That One Boss / Pump It Up

When the scale gives you a ?? and flash DANGER, good luck as this will be your Final Audition.

Hey! Why don't you just get up and dance man?

— Main announcer in every installment. Also, the dark voice in 1949.

For most of every installment in Pump it Up, there either seems to be a boss song from an original song or a "very hard" licensed song. As this is a game with a focus on intense body movement over the course of two minutes at a time, it's quite possible that a song becomes That One Boss for the player not because of the technical challenge, but because their body cannot physically keep up. Better hit the gym if you want to take on the game's hardest challenges! Due to Early-Installment Weirdness, many songs are not properly rated and many players would struggle to find which songs even qualify as Boss songs.

Note that the songs, charts, and courses listed below are based on when they were released.

General

• Pump It Up has had major changes to its rating system. Currently, it uses a more stable rating system up to level 28. Generally, songs labeled as anything higher than a 24 falls under this category.
• Nonstop courses also count.
• The Mission Mode or Mission Zone also counts to an extreme. These can exceed that of the regular charts.
• Any song that has a mislabeled difficulty rating can make things worse.

1st to Prex 3

• "We Are" from OBG is one of the Boss in Mook Clothing songs you start the game with. Typically songs you start the game with are easy so newbies won't be so intimidated. Instead, "We Are" is chock full of strange body motions, relentless jump-step-jump combos, and reversing (occasionally randomized) running patterns. Many players dread this song anywhere, especially early in their song set due to how fast it can drain you. Oh, and that's on easy mode: it gets worse from there!
• Final Audition Episode 1 S16 and D22 (formerly a D21). The S16 has awkward twisting at 189 BPM and the D21 has stuff like strange twists, drills that lead into twists, and some brackets. Combined with a very seizure inducing BGA and you get one of the most awkward charts ever.
• Radetzky Cancan S16 and D18. GOOD GRIEF, where to begin?? It has some of the most strangest twists and movements ever and the charts overall doesn't flow well. Having to do some staircases and small brackets adds to the difficulty.
• Love is a Danger Zone S19 and D21, despite being charts put on a pretty chill song at 140 BPM are quite interesting. It starts somewhat simple, but the further you go, the more intense the chart gets with some twists. On both charts it then leads to a downright CRUEL ending run where you have do some crazy twisting in the run. Hope you're ready...
• Slam was regarded as this. Formerly misrated as a level 9, this was the hardest chart in the game. This is currently rated as an S18.
• Will-o-The-Wisp S16 and D20 has very bizarre twists and combined with the 210 BPM can be very awkward to clear without looking up the chart online. Oh, and also Epileptic Flashing Lights in the BGA that can make the arrows harder to sightread.
• Starian's S07 chart^note the Hard chart before the series started using difficulty numbers for chart names is infamous for having four simultaneous jumps at the end which consist of all four diagonals, and due to the design of arcade pads, cannot be simply hit with both feet; the player has to use their hands unless they happen to have really, really big feet. Quite surprising for a chart that's only in the single digits.
• Join The Party CZ. Unless you place something heavier than 50 pounds of pressure on the center such as sitting, trying to hold one arrow in the center the entire time is going to hurt. Letting go of the center will break your combo and can rapidly cause you to fail the song.
• "Get This Party Started" from Prex 3 is a very good example of Boss in Mook Clothing. The Normal, Hard, and Free Style charts are standard for a pop song, but Crazy and Nightmare have not only a max combo of over 660 including long notes, but also patterns that to this day are still very difficult to play through! They're so bad, rumor has it Andamiro fired the guy who made them.
• The infamous Naissance S20. Try to drill jump as fast as possible. Or if you want some more challenge, the Prime Quest Zone offers you Naissance D25. (Bonus leg stretching.)
• Bee D23 . One of the first real run/stamina charts in Pump and it shows. It has relentless runs, twisting in the runs, heavy moments between both pads, a hard M-run that's hard to full combo and some jacks. This chart can drain you hard fast if you aren't careful with your footwork.

