Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA (Arcade)

Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA
Also known as: Dancing Stage SuperNOVA (EU) Developer: Konami Digital Entertainment Publisher: Konami Platform: Arcade (Konami Python 2) Released in JP: July 12, 2006 Released in US: May 15, 2006 Released in EU: April 28, 2006 Released in AS: July 13, 2006 This game has unused areas. This game has unused graphics. This game has regional differences. This game has revisional differences.

To do: Unused Double Expert chart of Beautiful Life (ARIA) The debug menu Investigate the European release Document regional (Dancing Stage?) and revisional differences (see MAME pull request)

Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA is a 2006 release in the Dance Dance Revolution series. Wait, Extreme wasn't the last DDR game ever, and A3 is the latest one?

Oh no! anyway, back to 2006...

NOTE: All data can be found within the partition PC.KNAC_00001.00672.FDH-UA in the American release.

Unused Graphics

Song Banners

The directory DATA\MDB_SN1\TH contains banner files for each of the songs in-game. Among these files, there are banners for songs that are completely unavailable, as well as early variations for already-existing songs.

DAND_TH_E.TM2
An early version of the English banner for the song DanDanDO (The true MAN's Road) The final version can be found inside of the folder ENG, and uses a different font for the title and artist.

Early	Final

DOSE_TH.TM2
A noticeably placeholder variant of the banner for the song DOESN'T REALLY MATTER. The song's ID is also misspelled - the correct spelling would be DOES.

Early	Final

KONO_TH_E.TM2
An early version of the English banner for the song Konoko no nanatsu no oiwaini, which uses a much heavier font for the artist name.

Early	Final

LABA2_TH.TM2
A banner for a cover of La Bamba by Baha Men. While this cover ended up not being used, a different one by LH MUSIC CREATION can be played - its banner is very similar in style to this one.

MAXP_TH.TM2
A banner for the song MAX.(period), which had previously appeared in the Japanese PS2 release of Dance Dance Revolution Extreme. While it goes unused here, the song would officially appear in arcade installments with the 2014 release of DanceDanceRevolution. No other files are present.

MUGE_TH_E.TM2
An early version of the English banner for the song Mugen, with the text being fully capitalized. The final version can be found inside of the folder ENG.

Early	Final

SAN2_TH.TM2
A banner for the song SANA MOLLETE NE ENTE (B.L.T. STYLE), which had previously appeared in several home releases. The song, however, never made a proper appearance in an arcade release. No other files are present.

THEF_TH.TM2
A banner for the licensed song BURNIN' THE FLOOR (MOMO MIX), which was only present in Dance Dance Revolution Extreme and its Japanese PS2 port. No other files are present.

TIKA_TH_E.TM2
An early version of the English banner for the song CHIKARA. The final version can be found inside of the folder ENG, and features a drawing of singer Riyu Kosaka, alongside simplified text effects.

Early	Final

WITE_TH.TM2
A banner for the song White Lovers, which was only present in Dance Dance Revolution Extreme and its Japanese PS2 port, despite being an original song.

Other Graphics

These graphics can be found within DATA\IMAGE.DAT.

Location Test Leftover

Found at offset 0x2049000, compressed under "TGCD". A variant of this graphic also appeared at the Dancing Stage SuperNOVA location test. For the Japanese graphic, the text reads as follows:

Japanese	Translated
ロケテスト版を プレイしてくれて有難う！ 製品版を楽しみに！	Thank you for playing the location test version! Look forward to the product version!

HUD Graphics

All of these are uncompressed TM2 files, and seem to be leftovers from very early versions of the game; some graphics are even taken from Dancing Stage Max, and the very last one comes from the obscure arcade game Dance 86.4: Funky Radio Station!

0x2164000

0x21AB800

0x21ED000

0x222D800

0x2247000

0x2260800

0x2272000

Unused Chart Data

The folder DATA\MDB_SN1\SSQ contains the step files for each of the game's songs. Some of them have new, unused charts, while one is not called at all. Note that this will not cover unused charts that had appeared in previous releases and that are still in the data, which is, for example, the case of the Single Challenge chart for LOVE SHINE.

Challenge-exclusive Songs

Each of the Challenge-exclusive songs from DDRMAX2 have unused Single Beginner charts, created from their existing Single Challenge charts. It is important to note that many of the new songs in SuperNOVA had Beginner charts directly based on their Single Basic charts, so the creation of these for the Challenge-exclusive songs was likely done for testing purposes or was simply an oversight.

