What Made You Interested in DDR in the First Place?

Back in the day, when I heard Do It All Night, Upside Down, and Captain Jack on 3rd Mix, I thought "Hey, this music is all right" and while I didn't get into playing it, I was more than happy to start downloading songs and crap off Kazaa.

A few years later, I walked by a 5th Mix, heard some 2Unlimited stuff on there, and was liek "Okay, I need to learn how to play this."

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When me and my sister would go to my aunt and uncles every other weekend back in 2006, he had bought DDR Extreme 2 to give us something to do while we were there. Every other weekend we would get a little bit further in Dance Master Mode.

Been hooked ever since.

Wow! So many responses! I'm really happy reading these stories guys.

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Back in Late 2000, my family took me and my older brother to go to an arcade/mini-golf/go-kart place, there I found DDR USA.

I've seen and played a lot of arcade games since I was 4 years old, but never in my life have I ever seen a machine that required you to step on arrows in time with the music on the screen. Ok, I did know about Spider Stomp but this was different, you had to look at the screen while watching your foot placement. My first song was Mr. Wonderful / smile.dk, I played on Basic and ended up with a C grade, since then I was just in love with the game and the concept of it all.

A few months pass by and my older brother met a friend in high school who had DDR KONAMIX for the PS1, she was nice enough to let us borrow the game plus the mat so that we could play. Soon afterwards we heard that there was going to be a DDR game for the PS2 (DDRMAX) and we got the bundled version of the game. And pretty much since then I've been getting all the major DDR PS2 games and then the PS3 one (no idea why), and eventually with DDR II and HP.

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After playing DDR for the first time, I was in a theater youth class and they had a DDR club thing. It became a competition on who could beat the best player in the class. After I got to be #1 I was just finding out about songs outside MAX2 CS. The first time I saw the full Extreme list blew my mind. I wanted to play all the songs. Over time I was passing 8s and 9s and pretty much became a hobby.

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I remember playing DDR at school (unfortunately it was in the groove but whatever). I was the best one as well.

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Well, one day I was leaving from a movie I saw with my grandparents many years ago and I wanted to walk through the arcade afterwards. My grandmother gave me a dollar and told me to go dance, in a joking/sarcastic voice. So I did, and I really enjoyed it. (I think the last song I played on that first set was Incognito , as it was an ITG2.)

And ever since then, I've been playing on and off. It's been a long time since then, back when one of my friends who I got to play and I thought passing Spaceman made you the lord of the dance.

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The funny thing is, I actually had no idea what DDR was until Extreme for PS2 came out. I remember seeing a commercial for it a long time ago, but I was at Game Crazy (before Hollywood Video's bankruptcy) looking for a present with my parents, and seeing this box: "Dance Dance Revolution Extreme" with support for the Eyetoy. Started playing it on the day of my sisters birthday, but I never got a single chance to play the game that day, and I was forced to sit and watch. The next day I started playing the mini-games, and after that, I started playing the actual game and started getting hooked. For years I decided to train myself to get better at this game, and it somewhat paid off. I lost interest a few years ago as I stopped playing for a year or two, but then over some recent months ago, and thanks to Stepmania, I'm back trying to play DDR regularly again, and I'm starting to get at least 3x better than I was years ago. I was just playing the console games at the time and buying so many dance mats to get there, but now I'm practicing with Stepmania, and arcade versions to get better at existing songs since I have an Extreme, SuperNOVA, SuperNOVA 2, and X2 machine within about 45 minutes of my area. I'm really happy that I'm back playing this game, and I don't think I'll stop anytime soon.

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@Drumrush7

That's awesome man! I'm happy you got back into it. That happend to me too (about losing interest for a while and then gaining interest again, thanks to Kon and DrD). I also don't think I'll stop playing anytime soon either (unless I lose one of my legs which I hope to God that'll never happen).

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My mom went to the local Y, which had this "kid's fitness gym" thing where you could climb a net, build some stuff with big foam blocks, play on a swing of some sort, and finally, play DDR (Extreme at that point, much later replaced with DCE). I was captivated by DDR, though mostly by the minigames at that point. I wasn't any good at the game at that point. A while after that, I played some arcade dance game that I can't really identify. My memories make it look something like DDRMAX2, but I'm not really sure anymore.

