“DDR is now in this renaissance because we can be competitive again,”

December 11, 2017 5:38 PM

The rise, fall and return of Dance Dance Revolution in America [Polygon] ““The lament of the DDR player in America [has always been] you find a machine, you’re just thrilled to play it, and the down arrow just doesn’t work at all,” says Felker, who placed third overall at KAC. “The sensors are just totally busted. You go to the tech and he says ‘Well, it works. It turns on.’ You’re like, ‘That’s not the point.’ I used to tell techs the arrow needs to be cleaned out a bit, and they would take some Windex and spray the top of the panel and wipe it. I’m like ‘dude, that’s not how this works,’ but they don’t want to do any work.””

• Becoming the Best DDR Player in the World [YouTube] [Polygon]

“Earlier this year, for the first time in history, the Konami Arcade Championship in Japan opened its doors to US competitors. When Bay Area resident Chris "iamchris4life" Chike was invited to participate alongside a handful of other Americans, he made a vow to not leave empty-handed.”

• Inside Tokyo's Long Love Affair with 'Dance Dance Revolution' [YouTube] [Vice]

“In 1998, the release of Dance Dance Revolution resuscitated the dying arcade industry by challenging often shy, introverted gamers to compete in dance competitions on top of neon platforms in front of eager fans. Yoshihiko Oto and his team of developers premiered the game in Tokyo, and it quickly took the country by storm, with DDR fanatics lining up in queues for their chance to compete. The game was then released in America, where it became a massive global hit, popular for its dedicated fan base, and the social interactions it spawned between users. Though the arcade scene in the West has since died down, it Japan it still thrives, especially at the Konami Arcade Championships, which invites DDR gods from around Asia to compete in front of teeming audiences for their shot at #1. In this episode of VICE Gaming Specials, host Nick Norton examines the loyal and seemingly everlasting DDR scene in Tokyo, following the characters who brought it to life and those who continue to hit “Perfect Scores” while also looking at the revival of the arcade genre.”

• Scientists have taught a neural network to choreograph Dance Dance Revolution levels [The Verge]

“In a paper published this week (with the quite brilliant title Dance Dance Convolution), a trio of researchers from the University of California describe training a neural network to generate new step charts. Neural networks study data to analyze patterns and then create similar-looking outputs, and in this case, there was an abundant source of data in the form of fan-written step charts. One of the study’s co-authors (and a longtime DDR fan) Chris Donahue told The Outline: “It sort of dawned on me one day that I had somewhere buried deep in my hard drive, gigabytes and gigabytes of data from this game StepMania, from a folder I’d been transferring from computer to computer since I was a teenager.” The researchers used two main datasets from different choreographers, with the total training data spanning 35 hours of annotated music and more than 350,000 steps.”

• Player beats all Cuphead bosses using a Dance Dance Revolution pad [Kotaku] [Twitch]

“Why fight demonic animations with a mouse and keyboard or game controller when you can just dance all those troubles away instead? Alright, so speedrunner PeekingBoo doesn’t exactly defeat Goopy Le Grande or Captain Brineybeard by dancing per se, but he does do it by stomping—patiently, methodically—until each is dead. You see PeekingBoo isn’t your average, run-of-the-mill speedrunner. He’s finished a lot of games quickly, and even set respectable records in a number of them, but his true calling card is beating games while hitched to a Dance Dance Revolution arcade cabinet. He plays them on a PC that’s connected to the DDR machine with the pad buttons programmed for the particular keyboard inputs of whatever game is being attempted.”

• Elderly man dancing up a storm on an arcade machine shows you're only as old as you feel [Mashable] [YouTube]

“If you've tried dance machine games at the arcade like Dance Dance Revolution, you'll know it's way harder than it looks. This clip of an elderly man in Chongqing, China, having the time of his life, is going viral because of the pure skill he's exhibiting. The unnamed man is seen effortlessly dancing in sync with the much younger woman next to him. The clip is so viral it's started making the rounds on national TV in China. Just goes to show, you're only as old as you feel.”

posted by Fizz (24 comments total)

The guy that did the speedrun on Cuphead with a DDR pad is my new hero. That must be *exhausting*.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 6:06 PM on December 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

I just saw the "Best DDR Player in the World" video earlier this evening and my first thought was FPPing it because it's a brief, sweet little video about a personal accomplishment. My second thought was, "Nah, Fizz will do a better job." And he did!
posted by ardgedee at 6:09 PM on December 11, 2017 [7 favorites]

DDR along with Guitar Hero are two games that I enjoy playing but am absolute shit at. I just lack the coordination required to excel at these types of games.
posted by Fizz at 6:12 PM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

I don't own Cuphead yet, but I do have the soundtrack, and it definitely feels like you could beat a boss by dancing to it.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:21 PM on December 11, 2017

If you search on YouTube, you'll find all kinds of gamers/speedrunners that have used DDR pads to beat games that you'd think wouldn't be possible using that particular input method.

