Dancing Stage EuroMix 2

Dancing Stage Euromix 2 is the 3rd Arcade release in the Dancing Stage series, a European version of the Dance Dance Revolution series of music video games. Euromix 2 is a sequel to Dancing Stage EuroMix. It was released in the arcades by Konami in 2002. Euromix 2's engine is based on the Japanese arcade release DDRMAX2, and also uses a modified version of its interface. The game contains 68 songs, 12 of them are carried over from Dancing Stage EuroMix.

Gameplay
The core gameplay of Euromix 2 is similar to Euromix, but introduced the new two-tiered scoring system and freeze arrows to the European audience. As mentioned, Euromix 2 uses DDRMAX2's engine and interface but with some minor differences, such as Nonstop mode being accessed from the song wheel, difficulty selections being made before the song begins, and the options menu introduced by DDRMAX is not used, electing to still use step codes. These codes are entered on the song selection screen. As with most recent DDR games, the arrows scroll on top of full motion video backgrounds with no dancing characters, but if the Beginner difficulty is chosen, the background is replaced by a visual representation of the pad, and a character assisting the player on when to step. Beginner mode was later also added to Dance Dance Revolution Extreme and the US version of DDRMAX2. Unlike other recent DDR games, Euromix 2 also does not feature unlocks or an extra stage.

Home version
No exact home counterpart of Dancing Stage Euromix 2 was released, though Dancing Stage Megamix, the first PlayStation 2 Dancing Stage game, contains some of Euromix 2's tracks and uses a similar interface.

Music
Notable songs from this version include:


 * MAX 300: Despite the title, this song plays at 150BPM but scrolls at 300 BPM, surpassing "DROP OUT". Usually considered to be the first 10-foot difficulty song (on Heavy), The Heavy step patterns are fairly simple to many people, but the incredible speed takes a toll on stamina and endurance. The steps briefly pause a minute into the song, offering a slight rest, but they quickly start up again with increased difficulty. The maximum combo of the Heavy steps on Single is 573, a number often used in Konami games for the fact that it is loosely based on a Japanese visual pun. (5 is "go" in Japanese, 7 is "nana" - think "na" - and the kanji symbol for 3 can be pronounced as "mi". Hence, "gonanami," or loosely "Konami.") Certain versions of DDR only count jumps as one step in the combo, rather than two. In these versions, the maximum combo will be 555 rather than 573. The Double stepset is much less dense than Single (only 497 combo), but still earns its foot rating with a six-measure 1/8th note run. The artist listed is Ω (Omega), a pseudonym of Naoki Maeda.


 * SO DEEP (PERFECT SPHERE REMIX): A trance song from Dancemania FantasiA. It is one of the fastest songs (140 BPM) to have a consistently high density of 1/16th notes. When DDRMAX was first released, many players thought the Heavy steps of the song deserved a 10-foot rating, but it only received a 9 when it was rated in DDRMAX2. On DDRMAX's Groove Radar, this song covers all of the chaos, voltage, and stream levels, with a full combo of 498 or 500 steps (depending on whether jumps are counted as one or two steps), which is higher than almost any other DDR stepchart. The combo for the Standard stepchart is also halved, making it 250 steps, as well as the Light stepchart which was halved, giving it 125 steps.