Blazing

Blazing first appeared in Pump It Up EXCEED and was conceived as a successor in spirit to Hello, a song from PREX3. The music is credited to Sound piercer, working under the WONDERTRABELER project alias. Its BGA tells a cowboy story: the hero chases down a band of outlaws to rescue a kidnapped companion, sparking a shootout in a saloon. The Western-meets-sci-fi mood is unmistakable, complete with a robot bartender and flying cars, and some players even liken the hero to Mega Man. The almost entirely white backdrop gives it a strikingly clean look, a deliberate contrast to the 3D BGA of X-Tream, released in the same version. Twenty-two years later, PHOENIX 2 added Blazor as the song's spiritual sequel.

The S17 (former Crazy) is the signature EXCEED-era chart: its mid-section punishes players with irregular diagonal twists and sideruns immediately after a two-note jump pattern. Through Prime 2 it sat at S15, where it was treated as a boss song within level 15 alongside Final Audition S18. The S20 began life in Prime 2 2.04 as the winning entry of the public StepMachine test, created by EUNHU; built around short bursts laced with twists, it was bumped up to 20 in PHOENIX. The easier charts shifted too: the former Normal became S4 in XX, while the former Hard, an S6 until XX, rose to S7 in PHOENIX, and an additional S9 was inserted during the Fiesta era.

The D21 (former Nightmare) is regarded as the prototype of the 'continental drift' style chart: it spreads the S17 across Double mode and reinforces it heavily with sudden weight shifts and twists. Its mid-section is where most players break combo, since the stairs and one-foot holds do not land cleanly on the beat, leaving little room to recover. It was once D19, nicknamed a 'true 19,' rose to 20 in XX, and was raised again to 21 in PHOENIX. That version also fixed a passage where the steps did not alternate properly (from around the 382 combo mark) and changed the final notes into a hold following a freeze. Among the retired charts are the former Freestyle (D6, dropped in Fiesta much like Monkey Fingers) and the D23 'Flying EXC,' a Prime 1 mission zone exclusive.