• Dark Souls 3 Beaten on a Dance Pad! (Soul of Cinder Final Boss)
• World of Warcraft (WOW) Hitting Level 100 with DANCE PADS!
• Smash Bros 64 beaten on a DDR Pad!
posted by Fizz at 6:29 PM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

In high school, DDR was the only source of cardiovascular exercise in my otherwise sedentary lifestyle. I remember being too broke and too far from an arcade to play on the real machines regularly - instead I ran a bootleg copy on one of my family's old computers, with a soft pad (originally for use with PS2, I think - I had a USB converter) which my dad helped me turn into a "hard pad" by stapling it to a plywood board and covering with plastic sheeting. Good times.
posted by btfreek at 6:30 PM on December 11, 2017 [11 favorites]

I am an old person, because I saw the title and said "What? East Germany is doing what now?"
posted by Daily Alice at 6:48 PM on December 11, 2017 [29 favorites]

WATCH THE VIDEO IN THE FIRST LINK.
posted by k8t at 7:16 PM on December 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

One of the study’s co-authors (and a longtime DDR fan) Chris Donahue told The Outline: “It sort of dawned on me one day that I had somewhere buried deep in my hard drive, gigabytes and gigabytes of data from this game StepMania, from a folder I’d been transferring from computer to computer since I was a teenager.”

I can relate super hard, since I’ve had that exact same folder following me around since like ‘03. DDR stepcharts were literally the first thing I ever torrented.
posted by Itaxpica at 7:53 PM on December 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

I am desperate to play this again, are there still machines somewhere in Los Angeles? God I am willing to drive to get to one if so
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:05 PM on December 11, 2017

Oh man - StepMania! I knew I got into DDR for a while but I couldn't remember actually playing any of the console releases because the song lists never quite lined up with what I remember. But now that I see StepMania, yeah, that's 100% what I used to play for the longest time.
posted by Kyol at 8:19 PM on December 11, 2017

A friend of mine has just bought her first house, after some years of serious savings in preparation for having everything she wants in it. One of those things is a full arcade DDR machine, just like my husband used to dance on when we were first dating. It was adorable watching him do it at her Halloween party.

We had the home game with the pads (which we mounted on plywood) for the PS2. I was terrible at it, as I am with all video games, but I still can't hear "Days Go By" without trying to dance the whole round to it.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:28 PM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

DDR got unpopular and is now becoming popular again? That can’t be right. It was a huge hit when I first moved to LA, and that was only...

Oh yeah. Seventeen years ago. When I was, at 22, probably one of the oldest guys to play it at the Sherman Oaks Castle Park.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:31 PM on December 11, 2017 [5 favorites]

In the early 2000s, I went to a work outing at Sherman Oaks Castle Park, and was delighted to find a DDR machine (possibly the same one that infinitewindow played!). I managed to coerce some of the higher-ups to give it a try, so there were some 30- or 40-somethings who played it there.
posted by mogget at 9:14 PM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

DDR Freak claims there are 302 machines in California, but I'm not sure how current it is.
posted by mogget at 9:18 PM on December 11, 2017

I am an old person, because I saw the title and said "What? East Germany is doing what now?"

I have been giggling about this on and off for hours.
posted by hippybear at 10:01 PM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

This is totally relevant to my interests. I was part of that DDR craze when it first came out (and even before, when we bootlegged the crap out of anything we could get our hands on). I am so glad to see it coming back, even if in a limited way so far.

I am a bit confused by the neural-network link though. Konami released a dance game called Goo! Goo! Soundy in 1999, and we got a copy from Japan. You loaded the game on your Playstation (that's right, original PS), then swapped out a regular music CD. The game would analysis the track you told it to, and generate a step chart for it right then.

Took some time, and there wasn't any "difficulty" to select. But you didn't really need it. DDR songs are shorter than normal radio play songs for a reason. We attempted to dance to Thriller and all just about died.

