Glad to hear it.

...And Mario DDR2 will be the HARDEST DDR GAME, EVAR!!!!! Just you wait!

I did enjoy the songs in the mix, though. 29 original songs is a goddamn breath of fresh air compared to Konami's constant recycling of old songs, adding 5-10 new ones, and calling it a completely new game.

Stepmania, for the WIN!

-SB

Yes Konami does seem to have a little problem with balence of the difficulty. It either is too hard or too easy, since some have complained that the game is too easy, so the next will probally be a little to much on the hard side.

Nintendo will probably tell thwem to either keep or lower the difficulty, they love easy games.

All I'd expect Konami to do is throw in 5 new songs, including one song which is not humanly possible to complete and ranks at 20 feet.

Then Mario DDR2 would be advertised as "The most difficult DDR game ever made!"

-SB

I think DDR Mario has a pretty good difficulty level. There's never been a DDR game on a Nintendo console before and any serious DDR fan already has a PS2. The target demographic here is largely newcombers, many of which are attracted by the Mario crossover. So it makes sense to make it more of a introductory game while the PS2 DDRs are for the hardcore.

Oh no! A game not aimed at the hardcore!

The collective bitching about Mario DDR not being difficult enough is ridiculous, even though Bowser's Castle and Midnight Drive are 9 footers on challenge.

And I was stunned Konami didn't just recycle in a quadrillion of their other songs into the game to inflate the song count.

Still, the truly hardcore DDR players own a cobalt flux ($300), a USB to PS2 adapter ($15) and Stepmania for the PC ($0), which effectively allows you to "sample" every DDR song ever made, ever.

-SB

I'm surprised they didn't have "Butterfly", complete with those...whatever Wigglers are called when they sprout wings. Those things. Flutters? Whatever. It's annoying, but I always think of it when I think of DDR. And Boom Boom Dollar? That's just asking for, well, Boom-Boom, the recurring Fortress boss of Super Mario Bros. 3!

But no...

Yeah, a lot of the happy trance would have been a shoe-in.

My only guess is that they pay licensing fees every time they use those songs whereas every song in Mario DDR was either Nintendo based or public domain.

They're all pretty good songs, though. With an average DDR yield of 60-80 songs, I can tolerate listening to about 5-10 of them. The rest I find to be repugnant garbage.

I could actually listen to Mario DDR's music casually without it making me want to punch something. I have roughly 5 favorites, but I find the entire soundtrack at least tolerable which is far more than I've EVER been able to say for any other DDR game.

-SB

"The collective bitching about Mario DDR not being difficult enough is ridiculous, even though Bowser's Castle and Midnight Drive are 9 footers on challenge."

Of all the tracks I've unlocked, Bower's Castle is the only one I can't "lock into" the rythmn of. The song doesn't have much a dance beat and the arrows don't seem to fit in any logical timing. Even on easy I basically just fluke out. Good workout though.

A hard pad helps, unless you have your soft pad firmly attached to the floor to prevent it from sliding (velcro strips will work wonders for this, so long as you have a carpet underneath the pad, and you can get them at any hardware store).

To add insult to injury, the one PS2->GC adapter which actually worked with dance pads seems to have gone out of production, preventing the usage of hard 3rd party pads with the GC.

-SB

Well, my order shipped today.

Bowser's Castle is actually quite easy, and it is on-sync. (i'm talking about the super-hard chart) Even if it wasn't, the HUMONGOUS perfect window would've done it for them. About the song having not much of a dance beat though, welcome to the world of DDR Paranoia's and Max songs, can't help ya too much there.

easy with a control? yes