Exceed to Zero

• Dignity as a whole is considered to be the hardest licensed song in the series. A heavy rock song at such high BPM that contains so many 3s (bracket jumps) and 3s holds is going to test people's stamina. At this time, using the bar was frowned upon, so attempting this no-bar is going to be brutal. Heck, even its lower difficulties (Like the S14 and D17) will require a lot of stamina.
• Canon D, PIU Exceed 2's boss song is a very great song, but the S20 and the D23 are quite the hassle. Put at 160 BPM, the charts are very run-heavy, has a lot of twists and there are only a few little breaks in between the runs.
• RAW (Exceed 2 only), the only Extra Stage in the series, is not really meant to be ''played''. It's a sort of credits roll. Just for fun, have 5 players attempt this.
• Witch Doctor D23 (Earlier on a D22) is notorious for being drill-heavy. Especially near the end where you have to drill like crazy to pass it.
• Love is a Danger Zone 2, PIU Zero's boss song has a S22 and D23 that's downright cruel. They have a LOT of twist and awkward movements in the charts. The D23 in particular is also known to be a 7 arrow chart, which does contribute to the difficulty.
• The Try to BPM remix of Love is a Danger Zone 2 can be chalked up to this: Annoying twists, very hard runs and a hard ending run that ends with a troll ending in the form of you having to use your hands to hit some holds (all 5 on the S21 and the six arrows in the middle of the pad on the D23).

NX to NXA

• Chimera, all around, at 210 BPM. Whether it's the S23, or even the D18, this puts your body to the test on utilizing heel-toe methods without the need of 3s. Its D26 is also one of the hardest Nightmare charts in the game!
• Wi-Ex-Doc-Va S21 and D24. Do you like hard drills near the end (or in the case of the D24, drills with leg stretching)? Well, then this chart is for you.
• Bemera, the remix of Bee and Chimera. The S17 and D18 mostly consist of jacks in the Bee parts, but the Chimera parts are doable. The S24 and D26 though... OH BOY!! There isn't much rest time, as the Bee parts will almost always give you stamina-draining streams of continuous 1/16th tap notes. The Chimera parts may play nicer in the beginning, but the last half is less forgiving.
• Final Audition Episode 2-2 (pictured above). While slower than Chimera at 200 BPM, the Nightmare (D24) chart is not one take lightly, especially after playing previous Final Audition installments.
  • Then there's the Another Chart. At the time, it was deemed physically impossible, though it was later crossed over to Infinity in an update as a D27.
• Banya-P Guitar Remix is a medley of different Banya rock songs (Phantom, Gun Rock, Guitar man and Beat the Ghost) It currently has a S22 and a D24 and despite the remix being 120 BPM, they both consists of awkward twists and brackets, which includes brackets while holding notes. The ending in particular can be confusing if you can't twist well.
• Uprock S17 poses as Fake Difficulty for having arrows freeze and unfreeze to the beat of the music. Unless you've listened to the song before, sight-reading isn't going to help your cause much.
• Guitar Man S20 and D19 from NX2 1.20, sharing the same ideas with both Hot Issue and Naissance, were quickly replaced shortly after. Unfortunately, the original charts made their comeback later on, with the D20 now re-rated a D19.
• Final Audition Episode 2-X S23 and D24. It also has a S17 and a D21 that both have twists and gimmicks (especially on the D21) and the S17 is heavier with runs than you might expect.
  • The S23 and D24, however, are both flatout brutal for one reason: BURSTS!! There are very quick runs during the Ominous Latin Chanting parts that go about seventeen notes per second. Sure, you can get life back due to the holds inbetween the bursts, but the bursts WILL take down your lifebar if you don't know what you're doing.
• Bee (Another-Nightmare)'s chart, like RAW, is impossible to play with one person. It, too, spells out names. Only this time, it can be chosen, as Extra Stages do not exist.

