User:EXonyte/Pump It Up

Pump It Up is a music video game developed by Andamiro, a Korean coin-operated games producer. It is commonly abbreviated as PIU. Similar to Konami's Dance Dance Revolution play style, you use your feet to step on arrows according to the music.

Gameplay
While the game's interface has changed as new versions were released, the basic remains: you have a pad connected to the machine. The machine is one of five models: SD (oldest cabinet, 29" screen), DX (began production with 3rd O.B.G with massive 51" projection screen), DX International version (began production with Pump it Up Premiere with a switch to change from 220v or 110v), SX (which appeared with the release of PREX, like the SD model but with one sub woofer in the center and a coin door on each side of the machine, also has a switch for 220v or 110v and also has improved pads), and GX (only current model in production, with new hardware, and 33" screen). The pad connected to the machine, which has had some changes in design with each model (improvements such as less recessed panels and smaller screw that are flat instead of rounded on older machines and rubber washers to keep the sensors working longer), is composed of 5 buttons (two red ones on the corners closest to the cabinet, two blue ones on the corners farthest to the cabinet, and a yellow one in the middle of them). These are normally called arrows because of their drawings and representation on screen–the middle button shows a drawing of two feet, but for simplicity is also called an arrow by players –. On the screen you'll see a fixed line on the top of the screen, with gray arrows on the same shape as those drawn in the pad. As the song plays, colored arrows will appear on the bottom of the screen and go up under the same column of their gray counterparts. When a colored arrow reaches the fixed arrows on the top, you must hit its corresponding button on the pad.

When you hit an arrow, a small word pops on screen, depending on your accuracy. From best to worst, the ratings are PERFECT, GREAT, GOOD and BAD. If you miss an arrow entirely or press it earlier or later than the threshold for a BAD, you get a MISS. The time window for each of these ratings varies across different versions and on the difficulty setting set by the machine operator.

The time window for each of the ratings can be pre-adjusted on each of the machines, and in all versions is divided into three difficulty groups, namely Easy, Normal and Hard. There is also a Stage Break system: in an event of missing a pre-designated amount steps in a row, it cuts off and you don't finish the stage or your game. When turned off, you need a 51-miss combo for the game to end automatically.

Difficulty
Songs are ranked by difficulty levels, and a song almost always has more than one difficulty (one for each game mode in which it is listed).

Before Exceed—more information about game versions is available in the Releases section—was released, the difficulty for all game modes ranged from 1 to 10, with the exception of "Vook", a song introduced on The Premiere 2, which was level 12 on Double mode. These difficulty ratings were only useful with respect to other songs in the same mode: a level 5 Crazy song will likely be easier than a Crazy song ranked 8, but is probably more difficult than a 7 on Hard. With Exceed&#39;s debut, all levels were reworked, in a unified range from 1 to 15 for Crazy mode and ranging as high as 20 for Nightmare mode. The rating system was again slightly reworked for the upper level songs with Exceed 2's release, raising the range to 20 for Crazy and going even higher for Nightmare mode, with a high of 22. Exceed 2 also added the infamous "??" rating for the truly top-tier songs. However, the difficulty ratings are by nature subjective, so are not always deemed accurate.

The way the difficulty rating appears on screen also varies a bit, depending on the version's interface: on The Premiere, The PREX, The Premiere 2, Exceed and Exceed 2, the difficulty is indicated by a natural number, like "3" or "8"; on all other versions, they are indicated by a line of circles, with as many circles as the level of the song.

After the release of PIU Zero, the difficulty has been scaled from 1 to beyond 20, with the highest one now being 23. This number is sure to be passed in upcoming releases, and some unrated songs are arguably more difficult than the level 23. These include some of the "another step" songs, which are all given a level of "??".

Combos
When you successfully hit several consecutive arrows, you get a combo. If you get 4 or more consecutive arrows, the game will display, right below the accuracy rating, a counter informing how many consecutive steps you've hit.

Only PERFECTs and GREATs count for combos. Any other ratings will stop your combo. On some newer versions, though, a GOOD won't break your combo (but won't increase it either).

The greatest combo you make in a song is called max combo, and when you keep your combo going for the whole song it is called a full combo. If you manage to complete a song with a full combo consisting of only PERFECT steps, it is called a full perfect combo or FPC.

Jumps
Sometimes two arrows may go up side-by-side. When that happens, you must hit both of them at the same time, or you'll get a MISS. Because of the movement players most often make to hit those arrows, they are called jumps.

On the harder songs, three arrows or more may go up at once. In such cases, players normally try to hit two pad buttons with a single foot, or stoop and use their hands and/or knees to help.

Unlike in newer versions of DDR, jumps do not count as several points for the combo counter.

