fighter 4 is Street Fighter 4, etc. Games are defined by the definitive version, not broken down as if they are different numbered releases.

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2nd Impact > Third Strike, please continue

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Flash in the Night perhaps? (Even though from what I hear, the DDRMAX2 beta test gave it an 8 :B, probably would have been a 14 on the X-scale.)

We don't have a good machine in our area (we've scrapped the newest machine, a Dancing Stage Fusion, in favour of the old one, a Dancing Stage Euromix 2, for some reason) so Afronova on Difficult was the standard to draw in a crowd, or you could opt to go for B4U B4 Za Beat mix on expert.

However, the standards now are, if you're a boy, just be decent, if a girl, you have to be going for difficult at least. Yes, the holiday park I go to is somewhat sexist xD

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Anywho, my personal standard for being "decent" is CARTOON HEROES*rimshot*, but my standard for being "good" is either SAKURA or Monkey Business. Also, what would the benchmark songs for other BEMANI games be?

I think the standard now heavily depends on what kind of community there is at your local arcade. At mine, myself and a friend are the only two regulars who play anything on expert on both Euromix 2 and Supernova. Since 99% of others who play ddr here just play on beginner or standard, anything on difficult or expert would be worth noting and playing any 9/10 and doing well would be considered good. Of course these standards are probably pretty low compared to other arcades/communities in the UK.

I once built a crowd playing 7s. It wasn't THAT long ago, either.

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Any song with fast streams (160BPM 8ths or so) draws a good crowd.

But, BY FAR the biggest crowd I've ever had? One word: doubles.

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You certainly get crowds with 7's, In fact most casual onlooker's don't really notice the difference unless you play a 10.

Any luck with 5's or 6's? I can never seem to get much reaction from them.

5s and 6s don't tend to work, unless, like I said, they're Doubles 5s or 6s.

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Yep lol I can get crowds playing 7s for my warm up.

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