DJMAX Fever

Overview

DJ MAX Fever is a PSP music/rhythm game, developed by Korean developer Pentavision Entertainment and is published by PM Studios. It was released exclusively in North America on January 21, 2009. It is the first game in the DJ MAX Portable series to see a North American release and was developed specially for it. Fever is a compilation game, featuring songs from both DJ MAX Portable and DJ MAX Portable 2. Despite being released one month after the most recent release of the DJ MAX Portable franchise,

DJ MAX Portable Black Square, DJ MAX Fever retains the gameplay modes and scoring systems from DJ MAX Portable 2. DJ MAX Fever was released on the PlayStation Network as a downloadable title in North America and Europe on January 20, 2010.

Gameplay

DJ MAX Fever is a rhythm game akin to Konami's Beatmania/Drummania/GuitarFreaks franchises. Notes scroll down on a vertical note chart and players must hit each note that crosses the score line to score points. DJ MAX works slightly differently than other games in the rhythm genre, as it focuses on a different kind of scoring technique. Instead of scoring the player's performance with words like "Perfect" or "Great", the player is judged on hit accuracy. A percentage rating is displayed for each successful hit. The higher the percentage, the higher the score value for that note. As players successfully hit notes, a combo builds. Combos are not represented by multipliers but simply by a note streak. The higher the note streak, the higher the end-song score is.

Full Combos and high-combo marathon runs unlock extra content. Carried over from the most recent release of DJ MAX Portable,

Black Square, is the "Special Note". It is a green note that, when missed, halts the background music and will not restart playing until the player hits the next Special Note. If players hit notes with a 100% accuracy rating, a meter, called "Fever", builds up. The Fever meter is the DJ MAX series equivalent of Star Power/Overdrive. Triggering the meter once it's full activates Fever Mode and a 'x2' multiplier is then applied to the score. When the multiplier is active, the meter can be re-filled and re-activated during Fever Mode to extend it and boost the multiplier up to 'x3'. This can be continued to a maximum multiplier of 'x5'. The higher the multiplier is, the shorter the timing window to activate Fever Mode is and the the faster the note chart's scroll speed will be.

4B Mode

4B Mode is the game's Easy difficulty. There are four note lanes assigned to the Left, Up, Triangle and Circle buttons respectively. The Cross button activates Fever Mode. The L and R buttons speed up/down the speed of the note chart's scroll and the Analog Nipple is used to hit "DJ" sections of the track.

5B Mode

5B Mode is the game's Medium difficulty. There are five note lanes with lanes 1, 2, 4 and 5 being aassigned to the Left, Up, Triangle and Circle buttons, in that order. Lane 3 is assigned to both the Right and Square button. The 3rd lane will usually consist of single notes but, on occasion, will have streams of notes that can be passed by rapidly hitting the Right and Square buttons alternatively. The Cross button activates Fever Mode. The L and R buttons speed up/down the speed of the note chart's scroll and the Analog Nipple is used to hit "DJ" sections of the track.

6B Mode

6B Mode is the game's Hard difficulty. There are six note lanes assigned to the Left, Up, Right, Square, Triangle and Circle buttons respectively. The Cross button activates Fever Mode. The L and R buttons speed up/down the speed of the note chart's scroll and the Analog Nipple is used to hit "DJ" sections of the track.

8B Mode

8B Mode is the game's Expert difficulty. There are six note lanes assigned to the Left, Up, Right, Square, Triangle and Circle button respectively. There is two extra note lanes that overlap, however. These are the L and R note lanes. L and R notes are shown as red rectangles with the appropriate button's symbol and are displayed behind regular notes. The Cross button activates Fever Mode. The L and R buttons speed up/down the speed of the note chart's scroll and the Analog Nipple is used to hit "DJ" sections of the track. 8B Mode is locked from the get-go and must be unlocked by playing the game for a certain amount of time.

Gears, Effects and Characters

Like previous entries in the franchise, DJ MAX Fever has equipable and unlockable options to customize the in-game UI. These break down into several categories and affect the player's performance and song presentation in various ways. Gears, characters and note skins can be unlocked but must then be purchased using in-game gold that is earned by playing songs or completing missions.

Gear

The Gear is the game's note chart, as displayed in the picture to the right. Different kinds of Gears can be unlocked by playing through the game and each have their own special effects. For Gears, the main effect is increased Health Meter . Secondary effects include Gold boosts, EXP boosts or a combination of both.

Notes

Notes are the musical notes that fall from the top of the chart. Notes can be unlocked by playing through the game and can have special effects. For Notes, the main effect is it's appearance. Most notes will retain the rectangular, default shape while others will be different shapes altogether, such as hearts or stars. The secondary effects are Gold and EXP boosts as well as Fever Meter boosts. Fever boosts allow the player to start with a set amount of their Fever meter filled.

Characters

Characters are customizable avatars that are displayed in very few areas of the game. They are displayed in the Customization menu and in Ad-Hoc multiplayer matches as your avatar. Ultimately, their sole purpose is to add extra effects. Like Gears and Notes, these are unlocked by playing through the game and can be purchased with Gold. The effects on characters are different, however. While few still have Gold and EXP boosts, most characters will effects like Tech XX, Auto X or FEVER XX. The full breakdown of effects can be found below. Character effects are much more useful for achieving high scores as opposed to earning extra rewards or keeping you from croaking halfway through a song.

