Red Swan

Red Swan arrived in Pump It Up 2015 PRIME as one of the songs marking Yahpp's comeback to the series. It is a remake of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, reimagined with PIU's signature instrumentation. At launch it lived in Basic Mode, but alongside Winter it earned a reputation for crushing newcomers, and was eventually pulled from Basic. Winter, being the more popular tune, stayed in the mode but had its level label bumped up by two as compensation for the difficulty.

The Single spread runs S4 through S18. The S4 sits high in its level: with over 300 notes and plenty of long steps it can tangle a beginner's feet, though clearing (break-off) is rarely the issue. The S7 was a level 6 chart until Prime 2 (raised to 7 in XX) and adds frequent simultaneous steps plus hold-note passages that beginners tend to drop early. The S9 was level 8 until XX and is nearly identical to the lower chart apart from a brutal stretch of chained hold notes in the middle that demands careful judgment work, making it a quietly notorious trap chart. The S18 opens with three-note bursts, then a long drill that defines the break-on; finish on a five-note pattern where only the hold notes are required to pass, but a full combo means hitting all five cleanly.

In Double, the D12 and D20 are built on bouncy four-note steps with a long mid-chart drill as the make-or-break moment; clear the drill and there are no real death traps left except a final burst that arrives without warning. The D22 (level 21 until Prime 2) plays differently: it uses three-note groups, flashes that hide both the BGA and the notes themselves, and the famous 'flower' drill that forces a wide leg split, much like the Love is a Danger Zone pt.2 finale but longer. In Co-Op X2, the standout is CODEARK2's UCS chart (DP4/DP20), the first Double Performance chart to break level 20 in the series; built almost entirely from freezes apart from the drills, its player-to-player variance is enormous. Later, in XX, Reminiscence Q (DP23) and Prime Time (DP24) took over the highest Double Performance slots.