Main Page     Dancing Stage: Party Edition table          Dance Mat FAQ
                     Dancing Stage EuroMix Arcade FAQ     Dancing Stage EuroMix 2 FAQ

 ===========================
=== Dancing Stage EuroMix PSX FAQ ==
===========================
by Tim Mannveille - ranma-tim@care2.com
Last updated 27/4/3 - html Version 1.5
 latest version always available at www.juggler.net/tim

Contents:

1) Introduction

2) Dancing Stage EuroMix PSX
   2.1) EuroMix PSX Song List
   2.2) EuroMix PSX Frequently Asked Questions
   2.3) EuroMix Scoring

3) Previous and forthcoming updates

1)Introduction

   First, note that by 'PSX' I mean the playstation version, as opposed to the arcade!

   There is plenty of information on the net about 'Dance Dance Revolution' (DDR), which is great. In the UK we have the 'Dancing Stage' games, which are essentially the same in all but name, but it is a lot harder to find information about these. That's why I've written this FAQ (and others).

   If you have any questions about the playstation version of Dancing Stage EuroMix that I haven't covered here, please e-mail me them at ranma-tim@care2.com, and I'll try to find out the answer and include it. Also please let me know about anything that puzzled you for a long time (but that you eventually worked out!) that I don't already have here.

   WARNING: I'm not totally infallible! Let me know if you find something here to be wrong! Yes, even if you notice that I've got the difficulty of one song wrong by just one foot!

Finally, thanks to the following organisations and people:
-www.ddruk.com for hosting this, and its forums for odds and ends.
-Mike of logiqx for the info on the original 'Dancing Stage' songs!
-www.aaroninjapan.com for explaining scoring in the DDR mixes
-Everyone that e-mails me new questions!

2) Dancing Stage EuroMix PSX

   2.1) EuroMix PSX Song List

   Here is the ordered songlist for EuroMix PSX, along with the difficulties. There are 24 songs in total. 6 of these songs are not found on the arcade version of EuroMix: these are shown in red. (In fact, these were the songs that featured on the very old 'Dancing Stage' Arcade machines that you might still find in a few obscure places around the UK!)
   The difficulties of the 8 and 9 foot songs on Single mode are given to one decimal place - this is my own personal estimation of how hard these songs are to pass if you've never passed them before. Also note that on EuroMix 2 arcade, End of the Century Expert has (quite rightly) been reclassified as a 9-footer!
   All beginner songs are 1-foot difficulty; Double Mode does not have beginner difficulty.

2.2) EuroMix PSX Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which mat should I get?
A: If you want to know about mats, please check out my Dance Mat FAQ devoted to that very subject, currently to be found at www.juggler.net/tim

Q: How do I unlock more songs?
A: There aren't any more! A lot of people think that since there were so many songs on the EuroMix 1 arcade (and on the EuroMix 2 arcade... and in Dancing Stage: Party Edition) there must be more than 24 on EuroMix 1 home version. Not so. As proof, consider this; on the back of the box, it says 24 songs are included. If there were any more, they would say so here, as it would make you more likely to buy the game!

Q: How do I unlock more characters?
A: There aren't any more! To see the female characters in slightly different outfits, play in training mode - their outfits also differ in this mode depending on whether you are player 1 or player 2. The only other way to get more characters is to buy Party Edition!

Q: I have two pads! How can I get Double Mode?
A: In Arcade Mode, before selecting a song, hit the O button, and select it from the menu that appears. The manual tells you to use the X button, which is wrong. This probably happened because Japanese PS controllers have the O and X button the other way around, so I'm told.
   To get Double Mode In Training Mode, go to the bar that says 'single' and go right twice to select 'double' there.
(Note this is nothing at all to do with the 'double mode' option under Options/Button Configuration!)

Q: Why do I keep failing the last song in Non-Stop Mode / Arcade Mode?
A: In both modes, the penalty for missing a step gets bigger as you go along. So on the first song, you can make quite a few mistakes, but still do okay (which makes it well-suited for beating your scores in 'music records') - whereas on the last song, a single miss will take the energy bar down by about 1/4! This means it only takes a few misses to wipe you out, and if your mat isn't working 100% accurately, you usually don't stand a chance!

