Dance Dance Revolution 5thMIX, or 5thMIX, is the 5th game in the Dance Dance Revolution series of music video games. It was released to the arcades by Konami on March 27, 2001. Although only officially released in Japan, units exist worldwide. DDR 5th Mix contains a total of 122 songs, nine of which are hidden and unlockable. Of those songs, 40 of them (including all nine unlockable songs) are brand new to Dance Dance Revolution.
General Information / Changes[]
- Introduces a new circular songwheel interface, replacing the jukebox-style interface of earlier entries:
- BASIC charts with a difficulty rating of 1 or 2 have a yellow and green V-shaped shoshinsha mark in the songwheel. This mark is used in Japan to indicate beginner drivers.
- Song titles are now displayed on the right as rectangular boxes, with banners on the left side of the screen.
- BPM is displayed above the song banners, while difficulty ratings are displayed below them.
- Subtitles and artist names are shown in smaller fonts for each song.
- Songs are now grouped by color on the songwheel:
- Yellow represents hidden unlocks.
- Green represents the new default 5thMIX songs.
- Blue represents songs that made their debut on earlier Dance Dance Revolution titles.
- Selecting individual difficulties during song selection has returned.
- Your play style indicator is now always shown in song selection, stage result, and overall result of all stages, a series first.
- The song order can now be sorted in one of four ways:
- The default, which is determined by sorting in the following order: group, BASIC rating, TRICK rating, MANIAC rating, and finally song title.
- This order uses the current play style, meaning that the song order will be different between Single and Double play.
- ABC, which sorts the songs by their titles.
- BPM, which sorts the songs by BPM.
- Player's Best, which shows the top 30 songs from most played to 30th most played.
- The default, which is determined by sorting in the following order: group, BASIC rating, TRICK rating, MANIAC rating, and finally song title.
- The sort order can be changed by holding both the left and right selection buttons and then pressing the start button.
- The gameplay interface has been completely changed.
- It now runs at 60 FPS, making this game the first mainline Dance Dance Revolution title to do so (the spinoff game Dancing Stage featuring TRUE KiSS DESTiNATiON was the first to do so in 1999).
- Song backgrounds for each song now always appear at the beginning and end of every song. This carried over to all future arcade Dance Dance Revolution titles up to EXTREME.
- The top and bottom parts of the screen are cropped to make room for score counters and a bar. This would also continue until EXTREME.
- When reaching a MAX COMBO of 100, the arrow flashes will be brighter. This behavior would be used until SuperNOVA.
- First Dance Dance Revolution game to feature LONG VERSION songs.
- LONG VERSION songs can only be played on the penultimate stage of a credit. It counts as two songs when played.
- First Dance Dance Revolution game to feature songs with stops.
- First Dance Dance Revolution game to introduce the AAA rating when achieving a perfect full combo; 4thMIX and 4thMIX PLUS only went up to AA.
- Last mainline Dance Dance Revolution arcade game to feature dancing characters until Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA.
- Last Dance Dance Revolution arcade game to have the announcer used from Dance Dance Revolution 3rdMIX.
- None of 5thMIX's licenses ever appeared in another Asian Dance Dance Revolution arcade release.
- Five of the game's KONAMI originals (DIVE, Radical Faith, THE CUBE, and long versions of B4U and DYNAMITE RAVE) have also never reappeared in another mainline Asian Dance Dance Revolution arcade release.
- With 23 exclusives, 5thMIX has the record for the largest amount of exclusive tracks of any Asian Dance Dance Revolution arcade release.
- All of the game's song banners are taken from the respective song's in-game background.
- Songs from 5thMIX revived in later Dance Dance Revolution games would gain unique banners then, though.
- NONSTOP mode was removed.
- New songs: 40
- Total songs: 122
Gameplay[]
- Main article: Gameplay of Dance Dance Revolution
The core gameplay of DDR 5thMIX is the same as the previous Dance Dance Revolution games.
The scoring formula is different from previous versions. The top score for a song is 5,000,000 + (f * 5,000,000), where f is the foot rating of the song. The top score for a one-foot song is 10 million, and the top score for a 9-foot song is 50 million. Bonus points are then added based on performance; the bonus added is calculated in the same way as scores in DDR 4th Mix, but with Perfects being worth a base of 55 points (instead of 777) and Greats a base of 33 points (instead of 555), and a flat amount of points based on the letter grade received is then added, ranging from 100 points for a D to 10,000,000 points for an AAA.
Interface & graphics[]
DDR 5th Mix introduced the song wheel interface used when selecting songs. This is also the first arcade version to display the game with a 60 frame per second refresh rate for smoother gameplay. Previous versions played at 30 frame/s.
Dancing characters[]
5th Mix was the last arcade mix before SuperNOVA to feature dancing characters. Twelve characters are selectable, six male characters for the left-side player (Afro, Rage, Johnny, Robo 2001, Spike and Baby-Lon) and six female characters for the right-side player (Janet, Emi, Charmy, Princess-Zukin, Maho and Alice). Legendary Konami and DDR Music Producer Naoki Maeda alongside Yuichi "U1" Asami were inserted as two hidden dancing characters including Naoki and U1 (on the left-side player) and N.M.R. and 2MB (on the right-side player), making them sixteen playable characters (both hidden dancers are highlighted in Yellow and the icon for the hidden ones are brighter).
