Visually, the game uses high quality videos to provide a backdrop when playing the various songs, which generally look great, whether they’re live action, animated, or a combination of the two. There’s also an Album mode to jump to that lets you listen to the tracks and watch the videos associated instantly if you want to listen but not play, and a Collection where you can see your rankings, check images you’ve unlocked and view the online leaderboards, so there are some options available to play with. The game itself houses all of the play modes under the “Arcade” menu, allowing you to jump into “Star Mixing” (Easy), “Pop Mixing” (Normal) and “Club Mixing” (Hard), as well as “Free Style”, which lets you pick songs endlessly on any difficulty you’ve played already, or on Star Mixing otherwise. Modes-wise, however, you’ll find there are some options to work with. This being a straight rhythm game, the focus is on the gameplay over any kind of plot as such, there’s no story to speak of here. That’s a good thing, honestly, as DJMax Technika Tune is a solid release that makes good use of what the Vita can do, combining catchy tunes with engaging touch screen controls into a game that’s a strong debut on the console. Finally, PSY happened, and while the popularity of “Gangnam Style” has diminished somewhat, K-Pop is more recognizable in the US than ever, so a game featuring it as the soundtrack will be met with “Oh, like the horsey dance guy, right?” instead of odd looks, which is… something of an improvement. For another, the Vita is still in its infancy, library-wise, and exposing gamers to a relatively unknown IP when there aren’t a lot of games out for a console can help your game stand out.
For one thing, the first two PSP games to reach the states, though hardly huge sellers, generally did well in the press, enough that a curious player (such as myself) could look at this and be interested. Well, publisher Pentavision is taking another crack at the US market with DJMax Technika Tune, and this time the odds are more heavily in their favor.
Outside of some international arcade releases, all of two entries in the franchise have come stateside: DJ Max Fever, a compilation of the first two Korean releases, and DJ Max Portable 3, the last entry in the series to come out on the PSP, some two years ago. Japan has seen a few entries in the franchise pop up now and again, but the US market has mostly not seen much exposure to the series, possibly due to its heavy focus on K-Pop tunes and the possible limited financial viability this implies.
The DJ Max series has been around since 2004 in South Korea, starting off as a PC based online rhythm game before spinning off into a fairly extensive PSP franchise in the country, though few of its entries have seen their way out of the country.