Only legal in Japan, for some strange/unknown reason, DDR Extreme is questionable the best version of this dancing simulator from konami. There are several Extreme's in Europe (Ireland has one, and that says a lot!), so if you don't mind illegal pleasure, I'd recomend you find one.
As the origional dance simulator, this game may be less flashy than other similar games like "EZ 2 Dancer"
but the 4 tile, multi-coloured arrow system is very easy to pick up.
You play by pushing the tiles (UP, DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT) in time to music. It sounds easy enough, but with
10 possible moves at any time, 5 difficulty settings and 10 levels of difficulty, it can keep you coming back for YEARS!
You normaly get to pick up to 3 songs, unless you fail one by dancing too badly. Arcades can change the
number of songs you get per credit, but most stick with 3.
While most of the songs on DDR's are created by Konami and all are edited to under 2 minutes, there are
a lot of really good dance tunes on them.
Songs that aren't created by Konami are often popular pop songs like "Cartoon Heros", or "Witch Doctor"
It's a slight let down that the songs you know are either remakes or very annoying, but if you're into
dance/trance/club music, you'll find there's a lot of catchy tunes floating around the playlist.
Like the EuroMix2, DDR Extreme no longer has the background characters who dance to the music. It does have
a lot of interesting background graphics. These include Unicorns, dancing cactii, morphing polygons,
spinning cubes, etc.
The graphics are really just there to fill a space. While playing, it's very hard to look at them and,
even when observing, the arrows get in the way.
Final Score: 9/10
It's good. It's really good.
It makes you look at the European version and say: "Why?! Why have you given us this tripe instead of a DDR?!
WHAT HAVE WE DONE WRONG, KONAMI!?!
HOW CAN WE BE FORGIVEN?!?"
