DJMAX Portable: Clazziquai Edition

Overview

DJ MAX Portable Clazziquai Edition is the successor to the two previous "Portable" entries in the DJ MAX franchise, taking the series in a new direction. While Clazziquai Edition is mostly aimed towards a more casual audience of players, it makes smart new enhancements to the traditional DJ MAX Portable formula which have since been used in games like DJ MAX Fever and it's sister game, DJ MAX Portable Black Square.

Both DJ MAX Portable Clazziquai and Black Square were released as part of Pentavision Entertainment's 2008 METRO Project. Black Square was released 2 months later as the "hardcore" offering for long-time fans of the series.

Clazziquai

Clazziquai is a Korean pop/electro/acid-jazz music group. The group's producer, DJ Clazzi, is credited as the artist in the game, although the entire group is involved. It consists of DJ Clazzi and singers Alex Chu and Horan. All of the songs found within Clazziquai Edition can also be found on the band's mini-album,

Metrotronics, released in 2008 under the "Clazziquai Project" name. It was an affiliated production with Pentavision for the publisher's METRO Project.

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, however, 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 the 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. 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.

Difficulty Levels

2B Mode (Intro Mode)

2B Mode uses the Left button on the D-Pad and the Circle button for music notes. This is the beginner mode, aimed at newcomers to the franchise and a more inviting way to play for casual players/fans of Clazziquai.

4B Mode (Easy Mode)

4B Mode uses the Left and Up buttons on the D-Pad as well as the Triangle and Circle buttons for music notes.

4BFX Mode (FX Mode)

4BFX Mode uses the Left and Up buttons on the D-Pad, the Triangle and Circle buttons as well as the L and R shoulder buttons for music notes.

5B Mode (Normal Mode)

5B Mode uses the Left, Up and Right buttons on the D-Pad as well as the Square, Triangle and Circle buttons for music notes. However, the Right and Square buttons activate the same note column, allowing for easier input when the player is faced with streams of notes.

6B Mode (Hard Mode)

6B Mode uses the Left, Up and Right buttons on the D-Pad as well as the Square, Triangle and Circle buttons for music notes. Unlike 5B Mode, the Right and Square buttons have their own, separate note columns.

Effectors, Notes, Characters and Gears

Returning from previous games are customizable Notes, Gears and Characters. However, these have all been streamlined into a single "Equipment" menu, which you can access at anytime within menus by pressing Square. Past games would allow you to change your Character (an avatar representing your DJ in menus, Club Tour or in multiplayer), Gear (The Note field) and Notes with each different option having some sort of effect on gameplay. Effects can vary from things like gold multipliers (Increases the money you earn at the end of a song), Auto X (Adjusts a miss to a 1% accuracy hit to avoid breaking a combo, with the X variable changing the amount of consecutive misses allowed), HP 10 (Increases your health meter) and various other effects. These have all been removed and packed into a single "Effector" option in the Equipment menus. 4 boxes are in said option, each being the effectors for the Fever meter, HP, Auto-Hit and Note effects. Characters, Notes and Gears are still completely customizable. However, they are only for appearance purposes only.

Combos

Combos have been a large part of DJ MAX games, going to lengths of having new tracks, images, music videos or OST tracks unlock as you hit a certain combo number. Combos carry over from song to song in regular gameplay modes that, in modes like Free Mode, can allow players to reach combos of 10,000, 80,000, 100,000 notes.

Game Modes

Club Tour

Club Mode is a new addition to the series, later adapted by Black Square. You'll start in the opening town with 4 clubs for you to perform in. There are 3 different types of clubs. There's Music Clubs (which have you play individual songs), Repertory Clubs (Which have you play set playlists) and Mission Clubs, having other DJs to play against instead of song playlists. Each DJ will either have a specific goal for defeat (i.e.: Activate Fever x4, Score 600,000 on each song) or have an effector on top of a goal (i.e.: Score 800,000 with the note line hidden). There are 4-5 clubs in each Area and they unlock as you clear roughly 85% the previous area. Each area will have a different theme (Rock, Jazz, Techno, etc.) and drastically increase in difficulty as you progress, starting out from 2B Mode.

Arcade Mode

Arcade Mode is a more traditional, eastern music-game mode. There are 3 stages to play through, each stage having it's own separate playlist of songs. The playlist will vary on which button configuration you choose at the beginning, as some songs are exclusive to certain schemes. You are scored on your performance for each song and all is tallied up into a total, final score at the end of the 3rd song.

Free Mode

Within the control scheme options at the start of Arcade Mode is the "Free Mode" option.

Free mode unlocks all songs at once (songs exclusive to control schemes stay so, however) and allows you to switch between each control scheme on the fly (in song selection menus, not during gameplay). Free Mode's biggest use is either for a quick play of a favorite song or to build up combos.

Network Battle

Network Battle is Clazziquai Edition's multiplayer. There are two options: Score Match and Handicap Match, the equivalent of Ranked and Player Match. Network Battle can only be played through local Ad-Hoc.

Collection Mode

Collection Mode is a gallery mode/statistics mode of sorts. There are 5 categories:

• Internet Ranking: Gives you a 24-character password to enter on www.platinumcrew.co.kr. This allows you to upload your best scores in Arcade Mode onto Pentavision's internet ranking service.
• Play Data: Shows statistics like your high score, highest combo and accuracy rating for each song in each Arcade Mode setting.
• ClubTour Emblem: Displays all the Emblems you've earned in Club Tour mode. Emblems are earned upon clearing 100% of a club's playlist/opponents.
• Image: A gallery for all the backgrounds, loading screens and other images for the songs featured in the game. Each image can be exported to the XMB and onto a Memory Stick.
• Movie: 5 Unlockable FMVs.

Option Mode

Options menu. Here, data can be installed for faster loading, the gear's location can be switched (Left, Center or Right), the difficulty can be changed and the language can also be changed. Clazziquai Edition is natively in Korean, though Japanese and English languages are available making it very import-friendly.

Link Disc Mode

Link Disc allows players to swap discs with previous installments of DJ MAX, giving them the opportunity to play past set lists with the gameplay additions of Clazziquai Edition. It also unlocks bonus Characters/Gears/Notes/Songs in Clazziquai Edition depending on the version you insert. Here are the unlocks for each version:

• DJ MAX Portable: The Oblivion gear, 3 Characters and the song "Elastic Star ~UK Garage Mix~.
• DJ MAX Portable 2: The Summer Time gear, 2 Characters and the song "Syriana".
• DJ MAX Portable Black Square: The song "Proposed, Flower, Wolf".

Album Mode

Album Mode is what was known as OST Mode in past DJ MAX titles. It acts essentially as an MP3 player, allowing you to listen to the game's soundtrack. Throughout playing the game, you can unlock new tracks to listen to in Album Mode including extended mixes of shortened songs found in the normal game. There is also the possibility to watch the background video for certain songs in Album Mode.

Song List

Platinum Crew update

An update to the game was released through Pentavision's "Platinum Crew" service, adding in a downloadable patch that could be turned on or off. It fixed numerous bugs that were discovered upon the release of Clazziquai Edition (which subsequently postponed the release of DJ MAX Portable Black Square, since it ran off the same code) and added in other features like the addition of 8 hidden songs, alternative song patterns and a new "Season" to the Club Tour mode.