To take advantage of a ready-made Beatmania home audience, EZ2DJ finds new life as DJ Max Portable on the PSP. Konami won't be porting BMIIDX to the PSP anytime soon so kudos to Pentavision for providing a slick clone to hook Beatmania jockeys on the go. After viewing the game intro, scrolling through the menu, and playing a few games, DJ Max Portable pretty much matches recent Beatmania IIDX efforts in terms of visual gloss, sharp presentation, and pop sensibilities. None of the songs will be familiar to you unless you're savvy to the PC version of DJ Max but the genres are the same - techno, pop, rap, hard rock, r&b, slow jams, fusion, etc.

View the back cover and screenshots on the main NCSX website.

Glossy Introduction
In the intro to the game, a blonde girl is standing inside a train and bopping to the music in her portable MP3 player, oblivious to the world. The train steams into a station and the doors open - blonde girl blossoms out the doors with a waft of wind. While at school, she daydreams and the intro shows other attractive music lovers leaving the train, in nondescript rooms, and other locales. Everyone appears to be headed to a jam session but it's only a fantasy. At the imaginary jam session, the blonde girl transforms like Wonder Woman into a mini-skirt, bikini-wearing songstress who dazzles the rocking crowd. The other citizens form her band with two wielding axes while another massages a synth. After the concert, the blonde girl's back to reality and she's on a sidewalk with the rabble. A bus passes, she looks up and walks. The text, "Make Your Own Music World." appears and fades.

DJ Max Portable Game
After the intro, the title screen appears and an electric blue whirlwind spins around the DJ Max logo. Eye candy galore. By pressing right on the D-pad, the following options appear: PORTABLE / OST / M/V CLIPs. Click on the PORTABLE option and the following modes are available:

PORTABLE
/ Rookie DJing - 4 button game play where LEFT, UP, TRIANGLE, and CIRCLE are used. Basically, if you've never played PSP DJMax, this mode is requisite to practice and train your brain so that it's wired properly for the game. There are 10 songs at the outset in this mode with difficulty ratings from 1 to 4 but once you complete one song, 10 new songs replace the original 10. There are three songs (Memory of Beach, Luv Flow, End of the Moonlight) that may be played in Hard Style Mode which is activated by selecting the song and then pressing up or down on the D-pad until the HARD STYLE indicator on the upper left corner lights up.

/ Pro DJing - 6 button game play which adds the RIGHT and SQUARE buttons to the mix. The difficulty of the game ramps up due to the buttons involved and also the amount of cues that drop. At 0.5 speed, the cues fall in such a heavy pitter-patter that most novices who didn't practice properly in Rookie mode will be destroyed in 20-25 seconds. That's right, 20 seconds. At 5X speed, it's actually slightly easier because while the cues drop at blazing speed, they're not as plentiful and the buttons may be mapped out in your brain as the cues hurtle downwards. The song list contains 11 tracks with difficulty ratings from 1 to 7 (Ray of Illuminati) and just about every song has a HARD STYLE variant while two songs also have an MX STYLE variant if you want to be blown out in a few seconds.

/ Master DJing - 4 or 6 button mode which is selectable by the player (the top option is 4-button mode, second option is 6 button). Eight button mode is unlockable but not available to the beginner. This fresh madness takes place at a virtual Club where four songs are knocked out in quick succession. The unlocked clubs at the outset are Temple of Black Music (Black Hitz), Club 420 (Electronic Sound Voyage), Iridium, Purple Lounge (Jazz Funk Music Lounge), Club Shake (Dance Music), Flora (Soft Pop Compilation), Under Attack (The Stage of Hard Beat Music), IZ (Mid-Level Music Club), Club N (High Level Music Club), and eight other clubs that require unlocking.

/ Freestyle - Play 4 button or 6 button mode with 39 songs and the usual Effector Select options. There's a randomizer option for the song as well if you have no preference. Think of it as nonstop mode. The amount of cues the fall down at 0.5 speed is thicker than anything in Beatmania. Bump the speed up to 3X and things get a little more manageable but the game potentially degrades into a button mashing fest as your brain commands your thumbs to move in tune to the cues but most player will fall behind and just tap indiscriminately on the PSP. We're looking forwards to the "Master Play" DVD for this game so we can check out how the elite play this game.

/ Gallery - If you've played well, bonuses will be added to the Disc Collection, Image Gallery, and Media Gallery. A Collecting Rate percentage meter is located on the upper right corner of the screen to keep you updated on how much further you've got to go.

/ Ranking Chart - The top ten scores for every game mode are recorded and stored. If you've never made the leaderboard, all of the default DJ names tagged up are "DJMAXPTB."

/ Option - Move the game display, toggle sound to speakers or earphones, toggle between three button configurations where the L+R triggers may be optioned to Speed Down and Speed Up respectively or used to trigger the Blue Note cues, and Save Data to memory stick.

OST MODE
All 58 songs in the game may be listened to in their entirety. The first virtual disc contains 29 tracks which you may flip through and the other 29 songs are on another virtual disc which are flipped between by pressing the L or R trigger. To listen to all of the songs, press the SQUARE button and the PSP will become a little jukebox which plays the songs randomly. Songs to check out: Light House by xxdbxx, Bright Dream by M2U, Temptation by S-TRO, Chrono Breakers by NieN, FunkyChups by Forte Escape, KUDA by Gonzo, Fear by ???, Minimal Life by Earbreaker, SIN by ESTi, and Hamsin by makou.

