What Made You Interested in DDR in the First Place?

Sorry if my memory is a little fuzzy, but I remember my cousins showing me the original Dance Dance Revolution game on the PS1 with the "official" pads when I was very young. I believe my first song ever was Boom Boom Dollar and I passed it with an okay score, although I immediately loved the song.

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Well, I believe that StepMania opened my way to DDR.

One day, I was searching for an offline alternative for Audition Online, a rhythm online game that I used to play. Then, I found Beat Up, a simulation of Audition's Beat Up mode that was based off StepMania. I downloaded the game and some song packs for it, but somehow that game mode didn't work with my machine, and only "dance" game mode available to play. After some reading, I found out that "dance" mode is a simulation of DDR. Being a hermit that went to town a few times a year ('kay, kidding), I have only a faint idea about DDR that time. But since I already downloaded the game, I decided just to start playing, and downloaded some more song packs (my favorite is Otaku's Dream and Project Destruction). After playing with keyboard for a few months, I can easily pass and easier , and I remember my classmates surrounded me when I start to whore Afronova, Shining Collection Double Speed Edit, or San Sebastian on keyboard.

My first encounter with DDR was a couple months after I graduated from high school. My friends, who believed that I was a DDR pro after seeing me keyboard-whoring songs on StepMania, asked me to come with them to play DDR in an arcade nearby (it was an Extreme, and the only one I know on the town back then). My first song was "Graduation" on , and passed with a shameful D. I lost my face to them, and told an alibi that if I play with glasses I can play better, lol. After that meeting, I didn't start playing regularly until the next couple of months, when college starts. The schedule was not as dense as my school's schedule, so I had more time to spend. I started to regularly play on that Extreme machine. After a couple of weeks, I can pass some songs, and started to wonder why was the arcade not getting much business on the Extreme machine. Turned out that there's some newer machines in my town that I didn't even know exists after I asked a player there (I didn't even know an X2 machine exists within 20 minutes from my campus! My trip to that Extreme machine was 1-1.5 hours from my campus). From that player, I also got to know a local DDR community that is still thriving until today, and gradually I start to be involved with the community (the name's Legion of Revolutionary Dancer, or LoRD) as I improve my play.

Well, my history is not that long, given that I started playing StepMania about three years ago and started in arcade less than a year ago, but whatever, lol. And sorry for this wall-of-text, my hand has its own minds and type pointless ramblings.

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My first DDR experience began at home, 2005 or something, when I wanted to play my Xbox. My father downloaded some games (as it was modded) and one of them he put was DDR Ultramix. I started to play this game. I think my first song was "Castles in the Sky" and with that I liked it very much. Though I only played it with the controller. Later on I've found out about Stepmania and downloaded it right away. I've played it a lot and even played on Stepmania Online too.

After some time I've actually had some idea to put a small PC in the living room to play emulators and Stepmania. I thought of buying two pads so my sister and I could play this game on a real pad. Though I started to lose interest and I haven't touched DDR again.

Flash forward to August 2012. I'm in London for a school language stay. It was a few days before I had to go back home. I haven't bought something for my sister yet and searched for a Manga store. I went to Trocadero around and went down and what do I see? A Dance Dance Revolution X arcade! I wasn't sure about this to play and after playing some other arcade games I played it. And yep, even though I haven't played on a Pad and haven't played DDR for a long time, I could at least do Heavy songs. Some people actually praised me for this. And this is where I got hooked on DDR again. When I went back home, I immediately set up a Mac with Stepmania in my Gaming room and bought two Softmats (Impact Dance Pads, they're great Softmats).

Now I still play Stepmania with pads from time to time and I don't regret anything. Also I'm going to try searching for a real DDR arcade in my local town. I hope I'll find at least one.

I thought everyone there complained about bad cabs?

Yeah, they don't seem to treat the cabs well. I noticed stuff like Point Blank being broken and House of the Dead 4 having crappy aiming. Though the right dance pad on DDR X was working well enough to play (as a pad beginner at least). I just couldn't play Double alone or play Versus with someone. Also a couple went away after the second Easy Mode song.

My older brother bought DDR Max and a soft pad for his 11th birthday (he's 20 now). I tried playing it and failed miserably on the easiest songs. Something just kept making me come back to it, though. I repeatedly said to myself that I would never be any good at this, that I will always be awful. A few months later, I passed my first song on Heavy (gentle stress). Soon after I discovered a few arcades near by that had DDR machines, and it all went up from there.