Spinoffs: Pro to Infinity

• Hasse Mich. The Nightmare chart has a lot of mines to avoid, alongside a mixture of some of the most advanced patterns placed into this chart. There's also the "arrow-shaped mines" that tell you where you are supposed to step. Of course, the end run takes it up a notch.
• The "VerTex" series of boss songs from In the Groove crossed into Pro and Pro 2 respectively, with the first being "VVV" — a sequel to "VerTex^2" of In the Groove 2. It features a number of complex patterns and runs at both low and high speeds, a gradual speedup near the end that will make your choice of speed mod useless, and one more run over the outro. "VerTex^2" was added on Pro 2 and Infinity under the alternate title "VV", and Infinity added a D27, which features 200 BPM 24th runs among other things. Oh, and did we mention its also a mod chart? The fact the charter apologized tells you all you need to know.
• The progressive course "Make Haste!", from Pro 2. For starters, the entire course uses a modifier called Accelerando (the song goes faster when you do well, and slows down when you do poorly). Each song in the course also has a mod that slowly activates throughout the entire song, and if it fully activates, the song is impossible to finish (i.e. Stealth). Therefore, it is more directly up to how well the player is doing that determines if the song will finish in time.
• Another course from Pro 2, Don't Trust Anything, revolves around gimmicks. The first chart, Moonlight, is a normal chart with a mislabeled difficulty. The second chart, Blow My Mind, has fake notes all around. The third chart, Radius, has a tame BPM changing gimmick that becomes easier to read if you memorize the song's rhythm. However, the fourth song, Stop & Go, is the real killer here, with lots of sudden BPM changes to very fast or slow tempos, making parts of the chart unsightreadable no matter which speed mod you use.
• The Impenetrable Defenses course is probably the hardest and most dreaded course in Pro 2, which consists of four weird but difficult charts. It starts with "Dawn (Perpetual Mix)", which is not so hard but has a rather strange chart. Then it decides to cruelly beat you down with "What Happened", which includes loads of sudden jumps and brackets as well as fast scrolling holds in the chorus that can make the next arrows unsightreadable. "Hasse Mich", which comes after, is somewhat a breather, but in the end it decides to throw in 280 BPM 16ths (or 140 BPM 32nds). Finally, "VVV" concludes the train with its irregular rhythms, abuse of drills, random BPM changes, and minefield segments. What makes this course even worse that it's a Gauntlet course that only allows 150 misses, and most of the charts scroll at very high BPMs, so good luck trying to pass it.
• Ignis Fatuus. A remix of Will-O-The-Wisp, and it still doesn't play nice like its previous song. It still exists currently.
• Dream to Nightmare. Similar to Wi-Ex Doc-Va Nightmare. Hope you like to rapidly press arrows while stretching your legs. It still exists currently, as well.
• The Infinity version of the Co-Op chart for Gargoyle - Full Song, mentioned below. It is similar to the S23/D25 seen in Prime 2, in which that the chart is a nonstop stream of runs and drills that go on for six minutes without breaks. However, this time, it has to be done by two people simultaneously, which means that both of the players need to both have a high enough stamina to pass the entire chart as well as coordinate themselves on when to switch sides. Luckily, the Co-Op chart for the same song present in Prime 2 is far more forgiving with the inclusion of breaks... at the cost of the first break parts being gimmicked.

Fiesta to Fiesta 2

• Sorceress Elise S21, S23 and D24 starts easy enough, but the charts have some of the most RUTHLESS drills ever seen in Pump It Up. Everything in between is doable, but the drills can tire you out easily.
• Fiesta introduced us to Doin's song Vacuum. It's a 200 BPM song and has (at the time) and still have an S21, S23, D21 and D25! The charts don't let up, and the few breaks it has means nothing when you have to drill like heck during the last stretch or in the case of the S23 and D25, do additional twists like hell to survive.
• Superman by Norazo. The D23 was the first infamous example of a One-Hit Kill where a miss on a quad-note stretch jump generates exactly 51 misses, which is enough to immediately stop the song and game over, even with stage break settings. It's like the step artists really want you to not miss those at all.
• Fiesta EX give us Doin's song Cleaner as the sequel to Vacuum. It has among others, a S22, a D25 and A D26. The song's BPM is 203, so a lot of pushing is required. It's also pretty technical, with some awkward twists and brackets, as it is not to be underestimated.
• Vacuum Cleaner from Fiesta EX is a remix of Vacuum and Cleaner, and is harder than both of those songs by themselves. First and foremost, its BPM is 222.22, making it faster than both Vacuum and Cleaner. Its charts consist of the S15 (currently an S16), S20, S25, D20 and the infamous D27. While the S15, S20 and D20 are pushy, they can be cleared if played well. As for the S25 and D27.... Good luck figuring out how to pass this. It's that brutal! In fact, the D27 was at the time the hardest Pump It Up stepchart ever until Paradoxx D28 came in and the D27 being changed to a D26 with the old stepchart retained...
• Hot Issue D26. A K-pop girl group song with a god-awful chart, the difficulty see-saws all over the place from having easier parts in the early run to having ridiculously hard parts like the 4-arrow bracket jumps in the middle of the song to the thirty-second note streams at the last third of the song that is almost, nearly impossible to get a full combo. This chart was originally a scrapped joke chart that later on became official at the end of the machine's last patches, as well as a returning unlock for Fiesta 2.
  • Unfortunately, the song was tournament-legal, if you are one of the unlucky souls to make it so far to finals and get it at random.