Q: How do I quit out from the middle of a song / from selecting a song / from anywhere?
A: Press Triangle. If that doesn't work, hold Select. If that doesn't work, hold Select and Start together. You have to use the latter if you want to quit mid-way through a song.

Q: How do I Fill in the blanks where song names ought to be in Records/Music Records?
A: Get a D or better on that song in Single or Double mode, on at least Standard difficulty.

Q: What does "This is a cool mode!" mean?
A: If you play the Non-Stop or All Songs modes, the excitable voice-over guy tells you "This is a cool mode!". If you play Easy Mode, or Hard Mode, he doesn't. As far as I can tell, these modes are only deemed 'cool' because they recreate modes available on the Arcade version. There doesn't seem to be any other difference - your best score for a song still goes into the
'Best Music' table if you do it in a non-cool mode, for example.

Q: What does 'Saved' mean?
A: After completing a song, you get a summary of how many of your steps were perfect, great, etc. At the bottom of this list is 'saved', and this always appears as a row of dashes. If you could activate 'Couple' mode, you would get one point here for every step you hit but your partner missed.

Q: How do I get Couple Mode then?
A: You can't! This seems to be something they accidentally left in when they were converting some DDR game into EuroMix. Unfortunately they didn't accidentally leave in Couple Mode as well.

Q: How can I get on the darn scoreboard?!
A: Do well enough in Non-stop mode playing one of the sets called "Ranking 1", "Ranking 2" or "Ranking 3"

Q: I did like you said in the last answer, got way more than the scores that ship with the game, but still didn't get to put my name in! What's up with that?
A: You only get to put your name in if you get all the way to the end. You can force this to happen by going into Options, Game Options, and then setting "Game over during song" to OFF... some people might count that as cheating, but then others wouldn't, which is the whole point of having it as an option.

Q: How can I access different Modes like Hidden, Mirror, Flat etc, while in Arcade Mode?
A: Press the Start button either just before or just after you have selected a song. A small menu comes up with four items, all by default set to 'Off'. In order, these allow you to activate the following modes:

   Flat - Off-beat arrows usually flash a different colour. This stops them from doing that, which makes it a little harder.

   Little - Removes all off-beat arrows. Use this if you want two players of different skill-levels to play together.

   Left/Right/Mirror/Shuffle - 'Left' moves all arrows anti-clockwise, so Up becomes Left etc. Right moves them clockwise. Mirror reverses Left and Right, as well as Up and Down. Shuffle randomly allocates a new direction for each arrow - so all the Ups, for example, could become Lefts, or Rights, or Downs, or not change at all.

   Hidden/Sudden/Stealth - Hidden makes the arrows disappear half way up the screen. Sudden stops them from appearing until they reach the half-way point. Both of these are good for practice. Stealth hides the arrows until after they've gone past their beat, and is just silly.

Q: I seem to be stuck on (insert number here)-foot songs. How can I improve?
A: Use the Training Mode! Pick a song that you just can't quite survive. Slow it down to speed 3 or 4 (speeds 1 and 2 often end up making the song harder rather than easier). Put on the 'Assist' - I prefer Assist 5, in which you hear the song and a handclap on every arrow when you're supposed to hit it. Use the 'Start Bar' and 'End Bar' option to focus on parts of the song that give you difficulty. Build up to Speed 5, remove the Assist, then go do it in Arcade mode!
   Also, go back to easier songs and try to improve your grade. Got an A? Try to get a AA (you'll need to get Perfects or Greats on every step). Then try for AAA (get a lot of Perfects and a few Greats). If you're totally nuts, maybe you could try for AAA-Perfect, which is self-explanatory, and also insane.
   On the other side of the coin, try songs perhaps a couple of feet ahead of you. You won't pass, put try as hard as you can - and notice your score at the end, not your grade. Try to improve that score. Then go back to the songs you were having difficulty with... they should seem much easier now!

