DDR W…ishlist for 2026

Hey everyone! I'm aware that there's already a main DanceDanceRevolution WORLD (AC) thread on here. I wanted to make a separate Wishlist thread because this would make the main DDR W thread easier to read, and it could be better focused on that game and its updates.

New Song Requests
I thought it would be neat for DDR World to include some songs that have "World" in the title. Here are some that come to mind:
• "Come Into My World" by Kylie Minogue (Fusion PS/PS2)
• "Ordinary World" by Aurora with Naimee Coleman (DDRMAX JP)
• "The World Around Me" by DJ Micro (DDR SN2 PS2 ≠JP)
• "What a Wonderful World" by Beatbox (DDR SN revival)
• "World, Hold On (Children of the Sky)" by Bob Sinclar featuring Steve Edwards

I'm sure that I'm missing may song ideas. If you have any, feel free to leave a reply!
(Edit at 16h: I added "Ordinary World" as how could I forget it? I linked "The World Around Me". No further edits are planned.)

As far other themes for DDR W licensed songs go, I tend to prefer older songs, though some newer ones would also be welcome. If these songs and (if added) music videos would keep the game rated E or E10+ by the ESRB, then all the better. Reviving the eight DDR A licenses that DDR A20+ removed would be a good idea. The Porter Robinson songs so far are okay. (I prefer the Musician songs over the XD ones.) It would be awesome to see more artists, though.

In keeping with the World theme, having new songs in a variety of languages (Spanish, Portuguese, German, Chinese, Korean, etc.) would be neat. I'd like to see the DDR X2 Chinese Challenges songs make a return, either for just Challenge charts, or as an option for any chart.

Oh, and please add Alice Deejay! I'll take her songs over "Play Hard", which is gone. It shouldn't be just "Better Off Alone" that is considered, but also "Celebrate Our Love" and other songs.

New Feature Requests
I personally find the DDR World theme to be plain and bland. Almost all elements are 2D, some screens look like a Green Screen of Death, and gameplay has a flat theme that makes Pop'n Music look more energetic. Some players may prefer this plain theme, as it's easier to focus on the arrows, but I prefer the extra details to get into the game, and score some PFCs along the way.

It would be ideal if DDR W offered an option between this new plain theme and another new theme, one with 3D stages and cool aesthetics like those from DDR SN to A3. Let players choose what works best for them.

The four-player feature from DDR A3 and W should be updated to support non-giant cabinets. My understanding is that the gold cabinets are supported, and the silver/platinum ones might be. Other LCD cabinets, or at least the white ones, should also get this feature. Also, I'm hoping someone can fill me in on this, but does multiplayer support two players (one per cab), or three players sharing two cabs? (Edit at 16h: I suggest Konami offer this mutiplayer LAN party feature on offline and online cabinets.)

The DDR W interface is available in Japanese, Korean and English. It would be nice to see French, Spanish and more.

Lastly, should Konami call its next game Dance Dance Revolution World 2, or something else?

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Hopefully at least some of these songs and features make it in the game. What would you like to see in DDR World?

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I very much would like for Konami to revive the groove radar, or at least offer some form of replacement. I find it very useful (in addition to BPM/ratings) to figure what song I'd like to play during a play session, and it's especially useful in Doubles mode, where there's both more potential for tricky patterning and more songs with multiple charts that share the same rating. As a matter of fact, I've mostly stopped playing DDR World except for songs I already know, or songs I'm interested in trying (which isn't many, since modern DDR isn't my taste), largely due to the removal of the groove radar.

I definitely would agree that I would like to see more licensed music- for sure, Konami should re-license the 20th Anniversary revivals, and it would be cool to see more Dancemania music revived (which both the Classic Mini and Stepmaniax illustrate should be possible, if Konami were interested). good-cool is an artist I'd love to see return, but there's probably a reason to his songs unfortunately not being in DDR that I don't imagine changing anytime soon.

Aside from that, one feature I enjoyed from DDR A that was removed from DDR A20 onwards was RINON's HEAT POWER, that filled up the more you played within a given day - the extra result stars for higher levels definitely helped in allowing me to shape my sets during an extended play session so I could play all sorts of charts while consistently getting an extra stage.

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1. Bring back edit mode. Konmai hasn't granted their wishes since ichika event at 2019 (it's currently their prize at top voting)
2. Fix staging font, etc. It's seriously distracting
3. Bring back groove radar
4. Bring back course mode
5. More unlocks from CS content : Vertical, In My Eyes, Nemesis, Love is Dreaminess, Mad Blast, etc. come on, Konmai
6. Bring event like Bemani Music Focus back. It would be at very least useful for really old release and utilize play counts at the same time

I just want Note to not be transparent anymore and proper quantanization colors on freeze arrows.

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A return to variety in the music would be nice. They’ve been horribly slacking on that for over a decade and has personally made me feel like DDR no longer has an actual identity anymore.

