Dancing Stage Max is the latest addition to the Europe's Dancing Stage series, boasting the highest number of songs that we have ever had. Including popular licenses (for once) and a good selection of Konami Originals, it should be our best game yet. Or is it? Dancing Stage Max has all the modes we have previously seen, with the exception of Solo Mode from DS Party Edition. One of the new features for Europe is Dance Master Mode. A lot like Fusion's Mission Mode, this is the main thing for DSMAX. You start off in Zone A and progress your way to Zone E, getting progressively harder each Zone you clear. Zone A has 2 boss songs, which if cleared can be purchased in the Shop. To purchase items in the shop, you will need Dance Points. After you clear a song in either Free Mode, Dance Master Mode or Advanced Mode, you will be awarded points (much like the token system used here). A Begginer song will give you about 100. Standard will give about 200. Difficult 400 and Expert about 800, but it really depends on the foot levels and the number of arrows you actually hit. A PERFECT will give you 2 points. A GREAT will give 1. A GOOD will give 0. An ALMOST will give -1. A BOO will give -2. A O.K will give 2. A N.G will give -2. In the shop a basic song from Zone A is about 4000 each, which is probably obtained by now. The songs in Zone A are Inside Your Heart and air. If you are lucky enough to get a certain requirement the Hidden Mission appears. These are usually songs that should only be unlocked in the later stages of the game but are special and will allow you to purchase them earlier, if you clear it. After clearing both the bosses, Zone B will appear. Unlike A, this is much bigger and has more Hidden Missions and 4 Boss Missions. After clearing this zone. C appears. By now, the difficulty might have been moved up to Difficult. Now it gets harder, as you progress through. D contains the song PARANOIA SURVIVOR, in what I like to call, 'The Survivor Square'. This is a group of missions in a spiral, going from the outisde to the center, with PS in the middle, forming a square. E is the hardest though, and is only for Experts only. In this you can unlock Sakura and PARANOIA SURVIVOR MAX. Sakura costs 20,000 Points, while PARANOIA SURVIVOR MAX costs a hefty 52,000. Nonstops can also be brought, and the hardest one, Hard 3, costs 52,000 aswell, and includes the song PSM at the end on Challenge.
Missions range in difficulty, but normally it doesn't really depend on the song's foot rating. Some missions are more complex, for example;"Absolute (Cuff-N-Stuff-It Mix) - Do not touch any arrows. As little as an Almost will fail you the mission. Press an arrow 200 times, but do not touch any of the on-screen arrows." This basically means that you have to push any direction 200 times, as long as you don't touch another arrow, so while there are breaks in the song you have to manically press as many as you can in the space given. There are more simple missions, like A this song, etc. etc. but the real fun comes out with the special missions. (One Mission put me in hell for ages; Goody Two Shoes - "Do not hit the left arrow. Hit every other arrow at least perfect. You have 4 chances. The difficulty was Expert, and in the streams you are so tempted to push it. I finally cleared it after 37 tries, and unlocked the boss Seduction
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After Dance Master Mode is completed, the Advance Mode comes into play. You can but add-ons for this in the shop. This mode is relatively new, with Survival and Combo Challenge being new. Nonstop and Challenge mode are old, but are still fun.
Survival Mode is hard: You have 4 lives to get through as many songs as is possible. it's random choice aswell, so you don't know what will happen. If you get a GOOD or lower, you lose a life. If you clear a song, you will gain an extra life if you lost 1 or more in that same song. Once all 4 lives are gone, the game is over and you are directed to the results screen, which tell you how long you lasted in songs and time.
Combo Mode is very tricky, and would be very handy to have a working mat when you play it. You have 1 life. The object is to get the highest combo as is possible. A GOOD or lower destroys your combo, and also your chance of carrying on. The song is randomly picked by the computer, so if you choose Expert, you have to be sure that you can do most of the songs, so if a 10-Footer appears you know that you can get a reasonable distance in it. Basically, you have to AA the song to continue.
Nonstops haven't changed much, but you can now hold up to 10 Custom Nonstops. There are 9 nonstops: Easy 1-3, Medium 1-3 and Hard 1-3. You can also take it up a notch by pushing down and selecting Level 2. This makes each song go up one difficulty, so if you were on Begginer, you would move to Standard. If you are on Expert and there are Challenge steps, you will move up.
Challenge Mode is basically the same as Nonstop, except you have 4 lives. You can hold 10 Custom nonstops. There are 9 Konami sets: Easy 1-3, Medium 1-3 and Hard 1-3. Hard 3 consists of 8 songs, with PSM at the end on Challenge.
Also new is My Room. Here you can view tips purchased in the shop on where to find the Hidden Missions, and you can view the Extra Arrows. These are arrows that are not shown, but are in the song. These don't add to your combo or score, but they give a great amount of Points if found. In Your Room, you can view the stepcharts with the hidden arrow circled, so you can try to find it in the Dance Master Mode.
