DanceDanceRevolution A (AC)

Gonna make a wild estimate right now:

It takes 8 full games or 32 songs to see Ace For Aces once. An average DDR song is 100 seconds long, so let's say there's 180 seconds or 3 minutes between songs (accounting for all the transitions). That's 96 minutes or ~1.5 hours between attempts, which is doable ~once per day but maybe not twice (over, say, an average week, smoothing out some days having more free time than others).

We've seen 10% of the song and three gimmicks so far. Gonna do an over-extrapolation and guess that the whole song has ~30 gimmicks. If each gimmick takes ~2 attempts to pass, it will take ~60 attempts to pass the song.

If one good attempt is possible per day, that's about 2 months until someone passes all of Ace For Aces. But now we have multiple players in multiple timezones who can get to Ace For Aces, so we might be able to see ~2 or more good attempts per day depending on circumstances. That would cut the time down to 1 month.

Now I want to try applying this guessing strategy to Over The "Period" and see how it would have compared. (It wouldn't work for something like Valkyrie dimension though, as the death part there was actually skill more than pure memorization.)

Wilder claim: I will pass AFA in under 3 weeks.

I give you sometime next week that you or someone in Japan will clear it :p

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Clear video of ACE FOR ACES, up to 47 combo:

Wait, even if you fail out 1st Stage? Or if you use Risky to 'skip' 1st and 2nd Stages and D something on on Final Stage?

Is the star system still like the previous few games where B, C, and D give 1 star the same way as A? Does Risky still give an extra star?

As a side thing, if you look at this video from a couple days ago, it seems there's a neat little tidbit comparing the Extra Stage (at 1 life) and the Encore Stage lifebars. The Encore Stage lifebar slightly flashes yellow to indicate that it's in 'PFC mode'.
Edit: Never mind, it seems like it always does this on 1 life compared to 4 lives, because it also happens when Risky is on. Tripped up because there aren't any 'regular' Encore Stages in DDR A to compare it to.

Going by BEMANIwiki:

You get +1 HEAT POWER at the end of every credit regardless if you fail or not.

B, C, D grades will give you a star.
RISKY will also give you a star.

HEAT POWER gets reset at 6am JST every day.

If you fail out 1st stage, as long as you are playing Premium Mode, you just go to 2nd Stage. Even if you use Risky to skip 1st and 2nd stages, then get a D on , you still get a heat point. I have failed while playing during either 1st or 2nd Stage a few times, but still managed to get a heat point after finishing the rest of the set.

I played The Reason to see how stupid the jumps and stepjumps were. I failed halfway through the song.


As long as you survive the song, you will get one star for grades A-D. Risky will give you an extra star, as well as LIFE4. Keep in mind that if you get a AA- FC to AAA while playing either Risky or LIFE4, you won't get that extra star because you can only earn three stars per song.

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Note that for the NA version, this reset occurs at 3 or 4AM PST (I forget which), since 6AM JST is in the middle of the day for us.

Oh, in that case then:


Scratch some of that. A person who's already gotten to Endymion and is performing the Ace For Aces attempt loop only needs to get through 7 credits as fast as possible. Let's say she or he skips 1st and 2nd Stage with Risky and picks the shortest possible song for Final Stage, and then fully plays out the songs of the 8th credit before Endymion to warm up.

A quick video check makes it look like there's about 30 seconds between songs if you fail as fast as possible, and about 2 minutes between credits. The shortest song in the game is 60 seconds long. So credits 1 through 7 each take 2 minutes + (0 seconds + 30 seconds)*2 + 60 seconds or 4 minutes, while credit 8 takes 2 minutes + (100 seconds + 30 seconds)*3 + 25 seconds (cutscene) + 120 seconds (Endymion) + 20 seconds (results screen) + let's say 2 minutes for Ace For Aces, which comes out to about 14 minutes.

So each Ace For Aces attempt involves seven 4-minute credits and one 14-minute credit, or 42 minutes each attempt. Someone with about 2 hours of DDR time on average per day would be able to fit in three attempts (probably more on weekends and fewer on weekdays), or 21 attempts per week. If the song takes ~60 attempts to clear as guessed earlier, then we could see a pass in three weeks. (Go for the goal, [ICNH]!) If good attempts can be replicated equally on opposite sides of the world, then we'd see a pass in 1.5 weeks optimistically.

Let's see how well this prediction holds up!

By that time you'll be able to pass ENDYMION Difficult and play ACE FOR ACES Basic instead.

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I'm not sure about that; I'm pretty sure it was 4th week when OT'P' basic was available, and that was mostly because it was clear that there was literally no way anyone would ever clear the DSP chart before the PFC requirement was dropped.

Remember that Valkyrie Dimension back in Replicant D-action never became available on difficulties lower than Expert, so there's that.

And honestly, this song isn't as hard as OT'P' was, I'm pretty sure this will be PFC'd while it's still on EES.

On my case, the mantainance is on 16:00-18:00 UTC-4 and 17:00-19:00 UTC-3 due to my country have 2 hour zones

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Very surprised no one's posted this yet:

http://ddrcommunity.com/max-300-expert-mfc-15-years-after-the-first-max-300-aaa/

Exactly 15 years after the first Max 300 PFC, Max 300 has been MFC'd.
(2002-07-17 - 2017-07-17)

I was about to but I was busy. I'm so proud for Fungah. Yasu's picture looks really good for 2002 standards.

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Just for the record, HEAT POWER will still increment if you blow the final stage. I've done this a few times by mistake >.>

from what i've heard of ACE OF ACES so far, I'm think it'll be more of a TAG-esque version of Tenkuu no Hana + 宇宙(ソラ)への片道切符

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I like how now that DDR A is available internationally, it's a worldwide effort to progress through Ace of Aces. It's amusing to see it happening in real time over Youtube

This system for unlocking ENDYMION is really nefarious though. You don't really get how annoying it is until you try to play through 7 credits to get full heat power. And unlike Replicant-D-Ignition, where attempts could be made over multiple days, you have to finish in one arcade trip, otherwise you lose all your progress overnight. By the time you get to ENDYMION, you'll probably already be toasted from hours of play

Good for Konami and the arcade operators though, I'm sure they're making tons of money out of it.

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You don't need to do premium mode to get heat power (you can get it whatever you do)

so if you want to try ENDYMION and ACE OF ACES fast, just drop 1st stage 7 times with normal mode.

It's scummy but hopefully this income will fund the next mix/more cabinets for more locations.

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Updated the doubles difficulty tier lists in DDRCommunity to include the four new charts. However, it also includes incomplete footage of ENDYMION , but will be updated when the charts are fully available.

http://ddrcommunity.com/ddr-difficulty-tier-list/
(Remember, that these lists are based on timing and scoring difficulty.)

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