You honestly kinda read my mind on this one. I kinda brought this up in the WORLD thread a few months back, and someone's reasoning is that outside of Japan, DDR is pretty much on life support (if that). I do believe there is a way of reigniting it -- maybe not to what it once was -- but music diversity would definitely rank right up there. Past 10 yrs is a good way of putting it, but the one thing that kinda gives hope is that usually Konami rebounds with an excellent follow-up release after an overhaul:

MAX: widely panned for small songlist
to
MAX2: Huge success, and widely acclaimed, plus fan inclusion for voting what KOs to revive.

SuperNOVA: large number of songs off sync, and difficulty in new songs widely disappointing
to
SuperNOVA2: raised difficulty, and great KOs

X: NAOKI fading out no longer the main sound director, songlists underwhelming
to
X2 and X3rd vs 2nd: TAKA becomes sound director and song choices are widely celebrated. To some, best release (X3rd) since EXTREME

And so on from A to A20, and debatable for A3 I guess. WORLD being the first in the revamp, I would guess (if there is a WORLD2) that it would be a much better release. From what I've seen, most of [us] hate the interfaces, and one can only hope the vlog music stuff doesn't continue....oof. Plus, there were a lot of just bad decisions Konami made when WORLD was released...I almost question if the game was really finished when they did.

Anyhoo, my wishlist of things for the next version would be:
1. Return to ALL songs having bgvids, either MAX to EXTREME era, or preferable those like EXTREME2. Most people use a filter for the dance window, so this shouldn't be a big deal. The static backgrounds, and other stuff in WORLD is just kinda lazy/boring, and I was never a fan of the dancing characters.
1a. However, if they did want to put dancing characters back, allow us the ability to turn them off, or do a custom avatar creation and use that for the characters. Regardless, I still prefer bgvids as in #1.
2. Absolutely, more diverse and "danceable" music. A whole library of songs from IIDX that never made it over that we'd love. Fine to keep crossing over those from other Konami rhythm games, but still, I think IIDX is where it's at.
3. Revive some classics and keep giving classic/legend songs steps. Brilliant idea to reignite love of songs from back then. Yes we all want good-cool back, but I sadly feel that's a losing battle by now.
4. Sorry Konami, but ya gotta shell out a bit for those licenses. Just Dance has been doing it better in this department for years! Either reach back into the Dancemania library and bring over some great ones we never got, or work some deals as was done for the home versions of DDR for licenses. Sticking mostly to just JP covers....(no comment).
5. Yes, bring back the Groove Radar!
6. How about a player option to let us choose how the game looks. Not like a choose your theme thing, but more like changing the color scheme of the game, or what song wheel we wanna use.

Definitely fair points for sure. If there is a WORLD2 (or whatever) and it ends up rectifying the lack of variety? Fantastic. I hope that’s the case. Do I have faith that it’ll happen? No. There’s literally no reason why this can’t be done, but it seems to be that, like most other companies now, Konami and the DDR Team are too concerned about what’s trendy as opposed to taking risks and really creating something unique. But hopefully I’m proven wrong.

And I absolutely agree with what you said about IIDX. There’s a LARGE list of songs from that series that should’ve been crossed over to DDR 10-20 years ago. I’m sure there are genuine roadblocks in regards to some potential crossovers (like all of DJ SWAN’s tracks, considering how none of his songs are playable in INFINITAS), but more often than not when a IIDX crossover is revealed, my response is, “……they went with this one?”

There are a ton of customization options. Not song wheels, but a ton of cosmetic stuff like colors and different background images. I think Starlight has spoiled some people when it comes to customizing a theme, and set an unrealistic expectation for actual DDR. Plus I would argue that if you could change literally everything then World wouldn't really have its own identity.

But of course World wasn't finished when it was released. Konami hasn't put out a finished game in over a decade, launching with tiny song lists and adding to them over time. A3 had tweaks to it's UI as well. A lot of World's UI tweaks came so late after release that you can't really argue they were part of the game being unfinished, and the stuff early on was absolutely because of community backlash like removing the zeroes from the combo counter, changing the judgment colors, holding the green button to bring up the menu again, and what not. It took so long to do things like putting the life gauge on the results screen and the timing graphs that someone at Konami clearly just thought they were good additions. And good additions well into a game's life should be encouraged.

People who hate the World interface definitely over state how the community as a whole feels about it though. Like the background videos/dancers thing, most players don't care. They aren't watching them while they play, and that's not what they're looking at when they watch someone else play. The game is better with them, but most people don't hate that they're gone either. From what I've seen the community as a whole is more neutral about it than anything. The improvements for gameplay like speed mod selections and constant definitely outweigh how most players might have felt about videos or dancers. Most players don't even use stuff like that in their StepMania setups, they're just trying to play. Like it's absolutely not wrong for you to have your preferences but saying "most of us hate the interface" just isn't true.

