Pump It Up (video game series)

The first game was known simply as Pump It Up (PIU), and it was released to South Korean arcades in September 1999.[1] It included 15 songs, and it is retroactively known as Pump 1st in subsequent PIU releases. A sequel, Pump It Up: The 2nd Dance Floor, was released on December 27, 1999. It adds 23 new songs while removing "Hatred" by Novasonic from the first game. A home version known as Pump It Up The Fusion: The 1st N' 2nd Dance Floor was released at the end of 1999 for Microsoft Windows computers.

Pump It Up NX Absolute running on a GX cabinet

Konami filed a lawsuit in Seoul, Korea against Andamiro in 2000, claiming that Pump it Up infringed upon their design right for Dance Dance Revolution. The court found in Konami's favor, but Andamiro appealed. At the same time, Andamiro sued Konami in the state of California, claiming that DDR violated their patent for Pump it Up. Both suits were ultimately settled out of court, and the details were never publicly released.[2]

Pump It Up The O.B.G: The 3rd Dance Floor was released on May 7, 2000 in South Korea. The name O.B.G is an acronym for Oldies But Goodies. A home version for Windows computers was also released later in 2000, while an expansion to O.B.G known as The Season Evolution Dance Floor was released in September 2000. Aside from one exception, future releases did not follow this numbering pattern, beginning with Pump It Up: The Collection on November 14, 2000, followed by an expansion titled The Perfect Collection in December 2000, and Pump It Up Extra in January 2001.

Pump It Up The Premiere: The International Dance Floor was released to arcades in June 2001. As its name suggests, it is the first title to be released outside of South Korea. That same year, Pump It Up: The Evolutionary Dance Floor was released for Windows computers in North America. The sequel, Pump It Up The PREX: The International Dance Floor, was released to arcades in November 2001. The name PREX is a combination of Premiere and Extra from previous games. Afterwards, The International Dance Floor became a series spanning 10 main releases, plus the first The Prex.

Pump It Up NX introduced a new cabinet featuring a widescreen LCD monitor. The game continued to run at 480p, and upgrade kits for older machines remained available.

Pump It Up Pro is a spin-off of the Pump It Up series.

In 2010, two spin-offs of Pump It Up were released: Pump It Up Pro 2 for experienced PIU players, and Pump It Up Jump! for children.

Pump It Up 2010 Fiesta was released to arcades worldwide on March 6, 2010. It was followed by two sequels: 2011 Fiesta EX in 2011, and 2013 Fiesta 2 in late 2012.

Pump It Up Infinity was the final Pump It Up spin-off. It was released in January 2013 in arcades.

Pump It Up 2015 Prime was released in December 2014 in arcades. It is the fist game in the series to run in 720p high definition on supported cabinets, although older cabinets ran the game at 480p standard resolution instead. A sequel, Pump It Up 2017 Prime 2, was released in November 2016, while a 2018 update features future improvements. Prime 2 and the 2018 update are the final versions to support standard definition SD, SX, DX and GX cabinets.

Pump It Up XX 20th Anniversary Edition was released on January 7, 2019 to celebrate 20 years of the Pump It Up series. This version runs exclusively on cabinets with 720p high definition support.

On May 10th, 2023, Andamiro announced the latest installment called Pump It Up 2023 Phoenix.[3] It was released to South Korean arcades on July 17, 2023, and internationally released in early August of 2023. The current update is 1.02.

A standard Pump it Up arcade machine consists of two parts, the cabinet and the dance platform.

The cabinet has a wide bottom section, which houses large floor speakers and glowing neon lamps. Above this sits a narrower section that contains the monitor, and on top is a lighted marquee graphic, with two small speakers and flashing lights on it.

The dance stage is a raised metal platform divided into two sides. Each side houses a set of five acrylic glass pads arranged like the pips on the 5 side of a die, separated by metal squares. Each pad sits atop pressure activated switches, and a software-controlled cold cathode lamp illuminating the translucent pad. A metal safety bar in the shape of an "R" is mounted to the dance stage behind each player. Some players make use of this safety bar to help maintain proper balance, do tricks during Freestyle routines, and to relieve weight from the legs so that arrows can be pressed with greater speed and accuracy. Some community members place more emphasis on no-bar play as many major Pump it Up tournaments used to not allow bar usage or had a separate division allowing it. However, song difficulty has risen over the years making some songs impossible to play without using the bar.

