We are eagerly anticipating the Japanese Location Testing for DDR X. From the announced features so far, you'll see we have good reason to do so as it appears to be what should have been done since SuperNOVA and a good start in SuperNOVA 2:
New Cabinet Design: As seen in our newspost
here, DDR's arcade cabinet takes on an old-school Beatmania-like appearance with some thin columns of lights on the side that may presumably act like one of those classic "bar" visualizers. There's also a set of buttons under the middle of the screen, and the 1p/2p buttons have new Up and Down arrows that have yet to identify their use.
And if it isn't obvious, the game is now in widescreen.
Edit Data Support Improved: DDR X CS versions will now support USB memory sticks to hold your data. Obviously this means scads more data to hold on your drive and the potential of more features.
Shock Arrows: They're mines. Don't hide the fact.
Dance Drill Mode: Advanced Mode is renamed to Course Mode and there appears to be an additional sub-mode that acts like IIDX's Dan Mode.
Songlist: 60 new songs, older songs revived (read: Butterfly and Dub-I-Dub on DDR X US CS), and the promise of more content for this or future releases. We're not sure due to translation issues.
Other: e-Amuse is still around with the ability that sounds like you can register your friends on your account. Beginner Mode is now Starter Mode and there's the inclusion of a Welcome System for new players.
Foot Rating Expansion: The foot rating meter has expanded to
20 feet. The scale only shows 10 marks but they are represented in this manner:
-If a song is 1 to 10 feet, the bar will be filled with yellow marks.
-If a song is 11 to 20 feet, the yellow marks will be overlapped with red ones. So if you had a 12-footer, you'd see 2 red marks and 8 yellow marks. 15 feet? 5 red, 5 yellow.
Now it's apparent that doubling the scale is meant to give more accuracy to song difficulty.
That's it for now. The JP location test starts in a few hours as of this edit.
LOCATION TEST INFORMATION
All SN2 JP CS songs are on X (Time Hollow, Puzzle, SAGA, etc)
Shock arrows cause combo breaks and life damage.
A bunch of old songs use generic videos.
Old licenses and deletions not seen yet.
New Songs FINAL STAGE: SABER WING - TAG SP 4/8/10/13 DOUBLES: 8/10/12
EXTRA STAGE: On The Break - Darwin -/-/-/13
Dance Celebration - Bill Hamel feat.kevens / BPM 130 2/4/8/11 DOUBLES: 5/7/10
Dance Floor - neuras feat.Yurai / BPM 120 2/5/6/9
Flourish - sonic-coll. feat. frances maya / BPM 152 2/5/8/10
Inspiration - DKC Crew / BPM 147 2/5/7/9
Party Lights - Tommie Sunshine / BPM 130 DOUBLES: 4/6/9
Taj He Spitz - DKC Crew / BPM 107 2/4/7/10
Tracers (4Beat Remix) - Ruffage&Size / BPM 140 2/5/7/10
Slip Out - Hamony machine BPM95 1/3/6/9
Fight of the phoenix - Jena Rose (SHOCK ARROWS) BPM145 -/-/-/-/7 DOUBLES: -/-/-/6
Re-ratings
Fascination MAXX Expert: 17
Fascination MAXX Challenge: 18
Pluto Relinquish Expert: 17
MAX300 Expert: 15
The legend of Max Expert: 15