Download Unused Beginner Charts File: DDRsnAC-beginnercharts.zip (13,0 KB) (info)

Double Beginner Charts

The songs Brazilian Anthem (BRAZ.SSQ), Brilliant R.E.D (BRED.SSQ), cachaca (CACH.SSQ), Drivin' (DRIV.SSQ), Himawari (HIMA.SSQ), Hunting for you (HUNT.SSQ), MONDO STREET (MOND.SSQ) and rainbow flyer (RBOW.SSQ) have data for Double Beginner charts, despite this difficulty never being officially supported by any arcade release - only being used in the Xbox games starting from Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 2, though only a measy three songs had proper data for them.
It is noteworthy that all of these songs have appeared in the Ultramix/Universe series from Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 3, which was when Double Beginner charts started to become a "norm", with virtually every song having proper data for this difficulty; Brazilian Anthem, Brilliant R.E.D, Himawari and rainbow flyer appeared in that game, with the former song being DLC, Hunting for you and MONDO STREET appeared in Ultramix 4, and cachaca and Drivin‍ '​ appeared in the first Universe game, and that the charts that exist in SuperNOVA match those that are used in those games.
It is also rather curious to note that Ultramix 4 and Universe were released after SuperNOVA. Given that Drivin' had previously appeared in a pre-release screenshot for Ultramix 3, the existence of the Double Beginner charts for the songs that appeared in those two games puts into question when they were supposed to appear first.

Mugen no hikari

The song Mugen no hikari contains two unused chart files, labeled as MUGE_.SSQ and MUGE__.SSQ.
While the former file is only different in the terms of a different sync and lack of a Single Beginner chart, the latter contains placeholder steps that feature a very early draft of the Single Expert chart - while notes are placed, they are all Left arrows. It is also worth noting that the arrows are all placed a measure earlier than they should be. A download for this file, converted to be readable in programs like StepMania and ArrowVortex, is available below.

	Early	Final
Offset	0	-0.013
BPM Values
b0	171.001	171.021
b8		170.994

Download Mugen no hikari (MUGE__ steps) File: DDRsnAC-muge unused.zip (1,83 KB) (info)

White Lovers

WITE.SSQ contains the steps for the aforementioned unused song White Lovers, completely unmodified since its last appearance. This and the banner are the only remaining files for this song; no music data exists.

Regional differences

The Japanese release of Dance Dance Revolution SuperNova is the first DDR game to support the e-Amusement online service. This allowed SuperNova players to save their high scores and settings, such as game options and character selection. This game and its sequel used magnetic stripe cards. Beginning with Dance Dance Revolution X, the DDR series switched to contactless e-Amusement Passes.

The e-Amusement service offered a limited-time event to promote the movie Backdancers!, with the song "Beautiful Life" by ARIA being playable from September 13th to October 11th, 2006. A course with this song was also available. While the data for the song was recovered and can be played in the Japanese version, the song itself is not available at all in other releases.

In Europe, the location test graphic for Dancing Stage SuperNOVA replaces the Japanese text with the following: "COMING SOON IN 2006!" and "DON'T MISS IT !!" The latter text and "2006!" are written in green. The final release of DS SuperNova offers five language options: English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. For non-English languages, however, few aspects are translated. All languages display "MARVELOUS!" with the American spelling, as opposed to "MARVELLOUS!" with the British and Canadian spelling. This limited localization is in contrast to the previous arcade game, Dancing Stage Fusion, and to Dancing Stage games on the PlayStation 2. Two future arcade games, Dance Dance Revolution X and Dance Dance Revolution X2, received proper translations.

Certain songs had their song titles and/or artists, changed/romanized, along with their banners altered in non-Japanese releases.

Japanese	English

Revisional differences

Original release	July 2006 update

The original release of Dancing Stage SuperNOVA and Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA in Europe and North America, respectively, did not include the songs "Flow (True Style)" and the Extra Stage song "Fascination ～eternal love mix～". The song "Flow (True Style)" was added to the Japanese and Asian releases in July 2006. For other regions, a free update disc with a build date of July 25, 2006 adds these songs to the game. "Flow (True Style)" uses the same music and steps as "Flow", but with BPM changes to the charts (from 140 to 280 BPM, while the original "Flow" is a constant 140 BPM) and a bonus Challenge chart. "Fascination ～eternal love mix～" is unavailable in Asia, except for Japan, as the Asian release uses the July 13, 2006 build.

Dancing Stage SuperNOVA originally featured an early recording of "My Only Shining Star", and when playing "PEACE(^^)v" by BeForU, the game displays a dancing character and stage instead of the song's music video. With the update disc, and in non-European releases, a re-recorded version of "My Only Shining Star" is used, and the music video for "PEACE(^^)v" replaces the character and stage.

The July 25, 2006 build of the game also fixes some syncing issues, adds the ability to sort songs by difficulty, and allows for faster scrolling on the song selection screen. Both of these fixes are available in the Japanese and Asian releases, with no need to install updates.

In Japan, Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA received an online update on September 6, 2006. This allowed the game to feature the Backdancers! promotional event, and to unlock boss songs as regular songs.