Nonstop Mode[]
Unlike DDR 3rd Mix and DDR 4th Mix before it, Nonstop Mode, which allowed the player to play one of several set courses without stopping, is not available in DDR 5th Mix.
Long version[]
Four songs--B4U glorious style, DYNAMITE RAVE Long ver., HOT LIMIT and Oops, I Did It again (Fired Up Mix)--are long version songs, songs that run twice as long as a standard DDR song. Whereas the standard DDR dance routine is around 90 seconds, a long version runs for around three minutes. Such songs took up the play of two songs, and are only selectable as the second-to-last song in the round. In order to play long songs is to have both stages available. Songs of this length first appear in DDR 5th Mix, and the concept was discarded for further releases. While Dance Dance Revolution X brings back songs longer than typical length, these songs are however only themed mixes of several songs.
Link data[]
Some machines have the ports to insert PlayStation memory cards. Such memory cards have to be PlayStation 1 memory cards with Link Data from the home version of DDR 5th Mix or earlier. It can exchange data with DDR 5thMIX, as well as any earlier version that has songs that are in 5th Mix. It can also use Edit Data, custom steps made on the home version.
Home version[]
The home version of DDR 5th Mix was released in Japan on September 22, 2001, for the Sony PlayStation video game console. It contains 47 songs, 9 unlockables, plus seven extra hidden songs that appear as a preview to the next arcade version, DDRMAX, for a total of 16 unlockable songs. The mix also contained song edits contributed by players.[1][2]
During the summer of 2004, a number of members of the DDR fan site Aaron In Japan made an effort to export the thousands of edits from the game into a format recognizable by popular DDR simulators. The results are available on and through links from Super Wailing Bonus.
General Information / Changes[]
- Final Japanese PlayStation Dance Dance Revolution release.
- As such, it contains several bonuses, including an art gallery with 228 different pictures and the DATA BANK, which contains over 3000+ charts for songs from all non-license group CS Dance Dance Revolution games up to that point submitted by various people over the years.
- Only Japanese Dance Dance Revolution title with Long Version songs until Dance Dance Revolution X CS.
- One of the few CS Dance Dance Revolution titles without ENDLESS MODE.
- First BEMANI project worked on by Sota Fujimori.
- Songs with BASIC charts with a difficulty rating of 1 or 2 have a yellow and green V-shaped icon in the songwheel.
- This is the same mark used in Japan for beginner drivers.
- Can unlock everything in Dance Dance Revolution 4thMIX CS and Dance Dance Revolution EXTRA MIX through System Data Support.
- Total songs: 47
Characters[]
Returning[]
New[]
Home version[]
Songlist[]
- Main article: Dance Dance Revolution 5thMIX/Songs
Soundtrack[]
The Original Soundtrack for DDR 5th Mix is a two-disc album produced by Toshiba-EMI under their Dancemania dance music brand. It is only available on compact disc. The first disc contains all 31 readily-available new tracks from the arcade version, the 12 new songs introduced in DDR 4th Mix Plus. It also has a second disc that has a Nonstop Megamix of all the songs on the first disc, and two bonus tracks from DDRMAX. It was released on September 19, 2001.
Promotions[]
A contest in Japan, the DDR 5th Mix Musicmanship Trial Contest, was held in 2000 with the grand prize being the winner's song appearing in DDR 5th Mix. The winning song was PARANOiA ETERNAL, produced by an artist named Matsumoto, who uses the pseudonym STM 200. Strangely enough, the soundtrack booklet refers to the composer of "PARANOiA ETERNAL" as either Takeshi Matsumoto or Mitsugu Matsumoto.
Naoki Maeda also held a talent search to create a new all-girl J-Pop band. He selected Shiyuna Maehara, Noria Shiraishi, Riyu Kosaka and Yoma Komatsu. The band they formed was named BeForU, and their first single, DIVE, is featured on DDR 5thMIX.
References[]
Dance Dance Revolution 5thMix (2000 Video Game) Year Active : 5 October 2000 s/d 20 September 2001
External links[]
- DDR 5th Mix Production Report, with information on Matsumoto (STM200) and BeForU.
- Dance Dance Revolution 5thMix official website
- Dancemania
Sources[]
| Dance Dance Revolution Arcade Games | |
|---|---|
| Main Arcade Series | DDR (1998) • DDR 2ndMIX • DDR 3rdMIX • DDR 4thMIX • DDR 5thMIX • DDRMAX • DDRMAX2 • DDR EXTREME • DDR SuperNOVA • DDR SuperNOVA2 • DDR X • DDR X2 • DDR X3 VS 2ndMIX • DDR (2013) • DDR (2014) • DDR A • DDR A20 • DDR A20 PLUS • DDR A3 • DDR WORLD |
| Spinoffs | DDR 2ndMIX CLUB VERSIONS • DS TKD • DDR Solo BASS MIX • DDR Karaoke MIX • DDR Solo 2000 • DS DCT • DDR Karaoke MIX 2nd • DDR KIDS • DS Disney's RAVE |
| Foreign Releases | Dancing Stage • DS EuroMIX • DDR USA • DS EuroMIX2 • DS Fusion |