Dancing Stage Fusion (PS2) {Mission Mode}

I was able to record footage of Dancing Stage Fusion on the PS2, and see the Mission Mode in its entirety.
I only have uploaded the first 50 missions, but they remaining 50 need more time to edit to make sure completing each mission is understood.

Missions 1-50: https://youtu.be/OMHerLeKK_I

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More documentation for console versions is always a good thing given how sparse most of it is.

There's plenty of documentation on the inner workings from Cutting Room Floor, but actual game modes, and lack of footage is quite disappointing.

Preserving these old games is going to get harder, and I'm trying my best to document any missing aspects of games or even stepcharts currently missing from the ZIV database.

Here's Missions 51-100: https://youtu.be/rKVm2lo9TpU

And that completes Fusion on the PS2.

Now it's trying to get DDR Festival which has a Mission Mode, and I'm scared.

If Fusion was easy mode, and Extreme was harder, I can''t imagine what Festival has in store.

Also, I'm just now discovering that 4th Mix had a Challenge mode as well.

Planning on getting 4th Mix at some point to show it off, even if it isn't necessary.
Support through 5th mix negates having to do any work, but it'll still be fun to see anyways.

And a quick YouTube search shows a Japanese speedrunner playing the mode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45RCVUVAUqI

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Don't worry, Extreme is by far the hardest of the 3. Festival, by the looks of it, is harder than Fusion though. I'd also love to see more footage of dancing stage max and its dance master mode :p great job!

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My big focus is gonna be obtaining the European releases of Dancing Stage first. They're less expensive then the current prices of all the Japanese PS2 DDR games.

Max will be a big one for sure.

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Yeah makes sense, jap games are crazy expensive lol

Max is the only one of the 3 games (extreme 2, str!ke) that I haven't beaten dance master mode, maybe one day :p

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Extra Mix also had some, but you have to wrestle with a lot of the 6 panel stuff and the lower framerate making the more precise missions more difficult. Best of luck getting them all recorded being beaten though! As someone who's done all of them (Except the ones that can't be done on the 360 games) I can safely say I recall the original Xbox games having surprisingly rough missions in its challenge mode.

One series that seems to have particularly sparse documentation is the Japanese Hottest Party series (Hottest Party, FuruFuru Party, Music Fit) on the Wii. Especially since they're the last CS DDR games Japan ever got.

A few particular things I remember from their English equivalents:

- Hottest Party 3 has some kind of optional missions earlier on where you get to unlock at least some of the boss songs early (Kimono Princess, roppongi Evolved, Pluto the First). Music Fit doesn't have Pluto the First, so does its optional mission just disappear?

- Hottest Party 1's mission mode has a structure that's strongly based around unlocking Super Samurai at the end of the first half and tokyoEvolved at the end of the second half. It is impossible to unlock songs outside of mission mode. For Hottest Party 1 JP, where does Pluto the First fit in?

- Hottest Party 1's final mission has a brutal section that goes "beat Super Samurai with 0 misses" -> "almost immediately after, beat tokyoEvolved with an AA with 0 misses". (As far as I know, no one has ever done this on console pad.) Is this the same in Hottest Party 1 JP?

- Hottest Party 3 has a brutal "Legend Road"-esque course that puts all five 10-footers back-to-back plus a filler song at the beginning to fit the usual six. What does Music Fit change with one fewer 10-footer?

I’m not the most ecstatic on the Wii releases, especially the early Hottest Party games.
Music Fit, compared to the other DDR titles, IS the most expensive DDR right now next to the GB games, which I luckily got before I realized they raised in value twice what they were years ago when I got them all.

Music Fit is gonna be on the back burner for some time, since I also need to make sure international games will work on all my systems.

Biggest pain will be the 360 and its Dancing Stage games, with everything else being relatively easy.

Update:
My recent upload for part 2 of the mission mode has 2 errors atm.

-Mission 67: Freak Like Me bleeds in Mission 68 which likely will cause confusion. It did for me when I realized the end of that song perfectly lined up with the end of the next mission.
-Mission 82: I failed once which shoulda been edited out, but at least you’ll get to see the failure screen, and should make a funny edit about it.

I definitely need to get 4th Mix, Extra Mix, and Festival to try out their Challenge/Mission Modes and document those for America users. I’ve seen the gameplay thanks to a YouTube search, and have a general idea of what’s going on.

I do want to get more of these games documented and preserved for completeness.

My next video will be for the beginner charts in the song Take It To The Morning Light which got new Beginner charts in Dancing Stage Unleashed, but the charts weren’t accessible until the next game. Managed to secure a copy of Unleashed 3, and hope the DLC works with my system so I can capture gameplay once again.

My biggest head scratcher right now is the Challenge chart for I Know You Want Me in DDR X2 (PS2 US). Dunno if hidden in data, in Dice Master Mode, or in another DDR game that has it. All for the sake of completeness.

Still trying to get the Beginner chart for My Only Shining Star on DDR Universe, but the only way to get it is to play through the very grindy Quest Mode which is beyond irritating for the way it’s designed.

Wish me luck as I slowly but surely get nearly get every DDR I can without repeats like with the PS3, and Wii versions.

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God those mission modes suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. You have the patience of a saint to go through them like this. Its very cool to see some of the harder missions later on, even on the US versions I had no patience for them back in the day and bought an Action Replay Max to just download fully unlocked saves and transfer them to my memory card.

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Some missions I cheat on by looking at step charts and playing in real time.
Missions like Ladies Night in extreme are infuriating. x8 and shuffle? pain.
Some Fusion missions are hard to read simply because Fusion is one of the few games that doesn't display mods in gameplay at all.

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