I suppose most wouldn't know about that game though, so the ability to generate new step charts without a modded PS would be pretty awesome, if you've got the stamina.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 5:58 AM on December 12, 2017

Back in the day, I had an imported and hacked PS One with what I choose to believe was one of the first DDR mats to ever make it into the UK. The problem, of course, was that the flexible mats were a sorry substitute for the hard pads found on proper arcade machines, which were few and far between - mostly at cinemas and bowling alleys, and I was never met by the hordes of amazed onlookers, Last Starfighter-style, that I secretly hoped might appear.

Fast forward several years, and I'm on the Royal Caribbean Oasis of the Seas mega-cruise ship going to Cork, Ireland (don't ask). On board, there are many amazing things: a surfing pool, a climbing wall, massive casino, cinema. Most amazing of all: a working DDR machine!

I stare at it, my eyes misting over. The seasons may have greyed my hair and bent my back, but one does not simply forget how to play DDR. Like a pigeon returning home across far seas, the step charts of Dam Dariram flow unbidden through into my mind and thence my legs. I activate the double pad mode and laugh in the face of the Basic mode. The years fade away; I become Old Man Logan, briefly-but-newly enlived by an injection of that weird Weapon-X syringe thing.

And then I notice, for the first time ever, I have a dedicated audience (other than my partner, who is watching on with a wry eye) - a small girl around eight or nine years old. It's like she didn't even realise half steps were possible. The notion of a double-pad DDR mode? mind_blown.gif

Eventually, the songs end. But before the world turns grey again, the girl just shouts out, "THAT WAS AMAZING!" and it was all worth it.

tl;dr: DDR is great, they better get a new machine in Edinburgh.
posted by adrianhon at 6:18 AM on December 12, 2017 [19 favorites]

The summer I was eighteen, the year I graduated from high school, I worked during the day washing windows at my grandmother's nursing home (in case you are wondering "how Rhode Island is this?" I brought her frozen lemonade at lunch every day) and at night at a go-kart track and arcade so I got to use all the machines for free and we got a DDR machine and I ended up in amazing shape! I spent the day climbing up and down a ladder then I'd come to my other job, play DDR until my shift started, and then push go-karts around. I think it is largely thanks to DDR that I placed out of all three semesters of my college's PE requirement and also that I was in a position to hook up with so many people that summer (including at least one guy who I met because he'd come and play DDR for HOURS) which was also excellent. I haven't played in years and years and I wasn't very good in that I only played the same few songs on easy (I was playing to have a good time, not to develop any sort of dancing skills, so I'd score super well on the three songs I did multiple times a day) but I imagine if I were to hear them again I'd have an intense flashback to that summer. This also happens to me sometimes when I use Windex, because of all the window washing. It's like my own personal version of Proust's madeleine or Bob Seger's Night Moves.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:48 AM on December 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

Oh man, I shredded so many DDR soft pads in the early 2000s. I think I've actually got a couple in decent shape in the attic, although I'm not sure the PS2 is in particularly good working shape anymore. To this day I can't hear or even think of Sandstorm without doing a little DDR dancing.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:27 AM on December 12, 2017

I'm not a pinball wizard by any means, but this is very familiar from that world. Pinball machines need regular maintenance, and playing on a badly cared-for machine is maddening.
posted by CaseyB at 8:07 AM on December 12, 2017

For anyone interested: The $50 DDR SuperNOVA Machine Restoration [YouTube]

Here is a video of me fixing up a DDR SuperNOVA (American) cabinet I picked up for $50. I honestly meant for this to be quite a bit more in depth, but a lot of it really wasn't that interesting. It was all working... Just a ton of cleaning and replacing sensors. Basically in this video I will show you...
-How to break apart the cabinet into moveable pieces
-Cleaning the pads
-Fixing some exposed wiring
-LED modding the pads
-A brief look at the control panel and what I did to it
-The dead sensors in the cabinet and why they weren't working

posted by Fizz at 8:29 AM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

My favorite DDR video has always been the guy Crip Walking.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 11:48 AM on December 12, 2017

We still play Step Mania from time to time in our house, and my hope is that our five-year-old can finally pass at the Novice level sometime in the future. Every time I haul the pad out, I hope that it doesn't break, and I send a silent blessing to the nameless folks who compiled all the songs.
posted by of strange foe at 3:05 PM on December 12, 2017