Q: I'm just about ready for 9-foot (Catastrophic) songs.
Which should I try first?
A: That depends on what you're best at. If you can read fast arrows and have a lot of stamina, then Dead End or Afronova should prove easiest. If you can also do 'turns' (that's when you get steps like R, D, L, D, R and you turn your body to the right in order to hit all the Downs with your right foot and all the others with your left), then Paranoia Rebirth should be fun.
    On the other hand, if you can't stand the pace but you've got rhythm, go for Dynamite Rave - use Assist 4 in training mode to work out the unusually timed steps, and then it's a piece of cake!
    You might start having trouble with your mat at this level - see my Dance Mat FAQ at www.juggler.net/tim to see what to do about that.
    Finally, it's good to know that on the EuroMix 2 arcade machine, End of the Century expert is classed as a 9-foot song, but has just the same steps. Quite right too - it's fast, confusing and exhausting! I'd say Dead End is easier.

Q: What about my question that you haven't included here?!
A: E-mail me it at ranma-tim@care2.com, and I'll see what I can do!

2.3) EuroMix PSX scoring

   If you're interested in how the scoring is worked out, then you've probably already noticed that the score for each step is scaled so that the maximum score for any song is 10,000,000. In non-stop mode, each song is worth it's number times 10,000,000 (so the third song is worth 30,000,000 and so on). That makes the maximum score for any non-stop course
(1+2+3+4)*(10,000,000) = 100,000,000.

   Other points to note are that only Perfects and Greats give you any points, and the combo makes no difference (unlike in Party Edition where the max combo pretty much determines the entire score). Also each step is precisely as important as its number: the 100th step is worth 100 times as much as the 1st, and the last step is worth the most points of all. Make sure you get it!

   If you're mathematically inclined and you really want to know exactly how the score is calculated, well, it's just like DDR 3rd mix but with no score awarded for Goods. If that doesn't mean anything to you then this is the in-depth explanation:

-Every step gets a score for how accurate it was, multiplied by its step number and also by the 'scaling factor' which ensures that if you get all perfects then you'll score 10,000,000.
-Perfects are worth 10 points.
-Greats are worth 5 points.
-All other steps are worth 0 points.
-When you have to hit two arrows at once, only the one you hit worst counts.
-If 'N' is the total number of steps in the song (double arrows only count for one), then the 'scaling factor' which we'll call 'S' is given by:
S = 1,000,000 / [ N(N+1)/2 ], rounded down.
-If your life bar has run out, you just score 10 for perfects and 5 for greats; no multiplication takes place. So don't die!
-Finally, due to the rounding down in the value of S, each step misses out on a bit of its score. These bits are saved up and only awarded if you hit the very last step, so make sure you do!

   Just to clarify, I'll do a quick example. Supposing you do a song with 75 steps in it (i.e. N = 75). That would mean that the scaling factor for that song would be:

S = 1,000,000 / [75(75+1)]/2 ] = 1,000,000 / 2,850 = 350.877...

This is then rounded down to give the final figure of S = 350. So, if you get a perfect on the 5th step, you score:

10[perfect]*5[step number]*350[scaling factor] = 17,500.

Because of the rounding, this amount:
10*5*0.877... = 43.859...
is added to the 'hidden score' which you only get if you hit the last step.

   So there you have it! Don't die, get lots of perfects, and make sure you do especially well towards the end of the song. Kind of obvious really...

3) Previous and forthcoming updates

24/4/3:
Version 1.5 - finally worked out and added the scoring! Also added the bit about which Catastrophic songs to try first.

27/2/3:
With version 1.4, I've split the original FAQ into the individual games - so this now only refers to Dancing Stage EuroMix for the playstation.

   There do not appear to be any secret unlockable songs or characters or anything like that really, although if I hear of any they will of course appear here immediately.

   Any questions I get asked will be added, but other than that there are no plans for further developing this FAQ. Thanks again to everyone that has helped my research, and to everyone that has sent me questions!

Send comments, suggestions, questions, mistakes etc to: ranma-tim@care2.com
Feedback makes the world go round!

This document copyright Tim Mannveille 2003, and if you want to reproduce or distribute it, ask me first (ranma-tim@care2.com) and then I'll almost certainly say yes.
Right now it should only appear at the following:
-www.juggler.net/tim
-www.gamefaqs.com
-www.ddruk.com
-www.gamesdomain.com
-www.ddrfreak.com

Main Page     Dancing Stage: Party Edition table          Dance Mat FAQ
                     Dancing Stage EuroMix Arcade FAQ     Dancing Stage EuroMix 2 FAQ