Effectors and Equip Effects

Effectors

• Speed: Speed affects the scroll speed of the notes during gameplay. The default speed is, obviously, x1. The different settings are x0.5, x2, x2.5, x3, x3.5, x4, x4.5 and x5.
• Fader: Fader is an effect that will hide areas of the gear as notes scroll down. Equipping these makes songs considerably more difficult. The different effects are:

  Effector Name	Description
  Top	The notes are faded at the top of the gear and fade in past the halfway point of the gear's chart area.
  Bottom	The notes scroll down normally and fade out past the halfway point of the gear's chart area.
  Blink	The notes repeatedly fade in and out, creating a blinking effect.
  Invisible	The notes are entirely invisible for the duration of the song. Song memorization is required to play on this effector.

• Key: Key affects the notes' button layouts. They will randomly change order (save for the mirror effect) which, in essence, makes the game give you entirely new charts on each playthrough. The list of effects are:

  Effector Name	Description
  Mirror	Reverses the button layout. This means L, U, Triangle, Circle would become Circle, Triangle, U, L.
  Random	Randomizes notes for the entire chart based on each column.
  Max Random	Randomizes notes for the entire chart based on each note. This means the entire track will be entirely different, sometimes combining the same note into multiple columns.

• Chaos: Chaos affects the scroll speed in a continuously changing manner. This is the hardest effector to play on. The effects are as follow:

  Effector Name	Description
  W	Alters the speed from x1 to x1.5, then back to x1 repeatedly.
  Slide Up	Starts at x1, then will continue to increase in speed in x0.5 jumps as your combo progresses. Once you miss a note, it resets to 0 and starts over. There is no limit to how fast the speed can go.
  Slide Down	Starts and x1, then will increase in speed to x1.5. As your combo progresses, the speed will gradually decrease in x0.5 increments and will reset once a note is missed. There is no limit to how slow the speed can go.
  X	This effector is glitched. It makes the song run at default (x1) speed.

Equip Effects

• Auto: Automatically corrects a missed note to a MAX 1% hit to avoid breaking a combo. The variable amount assigned to Auto is the amount of misses given to the player during one song.
• DefUp: A glitched effect. It is supposed to allow the player to receive less damage when missing a note but will, instead, significantly increase the damage taken. The variable percentage is the amount of extra damage done to the player.
• Exp: A slightly glitched effect and increases the amount of Exp earned at the end of a song. The variable percentage is an erronious amount of extra Exp the player is supposed to earn. Instead, the player will earn a little less than what is written.
• Fever: Fills up the Fever Meter at the start of a song by the variable amount assigned to the effect.
• Gold: A glitched effect that is supposed to increase the amount of Gold earned at the end of a song. Instead, only a small fraction of the displayed variable percentage is earned.
• Tech: Refills the player's health meter on each note hit with a MAX 100% rating.

Game Modes

DJ MAX Fever has a variety of game modes to play through, which are as follow:

• 4B Mode: Standard, 3-round high score mode. It is played in 4B mode, the Beginner setting.
• 5B Mode: Standard, 3-round high score mode. It is played in 5B mode, the Intermediate setting.
• 6B Mode: Standard, 3-round high score mode. It is played in 6B mode, the Advanced setting.
• 8B Mode: Standard, 3-round high score mode. It is played in 8B mode, the Expert setting.
• Free Style Mode: An unlimited-round high score mode. Players can switch between difficulty settings at will and can link combos from one song to another to build combos at insanely high counts.
• Xtreme Challenge Mode: A mission-like mode. Players are given a list of songs to beat with certain conditions to clear the mission, such as "Score 1,000,000 points", "Achieve a total MAX rating of 95%" or "Activate Fever x5". These conditions can be combined later on to make for extremely challenging missions.

DJ MAX Fever also includes a variety of other menu options, which are as follow:

• DJ MAX Portable: The main game.
• Network Battle: Online multiplayer. Players can connect to another friend through Ad-Hoc play and compete for high scores.
• Collection: An Unlockables gallery. Here, players can view their completion percentage, unlocked background/loading screen images, movies and discs.
• MV Edition: A music video gallery. Players can view the background videos for in-game songs. Most of these are locked and are unlocked by playing through the game.
• OST: A music player. Players can listen to the game's soundtrack, be it gameplay versions of the tracks or unlockable, extended versions of songs.

Soundtrack List

DJ MAX Fever Changes, Additions and Differences

Despite being a compilation of two previous entries in the DJ MAX franchise, DJ MAX Fever holds a number of additions and changes. Some are to the game's benefit while others are localization cuts. They are as follow:

• Link Disc mode removed. (This was a mode in DMP2 that allowed players to play DMP1 songs with DMP2's gameplay enhancements.)
• Album Mode has been removed, originally from DMP2.
• Players can get past Level 30 on the Easy difficulty. DJ MAX Portable 2 had a level cap if the player didn't increase their difficulty setting.
• Easy difficulty score penalties are decreased.
• The Special Note was added into Fever from DJ MAX Portable Black Square.
• The Auto-Correct system was added from DJ MAX Portable Black Square.
• Missions in Xtreme Challenge mode have decreased difficulty settings from DJ MAX Portable 2.

There are also a, unfortunately, numerous amount of localization errors. Improper titles for unlocked images, songs and videos as well as technical errors in loading screens. (The technical errors don't affect the game. They are cosmetic in nature.)