DX cabinets utilize a large rear-projection television as their monitor (with the lights being on the sides of the screen's enclosure instead of along the top), and FX cabinets contain a plasma display as the monitor, LED lights, and a pair of LED vertical VU meters on the sides. As of NX2, all Pump it Up machines now include USB ports on the side of the cabinet which allow the saving of statistics and unlocks to a proprietary USB drive. All FX cabinets contain them (as NX was slated to have USB functionality, which was later shifted to NX2), and the upgrade kit for NX2 includes the external USB ports so that they can be soldered to the machine if it doesn't already have them. As of the release of Pump It Up PRIME 2, arcade machines now have the option to use the AM.PASS card system instead of a USB flash drive.

Andamiro released home versions of Pump it Up for personal computers, 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. Pump it Up THE FUSION: The 1st N' 2nd Dance Floor, Pump it Up THE FUSION: The 3rd Dance Floor, Pump it Up Perfect Collection, and Pump it Up: The Prex 3 were all released on PCs. Andamiro also released a home version of Pump it Up for PCs in 2001, which was released exclusively in North America. Titled Pump it Up: The Evolutionary Dance Floor, it includes a Pump it Up dance mat, a Pump it Up: The Evolutionary Dance Floor PC game, a Pump it Up: The Prex 3 PC game, and a music CD titled Pump it Up: The Banya's Original Collection.[4]

On 11 November 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. An American version of the game was released on 31 August 2005 for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 by Mastiff under the title Pump It Up Exceed SE. This version includes most of the songs from the Korean PS2 version and six US-licensed songs, as well as revivals and removals from Exceed 2. Exceed SE also uses the updated engine from Exceed 2. While the Korean version of the game is rated All by the Korea Media Rating Board, the North American version is rated T for Teen by the ESRB.

On 30 November 2006, Pump it Up: Exceed was released for the PSP as Pump it Up Exceed Portable exclusively in Korea. This version of the game is rated All by the Korea Media Rating Board. A PSP version of Pump it Up Zero was also released on 15 October 2007. This version of the game is rated All by the Game Rating and Administration Committee. Unlike Exceed, there is no console release of Zero.

Andamiro on 27 March 2018, released a teaser screenshot for the mobile-phone version of the game, Pump It Up M. The mobile version introduced new features that are only exclusive for this version such as training mode, scout, and in-game shop menu. As of 30 June 2022, service has been terminated and the servers are now offline.

Pump it Up can be simulated by the programs Kick It Up, Direct Move, and StepMania.

The steps for the various levels of difficulty available for a particular song are ranked using a scale, the format of which varies from version to version. Early games had difficulty ranked by "Station" with all songs on a station having the same difficulty. Stations became ways to select song types in Pump it Up Zero and then became ways to select different game modes after the New Xenesis series. Some stations are meant for more advanced players despite hosting a selection of difficulties inside of them. For example, the Music Train, World Max and Mission stations are often for advanced players while Arcade or the Easy station are for general players.

Before Exceed 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. Level 1 was the easiest song available at that difficulty while level 10 was reserved for the most difficult. With Exceed's debut all levels were reworked into a unified range from 1 to 10 for most modes, up to level 15 for Crazy mode and ranging as high as 20 for Nightmare mode. Successive games have resulted in higher level ranges for all song difficulties as well as an overall higher maximum difficulty cap for Nightmare Mode.

Exceed 2 added the infamous "????" rating for unusually difficult songs. This level is often referred to as "unrated". Many unrated songs are more difficult than the allowed maximum. All "another" rated songs given a level of "??" in Exceed 2. Later games have most "another" step songs show a numeric difficulty instead of question marks. Unrated songs often feature gimmicks, experimental charts, or are not made to be beaten by a single player and are not recommended for the average player. Another rating charts vary in difficulty and can be easy, however, they are typically harder than the regular chart of the song at a similar level.

Early games up to Zero and including the New Xenesis series showed the levels via icons. These games use a star scale to measure the lower levels, which goes up to 8 in half increments (for a maximum level of 16). The higher levels are measure by a skull scale which goes up to 8 in whole increments. On NX2 and NX Absolute, the difficulty scale is modified with a line of circles that go up to 8 in whole increments. Higher difficulties replace these circles with stars and even higher difficulties replace the stars with skulls.

Starting with Fiesta, the Normal / Hard / Crazy / Freestyle / Nightmare modes are replaced by prefixing the difficulty level before the difficulty number. Another difficulty charts are placed among the regular charts for the song and are prefixed with "Another" instead of a difficulty level, though this was removed between Fiesta and Prime.

