Dance Dance Revolution 5thMIX, or DDR 5th Mix, is the fifth game in the Dance Dance Revolution series of music video games. It was released to the arcades by Konami on March 27th, 2001. Although only officially released in Japan, units exist worldwide. DDR 5th Mix contained a total of 122 songs, nine of which were hidden and unlockable. Of those songs, 40 of them (including all nine unlockable songs) were brand new to Dance Dance Revolution.

For the list of songs, please reference the Dance Dance Revolution 5thMIX song list.

DDR 5th Mix introduces the song wheel interface used when selecting songs. This was also the first arcade version to display the game with a 60-frame-per-second (fps) refresh rate for smoother gameplay. Previous versions played at 30 fps. You can modify how the arrow arrangement and how they appear on the screen with various step codes when you select a song, and also use the Up and Down arrows on the dance pad to select between the three difficulty levels: 'Basic', 'Trick' and 'Maniac'. They are color-coded orange, fuchsia and green, respectively.

Gameplay

The general premise of DDR 5th Mix is the same as the previous Dance Dance Revolution games. One player can play using one dance pad (Single play style), Two players can play using one dance pad each (Versus play style), or One player can play using both dance pads (Double play style).

A player must step to the beat, matching the beat to the arrows presented to them on screen by stepping on arrows on a metal-and-plexiglass dance stage. Depending on the timing of each step, the step is scored "PERFECT," "GREAT," "GOOD," "BOO" or "MISS." A health bar is on the screen, and starts halfway at the beginning of the routine. PERFECT and GREAT steps increase the health bar until it is full. BOO and MISS steps diminish it. GOOD steps have no effect either way. If a player accumulates too many BOOs or MISSes in rapid succession, and the health bar fully diminishes, then they fail the song and the game ends.

A player may play anywhere from three to seven songs (not including extra stages), depending on how many the arcade owner sets the machine to play each game. At the end of each song, the player sees their accumulated points, bonus points, and how many of each kind of step they stepped. They also get a letter grade, ranging from E (only seen in two player modes when one player fails but the other passes) to AAA (all steps PERFECT), solely determined by the kind of steps they make. At the end of the game, they get a cumulative score based on the last three songs they played.

The scoring formula was also revamped. The top score for a song is 5,000,000 + (f x 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.

Dancing characters

This was also the last arcade version of the game in which 3D-rendered dancing characters were displayed in the background. Twelve characters were 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 was inserted as one of two hidden dancing characters.

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, was not available in DDR 5th Mix.

Long Version songs

Four songs--B4U glorious style, DYNAMITE RAVE Long ver., HOT LIMIT and Oops, I Did It again--were long version songs, songs that ran twice as long as a standard DDR song, which was around 90 seconds long. Such songs took up the play of two songs, and were only selectable as the second-to-last song in the round. Songs of this length existed only in DDR 5th Mix, and the concept was discarded for further machines.

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 5th Mix, 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.

Special music notes

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 song that won was PARANOiA ETERNAL, produced by an artist named Matsumoto, who took the pseudonym STM200.

Naoki Maeda also held a talent search to create a new all-girl J-Pop band. He ended up selecting Shiyuna Maehara, Noria Shiraishi, Riyu Kosaka and Yoma Komatsu. The band they formed was named BeForU, and their first single, DIVE, was featured on DDR 5th Mix.

Home version

The home version of DDR 5th Mix was released in Japan on September 22nd, 2001, for the Sony PlayStation (or PS1) video game console. It contained 47 songs: Most of the new songs from the arcade version (including all nine hidden songs), plus seven extra hidden songs that appeared as a preview to the next arcade version, DDRMAX, for a total of 16 unlockable songs.

Soundtrack

The Original Soundtrack for DDR 5th Mix was produced by Toshiba-EMI under their Dancemania dance music brand. It contained all 31 readily-available new tracks from the arcade version, the 12 new songs introduced in DDR 4th Mix Plus, and two bonus songs: one from DDRMAX and one from DDR Extra Mix, a special PlayStation-only version of DDR. It was released on September 19th, 2001.

External links

• Konami (US Home Page), makers of DDR.
• Konami (Japanese Home Page)
• DDR 5th Mix Production Report, with information on Matsumoto (STM200) and BeForU. (In Japanese)
• Official DDR 5th Mix website, from Konami. (In Japanese)
• Dancemania (In Japanese)