Free Play mode is the normal mode, where you select any song and difficulty and dance to it. This songlist boasts 20 Licenses and 40 K.O's meaning there is a total of 60 songs. This is 6 more than DS FUSION, which had 54. The songlist for MAX is:
Licenses (20)
Chain Reaction - Steps
Goody Two Shoes - Adam Ant
Shout - Lulu
Mixed Up World - Sophie Ellis Bextor
Going Underground - The Jam
Dizzy - Vic Reeves & The Wonderstuff
You Sexy Thing - Hot Chocolate
Kung Fu Fighting - Carl Douglas
Lady Marmalade - La Belle
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper
Hip To Hip - V
Friday - Daniel Bedingfield
These Words - Natasha Bedingfield
Dip It Low - Christina Milian
In The Middle - Sugababes
Wonderful Night - Fatboy Slim
My My My - Armand Van Helden
Michael - Franz Ferdinand
Drop The Pressure [radio edit] - Mylo
This Is The World We Live In - Alcazar
Konami Originals (New) (31)
1998 - NAOKI
Can Be Real - Vision F
DAIKENKAI - Des-ROW feat. TSUBOI for ALPHA
Happy Wedding - ASKA
I Need You(Insideout Door Mix) - Supa Fova
La Bamba - Mexican Folk Song
L'amour et la liberte(DDR Ver.) - NAOKI underground
Miracle Moon(L.E.D.LIGHT STYLE MIX) - Togo Project feat Sana
TwinBee(Generation X) - FinalOffset
Saturday Night Love - Sota feat. Brenda V.
PASSION OF LOVE - NAOKI feat.Paula Terry
INSIDE YOUR HEART - AKIRA YAMAOKA
INJECTION OF LOVE(HINA MIX) - AKIRA YAMAOKA
Polovtsian Dances And Chorus - Naoto Suzuki feat. Martha
You gotta move it (feat. Julie Rugaard) - Yuzo Koshiro
TOMORROW - nc ft. Dreamscanner
SEDUCTION - nc ft. FINALFORCE
Make A Difference - Lala Moore with CoCoRo*Co
LOVE IS ORANGE - Orange Lounge
MARIA(I believe...) - NAOKI feat. PAULA TERRY
ABSOLUTE (Cuff -N- Stuff it Mix) - Thuggie D.
air - DJ SIMON
CANDY(EXTREME) - RIYU KOSAKA
Heaven is a '57 metallic gray(gimmix) - Hiro feat. Sweet little 30's
INFINITE PRAYER - L.E.D. Light feat. Goro
INSERTiON (Machine Gun Kelly Mix) - Thuggie D.
KEEP ON MOVIN' (DMX Mix) - N.M.R-typeG
Quickening - dj TAKA
SANA MOLLETE NE ENTE (B.L.T.STYLE) - Togo Project feat. Sana
SEXY PLANET - Crystal Aliens
Sweet Sweet Love Magic - Jun
Konami Originals (Old) (6) Afronova Primeval - 8bit Be Lovin' - D-Crew
Burnin' The Floor - Naoki
Brilliant 2U - Naoki
Dynamite Rave - Naoki
PARANOiA - 180
Konami Originals (Old Bosses) (1)
PARANOiA survivor - 270
Konami Originals (New Bosses) (2) Sakura - RevenG
PARANOiA survivor MAX - 290
AS you can see, this songlist is pretty good and has everything that a Begginer needs and everything an Expert craves.
The interface graphics looks pretty neat aswell, using a Purple-Blue type theme. The banners and nice and the background are good. The arrows scroll normally and are nice to look at.
The timing windows are just right. It's not too hard to get a perfect, but not so open that you get them everytime. I personally have only AAAd 2 Begginer songs, but that's just me
The grading system is prety good aswell. This game uses the STAR ratings. For example, if you FC a song but get about 80% GREATS, you will probably get a B, with a star next to it indicating that you FCed it. It doesn't show N.Gs on the results screen though, which I think they should've done. It only shows O.Ks.
The groove radar has also now been added. Now you can judge how hard a song is by the radar and not the Foot levels. It is judged in 5 ways: Stream (An 8th note (or above) run), Voltage (The ability to hit arrows in compex places), Chaos (The number of arrows above 8th (AKA Yellow and above)), Air (The number of jumps in the song) and Freeze (The number of Freeze Arrows in the song).
BPMs are still the same, they just show you the slowest point of the song and the fastest point.
Unlocks are quite annoying, as when you start the game the first time you only have the licenses and You Gotta Move It!, forcing you to play DMM.
Workout Mode now gives a much more accurate reading of how many calories you have burned and what it's equivalent too. You can also create new accounts just for yourself to use so you can record and look at how much you have progressed throughout the whole thing. You can pick all the songs you have unlocked in normal Free Play mode, and choose all the difficulties, unless you choose the new Workout Steps, which are basically Standard steps mixed around a little bit. The harder the difficulty the more calories you can burn!
If you have an EyeToy USB camera, you can play Hands & Feet mode. This is a mode where you see yourself on the TV. You have your basic Up-Down-left-Right arrows but you also have Hand Left and Hand Right. As these scroll up the screen you must use your hand to hit the step zone instead of using your feet. This gives more challenge to the game, but is a bit of a pain to use sometimes, with too complex streams with random hands thrown in.
Lesson and Training mode are kept the same as usual, with the exact same songs being used as was before.
Edit mode is exactly the same as before, except you can now choose the foot rating and create the groove radar for it.
But is it worth buying? IMO, yes. This is the best game that Europe has had and deserves to be brought. If you love Fusion you will never put this down!
9.5/10
Thanks for reading,
Ben Speirs
Dancing Stage Max // PS2 (Europe Only) 
