DDR Home release (Xbox vs PS2) What do you guys think?

I'll echo what Axel said (Swap Magic and Fliptop mods work as well), but it'd also be worth checking any "retro" used game store in your area for Japanese PS2's. One store like that one town over from me has occasionally had Japanese PS2's traded in and sold for about the same as an American PS2.

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eBay a Japanese PS2, not very hard.

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Reasonable enough. Haha I have a stupid question but like I said I haven't really been in the DDR/gaming scene in a while mainly due to a heavy schedule. My american pad will work in a Japanese PS2 right? What about memory cards?

Not trying to steer this whole thread off topic. I have heard great things about the Japanese cut of Extreme.

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Yeah, the ports/memory cards are the same.

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It's kinda hard when you don't have the $100+. Not even taking into account the step-down converter and the games.

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Well, yeah, I wasn't talking about the games, and I hope I'm not only speaking for myself when I say that step-down power converters weren't that hard/expensive to get...

And, yes, it's going to be hard if you don't have a hundred bucks to spend, but I'm assuming this person does, again.

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I want to say that the US PS2 games are all fun, and you'd probably enjoy the gems in the song lists despite the "meh" songs. The older ones have a good dose of arcade songs on them. EX2 and SN did some nice catch-up on the missing arcade songs from EX...

... and there is some truth to that, but the fact that I've never played an Ultramix/Universe title in my own home gives those statements some heavy bias. I'm sort of turned off by the interface of the Xbox games. Bigger reason for that is I didn't have any sort of Xbox until the 360 was on its last year or two. It's not shocking to hear their song lists are generally superior from everybody else in this thread. Unless you import, you'll probably enjoy Xbox's songs a lot more. The US PS2 ones are still satisfying for somebody who didn't have access to the rest of the games. *shrug*

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I've only played the PS2 games, one Wii game (the first one) and the PS3 game. I've seen some of the stuff that was done for the Xbox DDRs and it seems pretty good for me. But I've also heard of framerate issues (which has me scratching my head a bit, since the Xbox is a more powerful system than the PS2 was).

DDR was not released on any Xbox systems in Japan.

A step-down converter would only be necessary for users in Europe. For US and Canada, the voltage difference is so low (110->120) that there is no problem with running a Japanese PS2 in standard outlets. I've had my JP PS2 for nearly 14 years (SCPH-50000, I think? It's the one where they ditched the firewire port), no converter of any sort and it still works fine...better than my US PS2, actually.

DDR UNIVERSE 2 is better than DDR EXTREME JP
Anthema is better than anything from NAOKI
make me a mod

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DENIAL: Hypnotic Crisis violation

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So I know this is an older thread...but after ordering a Japanese PS2 purely for the Japanese DDR games I have to say...

The Japanese of DDR Extreme for the PS2 is amazing...All though unlocking everything can be a pain. It also turns out that DDR Strike is basically a best of from the Ultramix and American songs. So I have to say that the Japanese games are vastly superior.

All though the Xbox mixes are unique and pretty awesome.

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Personally:

1. DDR EXTREME (JP)
2. DDR Universe 3
3. DDR Extreme 2
4. DDR Ultramix 4
5. DDR II
6. DDR X (JP)
7. DDR SuperNOVA 2 (JP)
8. DDR X (US) ~ in lieu of the previous two
9. DDR Ultramix 2 or STR!KE (JP)
10. DDR Universe
11. DDR MAX 2 (US)
12. DDR MAX 2 (JP)

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I agree 110 Percent!

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I've been getting back into playing DDR over the past month or so and I definitely think the Ultramix series is better than the PS2 games as a whole. If you have an original Xbox and like DDR, they're must-plays. None of the releases are PERFECT, but Ultramix comes across as being the more polished and I really like the song lists, even with weird licenses. (That said, I had an Xbox before I had a PS2 and played Ultramix first, so I might be influenced by nostalgia...)

I've never played the DDR Universe series due to the difficulty of getting a Cobalt Flux to work with an Xbox 360. Maybe someday, when someone starts producing control boxes or I find myself with enough space for an electronics workbench...

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The Ultramix series is the better of the two simply because it has quad-play. That's doubles mode, but two times at the same time!!!

The Ultramix series really benefited from partnering with the "A Different Drum," label as the license selection pretty much defined the series. It also helped that the few Bemani crossovers the game introduced worked well. R10k, Jelly Kiss, starmine, Spirit of Hawk? Yes, please! Catch it and Jack and Mark Get Busy from the original 5key Beatmania games? YES! It's rather unfortunate that wavegroup was introduced to the series in Ultramix 3 and 4 and just kind of petered out from there. I think it had to do with the closure of Konami of Hawaii because the song selection for the Universe series ranges from moderate to awful. I like to believe that wavegroup recorded a 5 minute remix of the castlevania theme and just never released it.

The PS2 collection was alright in comparison. I still favor Extreme US over Extreme AC because the graphics and audio are not compressed to hell and back. Having never played Extreme CS JP, I can't think it would be any better than the AC counterpart in regards to fidelity.

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This was honestly one of the best aspects of the DDR Ultramix games from 2 onwards. That and all the party modes it had (hot potato, the co-op full combo mode, etc).

My favourites would honestly be DDR Ultramix 1 and 2. Ultramix 2 was because it was the first DDR game I bought and grew up with, and the reason why I always choose Rage as my dancer, and I liked Ultramix 1 because it felt more traditional to the arcade releases, from both the songlist and the interface.

But I think Ultramix 2 was the most influential, because quite a few charts and songs from that game were later released in DDR Str!ke/Supernova. Examples charts would be Monkey Punk, Midnight Special, and what used to be the Ultramix 2 exclusive boss song, Max 300 (Super-Max-Me Mix). Funnily enough, the last song felt more like a MaxX Unlimited rearrange than a Max 300 remix, which would've also made more sense because MaxX Unlimited was also in that game. I do wish they brought over some of the other remixes though, like the .59 remix.

The only downside I had with DDR Ultramix 2 was that it didn't have challenge/oni chart support, so songs that were ported over didn't have their challenge charts brought over with it, like A or V (for extreme). This started from Ultramix 3 onwards.

Speaking of, while I did like Ultramix 3 (especially since it brought over some of my favourites at the time like Daikenkai and Sakura), I didn't like most of the non-Bemani songs they had. I think at this point it started bringing in more "mainstream" songs, which I can understand, but not the songs I enjoyed. I dunno why, but I liked the more indie songs Ultramix 2 had focused more on in terms of non-Bemani songs/remixes it had. That's just me though.

Ultramix 4 I didn't like because they were also changing the graphics and I didn't like the Ultramix redesigns.

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I loved the PS2 Dancing Stage series when I was a young girl and I still love them even more now.

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Yes, but... Ultramix 4 has a lot of fun, challenging stages; Doki Doki (Panik Mix) - probably the most fun-to-play Smile.dk song and a USA exclusive one at that; Insaner (LED's Punishment Mix), and POWER MODE. Power Mode was the shit.

Universe 1 and 2 were okay, but the interface was really genericized and never really stood out as being stellar - and the thing that helped/hurt 2 was that there was a lot of medium-difficulty, but fun and well made charts... and literally NO boss songs. Not a single 10-footer among the whole lineup, even with all of its DLC.

Universe 3, however? It's literally my third favorite title after EXTREME (JP) and Extreme 2 (US), and just above Ultramix 2.

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