The versions up to The O.B.G. SE, however, worked on jumps differently: each arrow was independent, meaning hitting only one arrow of a two-arrow jump would count as a non-MISS (a PERFECT, for example) followed by a MISS, and hitting both could increase your combo by two. This behavior resembles Beatmania and other rhythm games, as well as Dance Dance Revolution's Solo series. Multi-arrow steps were introduced first in Pump It Up, on the first release of the game in 1999.

Hold notes
The Extra, Exceed, and Premiere 3 versions as well as the Prex series also feature another kind of arrow on screen, normally called hold note, freeze note (from DDR) or long note. These arrows look like stretched versions of the common arrows. Their corresponding button must be held until the whole arrow passes through the gray arrows on the top. If one were to let go of the note, however, one can resume holding it regardless of how long the note wasn't held for (unlike DDR and other similar games, where letting go of a note for a long enough time would count the note as a MISS).

For each half-beat or quarter-beat—the duration depends on the game version and song "tick count"—a hold note is held, a PERFECT is scored; if it is not held, a MISS is counted.

Note: Konami's Dance Dance Revolution used hold notes after Pump It Up used after Extra version. Ez2DJ was the first arcade beat/music game to introduce long (hold) notes.

Modifiers
Since the first release, all game modes accept modifiers which are enabled by using special codes. The effects vary from speeding arrows up to making them fade as they go up, or making them appear in random places instead of their pre-defined column (while still being on the same beat).

Most players, after a starting period, get used to applying the modifiers to make arrows faster, which makes them more spaced. This is a matter of personal preferences, but the Pump It Up culture generally favors speedy arrows (requiring faster recognition of movements).

Final rating
When a song is cleared, a results screen appears, which shows how many PERFECTs, GREATs, GOODs, BADs and MISSes were made, and the max combo. Then a final rating is given, which may be S, A, B, C, D, or F. An S means that no MISSes were made, while an F means a fail, and generally the player can't proceed to play another song.

Bonus stage
If all stages are cleared with an A or an S the player will be able to choose an extra song to play. This is called the bonus stage.

From a bonus stage, it is not possible to get another bonus stage.

Game modes
Normal (Easy)

On a few versions called Easy, but most often Normal, this is the mode for beginners. Arrows hardly ever are off-beat, and jumps normally have no other arrows close to them, so players can understand them and get prepared in time.

The difficulty for this mode ranges from levels 1 to 7.

Hard

Almost all songs have off-beat arrows, especially 8th notes (half-beat). 16th-notes are infrequent.

The difficulty for this mode normally ranges from 3 to 8, with a few exceptions ranging from 2 to 10.

Crazy

The hardest single mode. All songs have half-beat notes, and most also have 16th or 24th notes.

The difficulty for this mode, until Exceed was released, ranged from 1 to 10; now, however, all levels were reworked, and this mode now ranges from 7 onwards, now stretching to 21 with Zero's release.

Division

In this mode the player(s) are presented with choice making sections during a song which give them choices to change the mode at the point (each side being separate):
 * G–Groove Style: a sort of step chart for freestyling; most commonly resembles hard mode.
 * W–Wild Style: a harder set of steps, resembles Hard mode and Crazy mode depending on the song—it can also get more difficult than crazy if only Ws are pressed on certain songs.

If no choice is made during the choice making section the player who missed the choice making point is set to normal mode. It should also be noted that the songs have no set difficulty levels and instead the level is displayed as "??" due to the fact you can change the difficulty. Until Zero, this was the only way to have separate difficulties for two players on PIU, and was only present on Rebirth and Premiere 2. Andamiro only made 23 songs available on this mode, one of which seemed unfinished—A Prison Without Bars.

Freestyle (Double)

Previously called Double, but since The Prex 3 called Freestyle. In this mode, a single player uses both pads, having a total of 10 steps to hit. Most songs here are very similar to their Hard counterparts, with the additional challenge of having to move across both pads.

The difficulty for this mode normally ranges from 3 to 8, with a few exceptions ranging from 1 to 12, or more. Vook and Love is a Danger Zone 2 are the extreme exceptions, with ratings of 15 and 18 respectively.

Nightmare

Introduced in The Prex 3, Nightmare is a harder Double mode. It is deemed as the ultimate challenge Pump it Up has to offer.

In The Prex 3, all Nightmare songs are of level 99 (which just shows up as a horizontal line of skulls going from one side of the screen to the other), but on Exceed the songs have actual difficulties and can go from 8 to 20.

In Exceed 2, difficulties for Nightmare mode went up to "21", "22" and "??".

In Pump it Up: Zero, the song Love is a Danger Zone 2 has been rated at "23".

Extra Expert (XX)

Instead of featuring the traditional Crazy mode, the Extra version had the Extra Expert, where songs had a special difficulty rating. Other versions use the same steps from this mode in their Crazy mode.

