Dance Maniax

Dance Maniax
Also known as: Dance Freaks (KR) Developer: Konami AMD Publisher: Konami Platform: Arcade (Konami System 573) Released in JP: June 6, 2000 Released in KR: 2000 This game has unused graphics. This game has unused sounds. This game has debugging material. This game has regional differences.

Dance Maniax was advertised as the next-generation successor to Dance Dance Revolution, but the project was ended after one year when DDR remained far more popular.

Like its sister game Para Para Paradise, this game is also played with touchless infrared sensors.

Debug Remnants

The following MAME cheats can be used to access a debug menu after booting/loading is finished. However, none of the functions seem to work anymore.

    <cheat desc="Enable debug menu">
        <script state="run">
            <action>maincpu.pb@800f90d0=01</action>
            <action>maincpu.pw@800f90d4=0001</action>
            <action>maincpu.pd@80018a68=00000000</action>
        </script>
        <script state="off">
            <action>maincpu.pd@80018a68=10400030</action>
        </script>
    </cheat>
    <cheat desc="Debug menu implementation (do not disable)">
        <script state="run">
            <action>maincpu.pd@800103cc=3c02801f</action>
            <action>maincpu.pd@800103d0=24429080</action>
            <action>maincpu.pd@800103d4=00441020</action>
            <action>maincpu.pd@800103d8=80420000</action>
            <action>maincpu.pd@800103dc=00000000</action>
            <action>maincpu.pd@800103e0=03e00008</action>
            <action>maincpu.pd@800103e4=00000000</action>
            <action>maincpu.pd@80098c24=080040f3</action>
            <action>maincpu.pd@80098c28=00000000</action>
        </script>
    </cheat>

(Source: WindyFairy)

"Mada" Placeholders

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These images were presumably used to substitute for song titles and banners which hadn't been created yet. Their filenames contain "mada", which translates to "not yet".

"Mada" BG Animation

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Every song in Dance Maniax has an original and unique background animation (usually just a few scrolling or animated textures and lots of looping; nothing fancy). These textures were probably used as early placeholders, since they don't fit in the game's final layout.

Early Screens

Included in the game's textures are these very low-resolution screenshots of what appear to be an early version of the game!

How To Play

The "disc being" character (made of circles and coils) is not seen anywhere in the final game. This screen also looks very different and seems to indicate that originally "cross" scroll was the default mode of play. In the final game, both the red and blue columns scroll upwards like DDR. (With cross-scroll, the red columns scroll up while the blue columns scroll down. This makes sense since the red notes are hit high and blue notes are hit low, but it is actually very disorienting in practice. Cross-scroll was left in the final game as a hidden option.)

Song Select 1

Appears to be an early version of the song select mode. Five song banners are seen at the top, which resembles the final layout. But none of these banners resemble any of the final images. Unlike the final game, the background is black and the colors used are rather dark. The middle area seems to show some sort of options selection mode, which isn't present in the final. In the final version, the player's options are chosen from a menu before reaching the song select. This screenshot also seems to show that cross-scroll was once the default mode of play.

Song Select 2

Somewhat resembles the final version. The top 5 banners are the same as the previous image. The game's forgiving "coin system" for continuing play after failing a stage seems to be in place. The large banner in the center is for Keep On Movin, which does appear in the final version. The differences are:

1. The song id (in green) for Keep on Movin is "08" in the final and "BS 5" in this image.
2. The difficulty rating of 9 stars never appears in the final game.
3. The song titles appear to swirl around in 3D in this screenshot. In the final version, the text is flat.

Parts of some song titles are barely readable. Keep On Movin has the text "Muramasa!" and other bits of partially obscured text include: "BOMBER FROM", "BROKEN", "what you gonna do", and "MA?K??ER". None of these match any final song titles except that "BROKEN" may be part of BROKEN MY HEART, one of the earliest songs created for Dance Maniax.

Unused Nonstop Course

Dance Maniax features a nonstop course mode like other Bemani games of the time. The game contains data for 8 courses, although only 7 courses have names and textures. The 8th course was probably decided to be unnecessary since the game only has 25 songs (plus a boss song) and there's a lot of redundant songs between the other 7 courses already. The lost course seems to be a Konami Original course:

1. Broken My Heart
2. All My Love
3. Gorgeous 2012
4. Heaven is a '57 Metallic Grey (gimmix)
5. Afronova Primeval

Regional Differences

The Korean version has several differences:

1. The title screen (and cabinet art) refer to the game as Dance Freaks.
2. The game was left untranslated except for a bit of text on the "How to Play" screen, which was translated to Korean. (Both versions are mostly English otherwise!)
3. Seven new songs were licensed specifically for Korean players, and these songs also have unique animations.

Missing Song #29

Dance Maniax shows players a song id in green on every song's banner. In the original game, the songs were numbered from 1-25 with the hidden boss song taking slot #26. The seven added Korean songs take IDs 27-34. Observant players probably noticed that song #29 was missing. It does have unused texture data, though.

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  half-res banner (used on the loading screen)

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  title (used in song select)

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  title (used on the loading screen)

The missing song is Dance With DOC by DJ DOC. No audio or background animation data exists for this song. The full-resolution banner is also missing.