Prime 1 to Prime 2

• Nakakapagpabagabag by Dasu. Most of the step charts consists of the stop-and-go BPM tricks, while abusing various patterns of double-tapping different arrows while holding an arrow.
• Twist of Fate. The S19 and D21 charts completely slow down during the chorus at very difficult to read BPM similar to the gimmick in Yeo Rae A S13. Like Yeo Rae A, this speed cannot be modified (aside from the Auto-Velocity or Speed) in any way.
• The FFF (Flew Far Faster) mission from Prime's Quest Zone. The third stage requires you to clear the D22 chart with 1450 total steps or more. The last 4 holds are replaced with rolls, which means you have to step on panels 200 times in 5 seconds in order to clear it. Alternatively, redo it over and over until the D24 is revealed and gets enough steps for you to do it
• Yog-Sothoth. In both its D23 (now D24) and the D25, you may get caught off guard by its rather breather beginning, but the end itself is nonstop on its runs. If you exhausted yourself in the first half, you won't be able to survive in the second half.
• "1950" D27. The first song to be a 27 without being a long, or a special song. It is one of the most technical songs in the game, with extensive bracketing and few holds (which makes it harder to re-gain health). It becomes especially ridiculous towards the end, containing high-speed bursts and runs with more brackets mixed in (at around 20 notes per second), and climaxing with a complex bracketing sequence spanning across both halves of the pad at once.
• A mashup of "1950" with "Yog Sothoth", "Paradoxx (stylized as PARADOXX before "XX")", takes the above to the extreme as the first 28-rated chart in the entire franchise. It runs at a slightly faster BPM (220 vs. 200), and contains a ton of complex patterns and high-speed runs. And then you get to the ending, the closing piano solo from "Yog Sothoth" — a just over 30-second long run of nearly-unbroken streams with frequent bracketing — sure to drain whatever stamina you still have left. Very few players have ever gotten a lifebar clear on this chart. If you thought Vacuum Cleaner was difficult enough, don't bother touching this.
• Shub Niggurath, the sequel to Yog-Sothoth, is harder than its predecessor. Faster speed at 220 BPM, a mass ton of bracketing jumps, and the usual death run that will put a test to your body's limit.
• Shub Sothoth, a fuse between Yog-Sothoth and Shub Niggurath. It only has an S25 and a D27, they are no joke to mess with and will drain your stamina very quickly, especially when it tests you in almost every step pattern variations.
• Gargoyle - Full Song by Sanxion7. It has the longest charts in the game, clocking in at around 6 MINUTES and its charts are the S21, S23, D22, and D25. The current S21 (Formerly a S20) and D22 are run charts and while the charts are straightforward , the difficulty comes from the fact that you have to do this for 6 minutes long, even with small breaks in between. The (former)S21 is more technical, having more breaks and less runs, but compensating it by having more twists and jumps in the runs. The S23 and D25 however are notorious for one thing... nonstop runs, meaning NO BREAKS during the ENTIRE run with the breaks been replaced with drills, for 6 minutes long (except for the very start and finish). These charts are real stamina testers, so have fun trying to pass these without getting tired midway.