Currently, the number difficulty level system is still used, with 26 as the highest difficulty level for singles play and 28 for doubles play (referred to as "S26" and "D28" level of charts by the community).

Since the first release, all game modes accept modifiers which are enabled by using special codes inputted by rapidly stepping on the gamepad. The effects vary from speeding arrows up, changing the design of the arrows altogether, 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 out. All songs have a default speed of 2x. It is also possible to decrease the arrow speed. Using modifiers a matter of personal preferences even though the increased speed options are very popular, especially at higher levels where there are many arrows on the screen at once.

The most popular step codes for the specific version are contained on a sticker affixed to the machine. If a player has a PumBi drive inserted or an AM.PASS card that is scanned in the title screen, their preferred modifiers are automatically saved and will be applied to every song until the player changes their modifier settings.

Games before Pump it Up Zero used the Station select to choose the game's difficulty. Later games use the Station Select screen to choose the game mode.

"Easy Station" or "Basic Mode" is the default mode on all games starting with Pump it Up Fiesta. In this mode, song difficulties are color-coded to help identify harder songs. Blue songs are the easiest, yellow songs are normal, red songs represent hard ones, and purple for very hard ones, while green color is showing difficulty in Double mode. To leave Easy mode the player can enter the "FULL MODE" command, insert a flash drive containing user data or use an AM.PASS card (from PRIME 2). The Pro series also supports mission mode, music train and the regular arcade game once out of easy mode.[5]

"Arcade Station" or "Full Mode" is for players familiar with the game. In this mode the player may access hundreds of songs not available in Basic Mode. The screen also changes to show the traditional difficulty modes and colors. If a USB flash drive containing user data is inserted or an AM.PASS card is used to login, high scores are saved for later use and the machine will display local high scores after each song. These scores are uploaded to the Andamiro website to join in the global rankings.[6]

"Special Zone" was introduced in Pump It Up NX. This mode contains original mixes for some songs, remixes of several arcade song, also alternate version of songs and charts (later known as Another difficulty) mashed together. In modern iterations starting from Pump It Up FIESTA, These are now placed into channels system such as: Full Songs, Remix, and the later introduced Shortcut which contained shorter edit of some songs.

"Rank Mode" was introduced in Pump It Up PRIME is an extra hard mode for machines connected to the Internet that requires a USB flash drive with user data (for PRIME and later) or an AM.PASS card (for PRIME 2) to access. This mode allows players to test themselves in stricter conditions, with timing windows stricter than in Full Mode (VJ or Very Hard judgement) inability to use BGA Off (BGA Dark in later iteration) which dims the background animation, and inability to use mod groups such as JUDGE and ALTERNATE. Regardless of the machine settings, if the player's life bar reaches zero, it will result in a game over. Songs in this mode are starting at level 13 and lower ones can't be played in it. All points scored in this mode are recorded on the Andamiro website in the player's personal profile, saving the total score gathered along with separate scores for Single and Double charts.[7]

"Music Train" mode was introduced in Pump It Up Fiesta. Music trains are pre-selected courses where multiple songs play continuously. Many music trains feature a unique theme or gimmick to them, catering to advanced players. Pump It Up PRIME 2 introduced the "Random Train" mode, where tracks are randomly chosen from player-defined difficulty brackets.[8]

"Skill Up Zone", "Mission Zone" or "Quest Zone" is unlocked by inserting a USB drive into the machine. Mission Mode presents new goals for advanced players to meet which can be as simple as a different step pattern to a familiar song or as complex as modifications to the game's interface. When a player attempts or clears a mission, they are granted EXP (experience points) to advance further in the mode. The mode was expanded into the World Tour mode on NX, and the RPG-styled WorldMax on NX2.

"Battle Mode" appeared on Pump it Up 2nd DF. The player with the higher score would win the battle. On Perfect Collection and The Premiere, a player could "attack" their opponent with modifiers by creating combos, with longer combos resulting in more damaging attacks. On Exceed 2 there are 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.

"Division Mode", appearing on Premiere 2 and Rebirth, utilized special stepcharts with "switches" that could switch between a "Groove" style (for freestyling), and a "Wild" style for more advanced charts.

"Half-Double", appearing on Premiere 2 and Rebirth and remaining until Premiere 3 and Prex 3, was a mode that only used the 6 panels in the middle (both centers plus the right arrow pair on the 1p side and the left arrow pair on the 2p side).

