It was December now. In Japan DDR MAX (6th Mix) had came out. Those characters on screen was no more; added to the screen were freeze arrows and background videos, along with a fresh new song list which had little resemblance from previous mixes. The name of the difficulty also changed from basic, anotheradvanced and maniac to light, standard and heavy respectively. It looked like Starburst decided to picked up the beat in Bemani games in order to compete with other arcades. Someone posted in TGL that Orbit put a DDR MAX there - a move that surprised many since it was unannounced and unlike previous purchases, Starburst got the game relatively quick. It appeared that Starburst was serious in seizing the market this time and it was rumoured that Starburst had acquired more than one unit of DDR Max.
The reaction towards DDR MAX was relatively positive. However, some people complained about the short song-list (which had about 40). At the same time, there were more people who signed up at TGL. One day I talked to Karm about this and she seemed to have noticed about that too.
"There are quite a bit of people playing DDR MAX, so I think Steven is satisfied. By the way, have you have a chance to talk to Steven yet?"
"No. I don't post in eStarburst forum much. He probably did not notice me."
"Ever think you would ever meet him in person?"
"I'd rather not meet him. I don't want to get myself involved in some form of business relationship."
"I think it could do good on both TGL people and them though. I think Steven will want to meet you."
I was thinking the same too. Steven would want to meet me as the TGL moderator. The problem is we did not know each other.
One day during Christmas break I went to Pacific Mall and saw the DDR MAX in Orbit. I gave it a shot but I did poorly that day that I almost failed in first song. That was probably I am not accustomed to the new freeze arrow. Several other music games got an upgrade too. Then I saw Tim.
"What's up?"Tim asked. "Checking out with that DDR MAX?"
"Yeah. I never had a chance to see DDR MAX because of exams."
"That's too bad. Have you ever heard the story about extra stage yet?"
"What extra stage?" I asked.
"You can get a bonus stage if the ranking of the third song under heavy mode is AA, as I heard."
"Sounds good."
"The only thing is no one in Toronto can verify it. As far as I know no one in Toronto is skillful enough to get this ranking."
"I know. Perfect attack has always been overlooked here." I said. As there were not many tournaments in Toronto no DDRer would train themselves in Perfect Attack on purpose.
"Maybe the extra stage thing would bring people into playing Perfect attack. I am planning a tournament this summer in orbit here." Tim said.
"That's good. Good luck on that. I wonder what is that extra stage is."