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Time to set things straight :p

So basically a long time ago my sister used to play with her friend... and sometimes I tag along. This was the time when PSX is the BEST THING EVA!!1!! so whatever game they have (that appealed to them), I just play along... till they play DDR 2ndReMIX. I was a sucker for games and I just played it and was captivated... I dunno why.

My sister bought a copy and we whored it on our PSX.

Even though we're playing on controller, FCing PARANOiA was the biggest thing EVA (especially when I FCed/SSed PARANOiA KCET).

Then I bought 3rdMIX, 4thMIX, EXTRA MIX, Disney Mix (uh), EuroMIX and some other obscure mix like PARTY COLLECTION that was half-broken. I dunno why I didn't get 5thMIX :/

I played till I get tired... and half forgot about it... until I discovered StepMania (I think this comes first). I played StepMania a lot with my crappy set-up.

Until again, my sister brought me to a mall which has EXTREME. I did miserably on JANEJANA . It went downhill from there, I believe. Getting better and better score on JANEJANA, tried new songs, tried doubles (and failing miserably), playing SN2, meeting new friends, getting first AA, getting first AAA and getting first PFC, etc.

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I found out about DDR when my Mom bought DDR Mario Mix. We thought it was another Mario game, but with an original idea. Some time later, a friend of my big brother gave us a copy of DDR Extreme, which made me realize that Mario Mix was, in reality, a spin-off of a completely different game. Been hooked on DDR ever since, but with my pads worn out and living on the second floor, I'm relegated to playing Stepmania on Keyboard nowadays. Hopefully, in the future, I can buy a metal dance pad for Stepmania so I can play DDR.

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I initially got into DDR when my friend came back from a trip to Ohio with a copy of DDR Ultramix 4 and a foam mat. I heard of DDR before that time though. In fact, when a friend asked if I wanted to play on a DDR machine long before, I replied "You will NEVER ever see me dance. Ever.". Though when I played it, I just found it so addictive.
I eventually stumbled across Stepmania soon after when I was looking for something I could play any time I wanted to. That led me shortly to ZIv when I was scouring for Ultramix 4 simfiles, which after browsing DDRUK, didn't have.

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Sometimes my mom would bring my three-year-older brother and I to a local arcade. He coaxed me into playing it after being generally apathetic to disinterested in it. I loved it. We used to play Speed Over Beethoven on pretty frequently. Being the age I was I didn't even consider the fact that the game could exist in a home version. Fast forward to around 5th grade. My brother was in 8th, and we got (either that or we had and pulled back out) MAX2. Getting it initially was a surprise to me. My brother played it a lot more than me at the time, and I played it occasionally with and without him. I dominated mode, but I was naive enough to think "Nah, I'm not gonna try Standard, I don't like the half steps." From then on I played sporadically, being spread out many months at a time. I would play a song at the arcade if I was at one, things like that. I hadn't really gotten into it yet.

That is, until about eight months ago...

At this point I could play some simple songs. Nothing too intricate, but I could do well. My friend invited me to go out with her friends at a laser tag place. So we all head out there, planning on staying out for a couple hours. Well by the time the laser tag game was over, only around an hour had passed. We had at least two before we were planning on leaving. So we're all pacing around the place, and find a small back arcade room. The entire place had arcade machines, but there was this small back area too with a SuperNOVA cabinet. I coaxed my friend into playing, and we spent the next two hours doing it. My feet hurt like nothing else for the next week, but the following week I pulled out my home soft mats and began again. Since then I have played just about every day. I still regularly go to that place to play, and just last week I managed to come across the same group of people I was with the first time. I'm not going to go into many specifics, but pulling a Burning Heat! at that point felt pretty damn good (especially since one of them had only the response of "Oh God what the hell?").

I first knew about DDR in 2000, although I didn't know how the game was called. I remember seeing a DDR 2nd Mix cabinet at a cinema, and a very cute girl (at least that's what I thought back then) playing Dub-I-Dub, I think. It seemed interesting for me, but not enough to memorize the name of the game.

But it wasn't until 2001 since I actually played it for the first time. Dad bought DDR 3rd Mix CS for me one day, and I thought it was fun though I was only playing with a PS controller. In that year in Lima, DDR cabinets (called "dancing machines") became very common in cinemas, arcades and common public places. Most of them were bootlegs that booted DDR 3rd Mix CS (though you could find legit machines). Weeks later, I found an arcade not too far from home while I was with my parents, and I saw one of those bootleg 3rd Mix cabinets. I noticed the game was exactly the same as the one I owned (and was very familiar with too), so I felt brave enough to try the real deal. I remember failing on my 2nd stage: Paranoia Rebirth. Maybe I felt too brave...

