Pump IT Up - Gameplay

Gameplay

The core gameplay involves the player moving his or her feet to a set pattern, stepping in time to the general rhythm or beat of a song. During normal gameplay, arrows scroll upwards from the bottom of the screen and pass over stationary arrows near the top (referred to as the "guide arrows" or "receptors"). When the scrolling arrows overlap the stationary ones, the player must step on the corresponding arrows on the dance platform. Players receive a judgment for each step based on the accuracy of the step. Judgments include, from best to worst, Perfect, Great, Good, Bad and Miss. The size of these judgments vary from version to version, and sometimes depend on the difficulty of the machine set by the machine operator. Longer arrows referred to as "holds" must be held down for their entire length (with them adding additional Perfects to the combo, and in addition - holds can be held on to before the hold passes through without penalty).

Successfully hitting the arrows in time with the music fills a life bar, while failure to do so drains it. If the bar is fully depleted during gameplay with Stage Break mode turned on, the player fails the song, usually resulting in a game over. If Stage Break is off, players only fail the song (and cause play to stop) by getting a combo of 51 consecutive misses. Otherwise, the player is taken to the Results Screen, which rates the player's performance with a letter grade and a numerical score, among other statistics. The player may then be given a chance to play again, depending on the settings of the particular machine. The amount of songs in a credit is 3 songs + bonus on all versions other than Extra Mix and NX2. Extra allows changing the game to 2+1 while NX2 is 2+1 by default on Arcade Station (3 songs in all other Stations). If the player gets an S or A ranking on all songs in a game, the player earns a "bonus stage".

Depending on the version of the game, dance steps are broken into varying levels of difficulty - as of the current version, these modes are known as Normal, Hard, and Crazy for single pads, and Freestyle and Nightmare for doubles. However, the all-new "Full Mode" changes that by breaking the levels into numbers that range from 1 to 27, which are also divided between Singles, Doubles and Single/Double/Triple Performance (mostly freestyle). Older versions contained modes such as Half Double, Division (which used two stepcharts that could be switched between using special arrows acting as a form of switch). Other modes on some versions include Battle modes, long versions and themed mixes, and mission modes containing different challenges with specific criteria. 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 - usually using either numbers, symbols, or both. On some versions, songs with higher difficulties do not even have ratings, and are represented with a level of "??".