XX (20th Anniversary Edition)

• Dasu's other song, 86 (styled as "8 6"), would also use Nakakapagpabagabag's gimmick in its charts.
• King of Sales by Norazo. Like Superman, the S21 and D23 charts have that One-Hit Kill gimmick. Even worse for the S21, given that you have to hit all 4 corner arrows, either by hands and feet or by a very difficult heel-toe that is very hard to do with players who don't have large feet.
• "1949" D28. The first song to be a 28 without being a long song. "1950" was bad enough, but XX decided a sequel was a good idea. When the singer outright yells "DIE!" at one point and there's a distorted sample of the game's failure Catchphrase, you know it's bad. The chart is just as bad as Paradoxx at its worst, if not even worse in terms of patterns and sheer density.
• Baroque Virus - Full Song: S21 and D23. Just like Gargoyle - Full Song, these charts are long and are full of runs. While the song is shorter, clocking in at around 5 minutes, has some breaks in them and the BPM is only 135, the charts are still stamina testers, and the second half in particular can be tiring due to the twists.
• MopeMope's charts are not for the innocent, like intended from the original video. On one side, you get the cutesy flowers and nursery rhyme tunes that have steps that are moderately challenging yet fun. However, amongst progressing the song, the sound gets rather glitchy and dark, while the BGA is red and vicious (albeit censored), alongside steps that are glitchy and destructive. It goes back and forth chaotically.
  • The D23 (now a D24) used to have random flashing lights that can obscure the player's view of the chart and make it harder to read. However, the effects has since been removed because of some players having seizures from them.
• Ultimatum D27. The second non-special song to be rated a D27. This chart breaks the radar of the amount of stamina and brackets done in any chart. You will have almost no rest breaks in between. In addition to the stepchart, however, don't forget to footswitch holds at the near end or expect to instantly fail.

PHOENIX

• PHOENIX's first update gives us KUGUTSU, composed by onoken. It is a 220 BPM killer song, that gives us an S18, S20, S23, S25, D21, D23, D25 and a D27. The S18, S20 and D21 require some speed and stamina, but they can be done, although the D21 ends with a killer drill section that's very reminiscend of Escape D22. It's the higher difficulties were problems can arise. They have manic twists, rapid movements across the pads, runs, a killer 16th note drill section near the end and in the case of the S25 and D27, gimmicks, twists and brackets during the last part. It's that intense, just like the actual song.
• CHAOS AGAIN, by Naoki Underground Omega is very reminiscent of Deltamax (of DDR fame) and the S24 and D26 in particular are quite brutal. The BPM starts off at 150 (while in most cases, 150 to 260), meaning the song speeds up the longer the song goes and while the charts have lots of brackets and twisting in the first half, in the second half comes a run at a pretty fast BPM that starts from 200 and then to 210 later on, which also includes twists and bracketing with holds. When that's over and the song returns the 150 BPM, it leads to one more run, in which the songs speeds up one more time to 260 BPM. It's that brutal, but at least it has a cool BGA.
• Neo Catharsis by TAG Underground Overlay (of Bemani fame) is the latest song to get a S25 and D27 chart and they are quite brutal, but what also makes this song really hard is the way it fluctuates between 120 and 300 BPM, meaning you must choose your auto-velocity wisely. In the beginning you be dealing with bracket runs and twists and then you have to deal with a slowdown, and as the song speed up, you have to deal with bracket holds, jumps and then some small streams. After a small break, you have to deal with a very long run with twists that will put speed and endurance to the test. After that you have to content with weird bracket jumps and as you reach the finish, the song slows down a bit and you do one more small run. These charts will test your meddle.
• iRELLiA by HyuN, with a BPM of 204, has among others a S24 and D26, and the first half consists of brackets, twists and pivots. While you do get a generous break, you must do some small bracketing and twisting after that as the chart slowly builds up to the second half, which is almost full of runs, runs consisting of twists, broken staircases, brackets which will tire you out unless your stamina is great. Fortunately, the ending is easy, but by the time you reach it, you probably be tired out from the runs. Since the song is not a Premium Mode exclusive, you'll be at slighty at greater risk of playing a harder level.