Today Konami announced a new location test in Japan for a game whose name people are familiar with: DanceDanceRevolution. No this isn’t a retread from 1998 – for some reason Konami has so far decided to call the latest version of DDR – DDR. Hopefully they will add some sort of subtitle to it to avoid confusion down the road. The cabinet looks like other recent DDR releases in the ‘X’ series, the most recent of which was DDRX3. Whether Konami will decide on releasing this new DDR overseas is unknown but judging from what they did with X3 seems unlikely at this time, aside from interested locations doing an import. Otherwise, nothing else is known about the game at this time but we will probably know soon after the test starts this Friday.
I’m hearing that might not be the final name, but we shall see once the test starts.
Should be interesting to see what the interface looks like, since the last game was somewhat based on DDR II on wii (had the same font for the combo counts and everything)
I do not find it surprising to find them returning to a basic test name. It could mean two things, this name may be intended to serve to make this one of the final releases of DanceDanceRevolution. The reason I come to such a conclusion is the lack of support for the franchise in the U.S. these days (it has been over a year since the last home version [which was only for Wii]) and over two years since the limited release of DDR X2 for arcades (there has been an DDR X3, but was not released in the U.S.) and the title could imply making this a universal mix with changing song content through update packs downloaded through Konami’s e-Amusement service or manual installs. This way the game could in theory be on the market longer than a year or two (the average life span of a current mix for any BEMANI game).
The title could also imply they want to make the series available to the U.S. again since they did skip X3. I strongly suggest we write to Konami, our distributors and arcade operators if we want to see this newest title on U.S. shores. (You can find Konami’s mailing address on their website.)