The stage is set for 2006's Dance Dance Revolution titles, with the recent arcade hit Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA scheduled to hit the Playstation 2 tomorrow.
Following on its footsteps later this year, Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 4 will be released for the Xbox and DDR will make its jump into the next-generation with the Xbox 360 release of Dance Dance Revolution Universe.
The series is fast approaching 10 years of success in the United States after it was first unleashed into our arcades in 1999. Since then it has appeared in the U.S. on more than 10 home versions on systems ranging from the Playstation One to the Xbox.
While the releases have ranged from all Konami-original content to U.S.-exclusive licenses and even Disney-themed, all have embraced the unique and addictive game play that has etched its place in both Japanese and U.S. culture.
In anticipation of the upcoming U.S. releases, we recently had the chance to talk to Jason Enos of Konami in regard to Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA, Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 4 and Dance Dance Revolution Universe.
Aaron Auzins: First off, thank you very much for taking the time out of your schedule to talk to us today.
Jason Enos: Sure thing.
Aaron: To start things off, could you please tell the readers a little bit about yourself and your role with the upcoming Dance Dance Revolution titles?
Jason: Well, I have been with Konami for over seven years now and I am a senior product manager, which basically means I am responsible for managing the day-to-day issues with the products I handle, including the promotion/marketing strategy, packaging/ad development, daily communication with the development teams, etc. My involvement with the DDR series dates back to as early as 1999 when I first joined Konami and subsequently, DDR first released in the U.S. arcades.
Since then, I have been involved with building the DDR brand in North America and working with the development teams on the various DDR games available on console. As the game's popularity continued to rise year over year, we spent a lot more time on planning for the upcoming games.
Aaron: Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA is set to release at the end of the month with Ultramix 4 and Universe still to be shipped by the year's end—how long have these games been in development and what are the typical steps the team goes through when developing a Dance Dance Revolution title?
Jason: From a very top-line perspective, the biggest element to any DDR game is the music. There is a long process involved with acquiring the music content for each game.
For example, a lot of the music first requires securing the licensing rights to use the song in the game. Assuming the content is good to go, we also have to edit the song to fit the typical length for the game (roughly 90-115 seconds on average). Once the song is in the proper length, the dance step patterns have to be created for each difficulty level in the game. If you figure the typical DDR game has about 70 songs, we are already talking about 500+ individually tailored step patterns that have to be made.
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