Months passed. Got a third party dance pad for PS, and got better at it though I didn't practice much because of the lack of space at home. Found out about other versions, played on other cabinets, until I got towards the Trick-Maniac spectrum. I eventually lost interest in it, but I kept on playing seldom.

Years passed, and arcades started disappearing. PIU got very popular, and even more popular than DDR, so DDR cabinets were replaced with PIU ones. Now I regret not having played more often on those arcades.

And, I guess that's it!

I was living in Germany at the time when my Dad brought back DDRMAX2 and 2 dance pads. My Dad played the first song, and from what I remember it was In The Navy by Captain Jack on . He got about 7,000,000 points. My sister then went next and she didn't know much about the game so she ended up with a bad score. I was then the last person to try the game that round, and my first song was Twilight Zone , or atleast I think it was. I was mad because I didn't have very good Hand-Eye Coordination (Or in this case, Foot-Eye Coordination) since I was about 5 years old at the time, so I freaked out and started smashing all the buttons on the pad. Also, I am 13 years old now, FYI. After a while, I got more into it and was able to do a few songs on . After around a month, my Dad was impressed by my skills and he filmed a small "Documentary" of me playing DDR and my sister jumping on the pad, but I didn't know I was supposed to be being a goofball on footage, so I smashed her with a pillow. Before all that jank happened, my Dad opened up the footage with me doing SP-Trip Machine Jungle Mix on , when he told me to do a quick song. After a lot of playing, my Mom saw how skinny I was getting, and I am still very slim to this day. Later, we got two more games, In The Groove, and DDR Extreme. When I first played In The Groove, I saw that there was hand steps in some of the songs, but at first I didn't know how to hit them. I also didn't know about mines either, so my sister started laughing every time a mine exploded, then when she played she stepped on every mine she could. When my family moved to North Carolina, where I still am now I had a very long break from DDR because I got so mad at the game that I spit on the screen. During that break, I became very out of shape and simply running for 5 seconds made me winded to the point I would fall over. After a while, I lost interest, but I saw some games at a Trade-It store in the town I live in and I was so filled with joy, I couldn't resist but buy it, and now I am playing the game alot. A good thing is though, now that I am around the Teenager ages, I have a better appetite. I am still very skinny though.

And THAT, is why I have joined this community.

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Believe it or not.. my first DDR experience left me really messed up!

I was a very young kid, I believe I was about 6/7, and at Great Yarmouth, a seaside in England with loads of arcades I first spotted a Dancing Stage machine. For whatever reason it enticed me in and I gave it a go; on my first song I picked Dynamite Rave and it kicked my arse on Basic. What messed me up however, was that the flashing DANGER! logos with the skulls along with the announcer telling me I sucked made me burst into tears and run away aha.

That night I actually had a NIGHTMARE ABOUT THE DANCE MACHINE. The dance machine skulls came out the machine and I was trapped in an arcade and zombies come out of a House of the Dead machine and it was just horrible!

But yeah I had an actual phobia of dance machines up until my local arcade got a EuroMIX 2 and I thought.. that's it I'm concurring this fear, and I played it, I nailed B4U (ZA B4 Beat Mix or w/e) on Beginner and I realised how fun it was, and that's my story! Shortly after I got EuroMIX and a soft mat for the PS1 and was quickly up to Difficult and then Expert; in the arcades I didn't want to waste my pound so I never took any risks so I was stuck on Basic for FAR too long but at home I moved up really quickly!

Fascinating story man. You're the first I've heard to actually have nightmares about DDR machines. Well I'm glad you concurred your fear and better yet just concurring the game itself.

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I remember the danger signs putting me off, but they never gave me nightmares...

I'm sure I've posted here before but
I myself was always fascinated by the dance machines when I was younger, going all the way back to when I was like, four or something. When I was 7, for christmas my dad decided to buy a 300$+ metal pad for some reason with DDRMAX2. That was almost 9 years ago... Next Christmas I will have officially been playing DDR for 10 years. Wow.

On the bright side, it wasn't Extreme.

What was up with Extreme?

Are you referring to the sharks? I hated those sharks.
They were the worst sharks

I don't really have a good story to go with mine. My best friend as I was going into my freshman year in high school was all kinds of into the game. We had a local arcade with a 3rd Mix and an Extreme machine, though I was too afraid to play in public. So I sold my broken Gamecube and all it's games for a PS2, a soft pad and a copy of MAX2, and went from there.

Haha yea I know, a nightmare about a DDR machine is pretty out there! Needless to say it's never happened since! But it's definitely a dream that I can remember so distinctly to this day...

And yes, I imagine the sharks would've put me off DDR for life at that age!