Given what they were, DDR games had some unusually thorough full-color manuals. Besides answering any question you could have about the various modes and music credits, a couple of them had interviews with various music artists who contributed to the games. Loved reading those as a kid. Electronic music production seemed like sorcery, and to have any window into the mind of a person who made a living of it was amazing. Of course, the last few didder games I got had manuals unfit for use as drink coasters. Colorless and uninformative. That was sad to see. I think the largest manual was 80+ pages. I forget when the manuals stopped being good. Did color go out with Extreme 2, then info with SuperNOVA? It's been a decade since the manuals died. That wasn't just a DDR thing. Guitar Hero (II?) had a magazine-themed manual, with character interviews. Pretty sure III had one of those colorless paper flap "manuals". Screw trees, I know I'm not the only one who misses the days of good manuals.
It's a shame the US console releases got shafted with most of the licenses on the Japanese ones + overall song counts, at least for the PS1 years. They could have crammed a bunch more stuff into those discs. Konamix with the 5th Mix engine would've been great too. I guess I shouldn't complain too much since the PAL releases (going by Dancing Stage) were like the exoskeletons of the other regions', but still, home territory always lucks out. grr. I wonder if the Greatest Hits re-releases had any differences, like bug fixes. Probably nothing important. I want like a 4th PLUS revival or something, kinda like X3 vs 2nd Mix's 2nd Mix mode. Even outside of mix emulation, aesthetic revivals would be cool. Gotta love that early didder style. Back in the day, I never really recognized how unique a lot of DDR music sounds. Like, what genre would you shoehorn Drop Out into? I'm terrible with genres so maybe there is a close match, but *shrug*. Either Orion.78 as well.
bawl