One unique characteristic, though, is that songs have both single and double steps listed in this mode. The Extra Expert Double steps were, like the later-introduced Nightmare steps, harder than the original Double steps. However, these step sequences are not available in any other release–even the songs that already had XX Double steps in Extra got brand new sequences for their Nightmare versions.

The difficulty in this mode ranges from "1st Level" to "5th Level", with one song ("Can Can") being of a 6th "Final Level".

Half-Double

In this mode, a single player stays in the center of both pads and uses the inner six arrows to play: the center and rightmost arrows from the left pad, and the center and leftmost arrows from the right pad.

The difficulty in this mode ranges from 2 to 10. This mode was present in Rebirth, Premiere 2, Premiere 3, and Prex 3.

Nonstop Remix

This mode first appeared in Korean releases, and featured longer songs normally mixing two or three songs from artists featured in other songs of the game (most of the mixed songs also were part of the game). As the songs are longer, many people consider them also more tiring.

Just like Extra Expert, this mode also features single and double versions of each song.

Playing those songs you won't be able to play as many songs as in other modes, though–for example, in Extra a nonstop remix in single mode counts as two songs being played (while, for some reason, the double mode remixes still only count as one).

The difficulty in this mode ranges from 4 to 7, with an exception at level 9.

Nonstop Remixes later made a return in the Exceed 2 version, and are now graded on the same 1-20 scale as the rest of the songs, despite having higher numbers than certain stepcharts might normally have. Also, all the remixes in Exceed 2 now have Crazy, and occasional Nightmare, modes of play, a first in the series.

Battle Mode

In this game mode, two players compete on two songs in hard mode and a song in crazy mode. The winner for each song is the player who gets the highest score.

On versions up to The Premiere, a player could "attack" (cause the effect of a modifier, like speed up or vanish) to the opponent's scrolling arrows by accumulating a combo and then breaking it. The effect depended on the combo accumulated by the attacker. On The Prex and Extra this attacking feature was removed. Recently released Exceed 2 brought it back in a whole new "station" as it was referred to. There would be extra bonus arrows containing power ups activated by action steps that come up later which launches the attack. The battle could be decided in only 1 song in most cases.

Stage Break does not affect this mode.

Combo Battle Mode

In this mode the players rack up combos and the highest combo count wins. The only requirement to win is to get a higher max combo.

This mode was introduced in The Premiere 2/Rebirth.

Hybrid Battle Mode

Introduced in PIU Exceed 2. Players could select one NSR for the price of one player (equivalent of 2 songs) and battle each other using icons that would scroll up to the indicators as well. Different icons represented different attacks... players could also just play plain Hybrid. The step charts change depending on how well the players are doing.

Mission Mode

Introduced in PIU Zero, this mode is basically clearing songs that are modified as "Missions" and more are unlocked after finishing other missions. There are about 30 missions. Clearing them will give reward like hidden songs, skin, and other modes. Each mission is divided into three songs, or stages, and are ranked in difficulty by the number of stars shown. If a song is failed, the player is also given an option to continue the mission and attempt the stage again.

Another Step

Introduced in PIU Zero, this mode has songs which have alternate stepcharts. While frequently harder, some Another stepcharts can actually be easier depending on the song. Another steps are only playable in one remix from Exceed 2, while Zero devotes an entire Channel to Another, which includes several regular songs from the game. The songs in it and even the channel itself have to be unlocked little by little by playtime and clearing missions.

Home versions
Andamiro eventually released home versions of the arcade game. These versions are designed to run on PCs, coming with a CD containing the game and a special dance mat, with arrows of the same size as the arcade's pads.

On Korean versions, the mat is connected through the PS/2 port, and comes with an adapter to share it with the keyboard; on international versions, the mat uses a USB plug.

PIU can be simulated by programs such as Kick It Up and StepMania.

On November 11, 2004, Andamiro released the Korean version of Pump It Up: Exceed on the PlayStation 2, which includes most of the songs from the arcade Exceed version. You must have a Japanese/Asian PS2 to play. An American version of the game was released on August 31, 2005 for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 under the title Pump It Up!: Exceed SE. This version includes most of the songs from the Korean PS2 version, as well as arcade songs unavailable in the Korean version. In addition, six US licensed songs were also included.

The songs
The songs used in Pump It Up are normally Pop songs or specially-produced music, created by a musical division of Andamiro. As of Pop, the first versions featured several K-Pop artists, like Baby V.O.X., Fin. K.L. and S.E.S.. As the game's popularity grew on other countries, international Pop and Latin Pop began to appear.

A special musical division of Andamiro, called Banya, is in charge of making new songs targeted especially for the game. Of all songs released until the Exceed version (202, not counting the nonstop remixes), there are 60 songs by Banya (about 30% of the total), while no other artist has more than 5 songs.

As on Dance Dance Revolution, songs are typically between one and two minutes, with nonstop remixes (like DDR's long versions) around three minutes long.