"Nonstop Remix Mode" contains longer club mixes of several songs, and sometimes even long versions of existing songs.

"Training Station" was introduced in Pump It Up NX, and consists of special tutorials themed on various fundamentals of play. Lessons consist of 3 songs with special stepcharts emphasizing the theme of the lesson.

"Brain Shower" was introduced in Pump It Up NXA. It is a new type of game that combines the traditional timing of steps and arrows with mental exercises including mathematics, observation, and memory.

Games starting from Pump It Up 2010 FIESTA: 10th Anniversary Version use Channels to categorize every single songs within the game. Certain Channels will have sub-categories within itself.

"Original Tunes" channel contains arcade edits produced by Andamiro's in-house music producers, such as: BanYa Production, Yahpp, DOIN, MAX, etc.

"World Music" channel contains arcade edits from licensed music.

"J-Music" channel contains arcade edits from licensed Japanese music.

"K-Pop" channel contains arcade edits from licensed Korean Pop music.

"XROSS" channel contains arcade edits from rhythm game collaboration such as: O2Jam, EZ2AC, and NeonFM.

"Remix" channel features longer songs that have been remixed or mashed up tracks. (With the exception of Repeatorment Remix, which is an original track.)

"Full Songs" channel features Original Mixes of some songs within the game, albeit some songs such as Baroque Virus from Pump It Up Infinity, "Bad Apple!!", No Despair, Dignity, Butterfly (SID-Sound), I'll Give You All My Love, Slam, etc. uses a different edit than the Album Version. They're either shortened a bit, or got a full audio remastering for the game such as tempo fix and audio mixing, etc.

"Shortcut" channel features shorter edits of some songs within the game.

Difficulty Zone Single channel contains 5-panel stepcharts that can be played by one player, sorted by difficulty with Level 1 or S1 as the lowest range. (Including Single Performance for Freestyle players)

Difficulty Zone Double channel contains 10-panel stepcharts that can be played by one player, sorted by difficulty with Level 1 or D1 as the lowest range. (Including Double Performance for Freestyle players)

CO-OP Play channel contains 10-panel stepcharts that can be played by two players or more. (example: CO-OP x5 means that the stepchart can be played up to by five players)

User Custom Step channel contains user-submitted stepcharts downloaded from Andamiro's PIU UCS website, the content of this channel will depend on AM.Pass account. If there are no UCS downloaded within the user data, this channel will not appeared in-game.

This mode was introduced in Pump It Up 2019 XX: 20th Anniversary Version, it let players to compare their gameplay performance with other players around the world in real time. During gameplay, the opponent's combo will be shown as a small yellow combo counts below the player's combo count. Then after song completion the result will be shown side by side.

Pump It Up Pro was released by Fun in Motion and Andamiro in 2007. The product is a spin-off of Pump It Up, and was developed separately from the main series with the intent of getting players who normally play 4-panel dance games to try 5-panel dancing.[11] The game utilizes a heavily modified build of StepMania 4 for its engine and was purchasable as a cabinet or as an upgrade for existing Pump It Up machines running MK6 or MK7 hardware.

Kyle Ward is the project lead and is responsible for many of the songs and step charts in this series.[12] Many elements of the game are inherited from In the Groove, a four-panel dance game which Kyle Ward was previously involved with, such as the ability to save stats and song edits on a USB flash drive. Andamiro built cabinets for and distributed In the Groove 2.

The Pro series is also unique among Pump it Up games due to its trademark style. These are the first games led by a non-Korean project head. The good will fostered by Kyle Ward working with Andamiro to create cabinets for In the Groove 2 led to him being given a position within the company as a project creator, lead, and creative consultant.[11]

The default mode is Easy mode, which offers a simplified user interface where a minimal number of options are selectable and the most difficult songs have been removed.[13] The Revision 5 patch added Half Double mode as a difficulty which uses the 6 panels on the inside of the pad layout excluding the outer corners from play. Pump It Up Pro does not contain a separate mode for remixes and long versions, the long songs and remixes present on Pro are present in regular play, and require two rounds to play. In place of a Remix mode is Progressive, a mode containing courses consisting of four songs each. A sequel was released in 2010.

Pump It Up Infinity (2013) was intended as a reboot of the original Pro idea and introduces a "Basic mode" to encourage new players.[14] Infinity features songs from all Pump It Up versions, including the spin-off series Pump It Up Pro and Pump It Up Pro 2.[13]