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Regarding the bgvids/character debates, you have a point in that obviously players don't pay attention to them; we didn't way back in the day either, but I always regard spectators as well. It's also why adding the step window filter was a brilliant idea. I just think presentation is important and static backgrounds just makes the game feel stale or lifeless. As a compromise, maybe give players the option to turn off bgvids/dancers and use something static (a la World) if they choose to, similar to how in 3rdMIX people could turn off the lyrics if they wanted to during gameplay.

Regarding the interface, if I'm wrong, I'll take the L. I just thought people felt the way World looked was a bit bland/basic. I didn't know there were other ways to customize it outside of backgrounds. I had no idea you could do color changes as I've only seen the white and green mockup in vids shared. You're right, World does need to maintain its own identity and I think there is a way to do so, but I personally think there's nothing exciting or that draws me to the game compared to how previous releases looked. I wasn't a fan at all of the song select screen for A to A3, but I would put it above how World looks. But if I'm in the minority more than the neutral, then welp...

Yeah, I know that many people don't really care about, or care for bgvids/characters, but I personally find not having a background kind of stale (which I think is the case for vanilla WORLD). I personally like using Stepmania 3.9 for a few reasons, one of which is that songs without a BG script randomize every time, as opposed to Stepmania 5.

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The characters and BG animations helped give the series some personality. Sure, they aren’t the immediate focus for gameplay, but they were both assets that helped with DDR’s image. People often underestimate how important it is for a game to have and show off some personality.

Speaking of which, this could become a song pack for DDR GRANDPRIX, appropriately titled the WORLD Pack. iykyk ;3

I did take spectators into consideration, I said they were watching the arrows and judgments more than the backgrounds.

World has 3 options for songs with videos, btw. Full screen, windowed (single player is off to the side like DDRII on Wii, versus and doubles work like World did at launch before the option was added), and off. The default generic background is animated, btw. It’s nothing special don’t get me wrong, but it’s not static. The rockets shake, the clouds scroll. Possibly some other details. It wouldn’t be bad if it wasn’t the only free background. At the very least Konami should offer a shuffle option for the colors the free background comes in, and for your paid ones to let players have a little variety without having to change backgrounds on the website between sets.

Presentation is definitely important, and I think the overall community opinion is that the game looks bland by default (I certainly wouldn’t say otherwise) and it’s probably an attempt to push paid cosmetics. But also from what I’ve seen the general community opinion is that they aren’t really bothered by it. A less bland game would be nice, but ultimately we gained a lot feature wise from A3 which is more important than how the game looks, like I haven’t seen a lot of people who would want to trade World’s features for A3’s visuals (editors note: we shouldn’t have to, we should have it all) they just aren’t bothered by the bland theme enough to actively hate it. Its actually somewhat ironic, the one spot people definitely don’t want something is in the arrow lanes and unless you spent real money you have to have a design there. The grid is a paid lane background. People are paying to make the game backgrounds less bland and lane background more bland, and there is no option for a completely blank lane background like prior games.

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I Would personally love to see some more songs from other series. (Such as Dancerush and Dance Around)

That would be a great addition for new players (128BPM House Songs) but also a great addition for the skilled players (Nice remixes of classic tracks) Dancerush is being phased out as we speek, so when that game goes, the great songs will go with it... And that would be a shame.

Also. There can never be enough collabs with popular EDM artists (Tokyo Machine, Nanobii, Fox Stevenson etc...)

Not gonna lie, I'd like a console release. I know a lot of people would be against it, but I'm in an area where there's not really any rhythm game arcade machines except for a couple PIU machines.

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Just bring back the groove radar. There was no reason to remove it and nothing has been added in its place in terms of QOL. You want to get assaulted with jumps? Better memorize which charts are jump heavy!

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^My point exactly. I could possibly understand it if Konami provided a replacement of sorts- even just information on step counts/jumps/etc.- but they haven't. I think they could have made it toggleable if they just wanted to make the radar less prominent, based on the fact that not all of the numerical buttons are used on (vanilla) world.

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when the title was first announced I expected them to feature songs from around the world, different genres/artists from other regions

I wish they'd update Vivid with more frames of animation, so that 12th and 24th notes didn't match the color of the nearest 4th/8th note. It wasn't a huge problem in the old days, but now it's much more common to see 12ths and 24ths in new songs, and they're getting very hard to read on good ol' Vivid.

Also, I think it's kinda silly how Konami went to the trouble of fully recreating so many retro interfaces for DDR SELECTION in A20, and then didn't do anything else with them. I'd love to be able to freely choose to play with the Extreme or SN2 interface.

As for fullscreen background videos, I love 'em. I can get more into the music when more of my senses are being engaged. Give me that sweet, sweet visual stimulation.

I know everyone is talking about customization, so what if we could select an announer & combo/judgement fonts? I really like the SuperNOVA announcer, but the only way to get it is via DDR Selection, which no longer exists. I also think the combo text from the X era looks better than the World one, but it isn't terrible. I do also enjoy the 3D character backgrounds, but I have to wonder why they removed cut-ins when Ace released...