Note that many of the songs are in English and the manual devotes a good chunk of its pages to the music and the lyrics for many songs. However, some of the songs are sung in a nigh unintelligible English pronunciation so the English lyrics help... Basically, DJMax contains an energetic mix that would be welcome in any techno club in London or New York.

M/V CLIPS
Since you'll never get to see the 39 animated videos in the game while you're concentrating on the cues, this is your chance to watch every video in wide screen splendor. Everything is unlocked from the start so there's nothing to unlock or scramble around for. After watching the SIN video this morning, we're guessing that it's a stylized interpretation of the age old werewolf story but we don't understand the surfeit of chrysanthemums. The KUDA video is slick but it might prompt Konami to file another lawsuit for infringement on their Metal Gear property. We clicked on the JBG video by mistake, thinking it was Alizee's song but it's a rap fest with a hooded gangsta and a graffiti spraying artist. Occasionally, speakers may be seen booming in the background.

NCS Game Test
To start a game, press the O button to proceed or the X button to return to the title screen. In the Rookie DJing mode which is aimed squarely at novice players, ten songs may be selected at the outset but 10 more songs are opened after completing 1 song - push the d-pad left and right to flip between the attractive disc covers. The song from the animated introduction by Forte Escape is selectable as track 01. While flipping through the tracks, about 30 seconds of each highlighted song will play before looping. We tested the game with the first song. DJ Max requires that you rewire your brain so that your thumbs move in time to the cues on screen. The cues are apportioned on the screen in the following manner:

4 button mode: LEFT | UP | TRIANGLE | O BUTTON
6 button mode: LEFT | UP | RIGHT | SQUARE | TRIANGLE | O BUTTON

It's intuitive to focus your mind and fingers on the relevant PSP d-pad and face buttons and only flip between them. However, as the cues rain down steadily, you might be perturbed if your brain can't translate the cues quickly enough to move your thumbs to the proper button pushes.

If you botch too many cues and drop your energy bar to zilch, a big red "GAME OVER" crashes on screen along with "U NEED MORE PRACTICE." At this point, you may hang your head in shame or highlight RESTART and try to earn some credibility once again. Your HP is indicated by a rainbow colored bar on the left side of the active screen. Each time you miss a cue, it drops down a little lower. Miss an entire stream of cues and you're booted out of the game. To re-energize your health bar, performing lengthy combos boosts it up.

If you hit the cues perfectly, you'll earn a MAX 100% but if you're too late or too early, you'll get a MAX 30% or another percentage depending on your hit. Even if you get a MAX 1%, your combo streak register keeps tacking on your combo count which is fairly lenient for an otherwise very demanding game. If you botch a cue entirely, you'll get hit with a BREAK and your combo chain resets to 0.

There are Effector Select options in the mode screen which you may access by pressing the TRIANGLE button. The Speed of the cues may be toggled to 0.5, 1.5, x2, 2.5, x3, 3.5, x4, 4.5, x5 and a Fader may be toggled as well as a Key Mirror. At slow speeds, there's more cues that drop but at x5 speed, the cues are more sparse although they're breathtakingly fast.

To scale into the game, NCS recommends playing a few sessions of Rookie DJing to adapt to the 4-button control. The game may be played with all thumbs or if you're in an experimental state of mind, lay the PSP flat on a table and use your thumb and index fingers on both hands to tap the L, U, TRIANGLE, and CIRCLE buttons to match the rain of cues as they hit the base line. The gist is exactly the same as Beatmania but once the game starts, the screen is divided into 2 portions - 1/3 of the screen is your play area and the other 2/3 shows a music video - since you won't get to see any of the action on the video when concentrating on the cues, they're really there to provide flashy lights and blips for your peripheral vision.

DJ Max Portable's Easy Style songs (Difficulty 1-4) are relatively breezy to plow through once your fingers are sufficiently trained but the difficulty level reaches nigh unmanageable proportions once you test the Hard Style and MX Style songs (Difficulty 4-10 - yes, there are Easy Style and Hard Style Difficulty 4 songs).

After each stage is cleared, you're ranked on your MAX, BREAK, and COMBO counts as well as your percentage of hits. A letter grade is also assigned such as A or B+.

Closing thoughts
DJ Max Portable is unforgiving for the most part. Botch the cues early on and you're abruptly booted out of the game. The Bemani elite will take the difficulty level in stride, prosper from their talent, and likely unlock ~80% of the game's secrets. Weekend warriors will probably not even see 5% of the unlockables. That said, if Pentavision releases a sequel to the game, NCS has some suggestions:

1) Include a Practice Mode where a player can test their skills without being kicked out every 10-30 seconds in the normal modes of the game. Give the option of unlimited health in Practice Mode. When you slam a "U NEED MORE PRACTICE" in our collective faces without any recourse, it hurts.

2) Incorporate an online mode with side by side challenges for up to three players since the active game screen takes up 1/3 of the PSP screen and three players can be accommodated.

3) Love the music but maybe include some licensed Euro-beats or talent from other parts of Asia in the next volume?

4) Add an option to use the analog nub to trigger the 4-button cues as well as a button re-map option. Failing that, a miniature USB DJ deck that's a true to scale rip-off of Konami's PS2 controller. You've already infringed on their Beatmania IP, so might as well go for broke...

Korean PSP games will play on USA and Japanese PSP handhelds - there is no region protection on PSP game software.

This document is ©NCSX 2006. All rights reserved. No reproduction in whole or in part of this document may be made without express written consent of National Console Support, Inc.