Christmas of 2005 was basically when I got started, as I got a GameCube with Mario Mix. A few months later, I started playing a ton of StepMania, and eventually that brought me here.

@FlameyBoy

I used to play DDR at the Y until I had my own metal pad. I had some old videos of me playing there but I deleted them.

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I saw people playing it and thought "Hey that looks fun" so I started playing.

This can be said for ITG, PIU and IIDX as well haha.

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First off I was bored. Then I found out about Stepmania because a friend told me how stupid this was. Holy shit he was WRONG.

Out of curiosity, I got SM, but I had to download a simfile pack too for being able to play it! My choices were DDRMAX and DDRMAX2.

The first song I played was AFRONOVA (FROM NONSTOP MEGAMIX). Holy shit this song was intended to hook me up for 3 YEARS before I could pass the chart. On the keyboard.

After I learnt how to create screenshots of my results, i posted them on some community (Dont remember which one) and people asked me "Did you play this on pad?" I answered "What's a pad?" And people started facepalming all the way. Because I wanted to know what a pad is, I bought one from ebay. FORTUNATELY I BOUGHT A METAL PAD.

I failed FLASH IN THE NIGHT .
Holy shit I couldn't stop playing.

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LOL.

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I had DDR 1stMIX, 2ndReMIX, and BEST HITS on my PS1 (with a pad) 9 years ago when I was 5. (Back then, I started playing on and (BEST HITS)) I then received 2ndReMIX Club APPEND 1 and I had EXACTLY no idea on how to use it. I have been playing on pad at lot before and a lot that I couldn't move one time (LOL) and got pretty good scores. Also, my family would call it "Dance Revo. " I would even go to arcades before (I think the first one was DDR SuperNOVA) and play DDR. Now, I have all PS2 DDR USA games after a trip to Gamestop and now unlocking almost everything in Extreme 2. I still have 1stMIX, 2ndREMIX, an APPEND Club Version 1. (RIP DDR Best Hits)

I started the arcades fully when I saw DDR SuperNOVA and played on Tutorial, then moved on to All Music. I remembered playing on a 4thMIX machine before in Las Vegas 7 years and played DDR USA on Seaworld Orlando and Las Vegas too. (Damn I miss those) Then I played EXTREME and ITG on Chicago. In the Philippines, the last time I played was DDR SuperNOVA 2 3 years ago, then stopped playing.

What a fun and long experience I had, LOL.

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Sorry, long-ish post, but I'll try to make it as entertaining as possible.

Well, DDR was the first game I ever remember playing. One day I saw my mom play "Have You Never Been Mellow" on Basic, and I wanted to try the game. It was the first original DDR for the American market (3rd mix in Japan I guess?) and my mom owned this plastic mat which was super loud. Well I was interested, so I decided to try it, and well, I kept failing over and over again. It was on the pattern of up down up down because I didn't know I was supposed to alternate feet. Well I kept playing until I finally got it, and I realized how awesome the game was, so I played it for the next few years. Since I was young, I really didn't care about score, I just want to have fun and even a full combo was pretty rad for me.

And then I guess I took a big break from DDR? I completely lost interest and began playing other American games like Rock Band and whatnot.

Well, one day my parents told me that we were moving to Japan, and at this time I still had no interest in DDR (last game I remembered was DDR Supernova, and it was new at the time so that's how long the break was). Well, disappointed that I had to leave my American life, I went to Japan and am still living here. Well once we got situated, we explored the area a little bit. There's something called a shopping arcade (it's basically a really long walkway with stores on the side, also known as the "ginza" for English speakers). Inside the shopping arcade, they had two gaming arcades. I went into both of them, and neither one of them had DDR. It was kinda weird because since I lived near Chicago, there were DDR machines everywhere.

With this it sparked my curiosity as to what happened with DDR after I played it last time. Well I started looking up videos of how DDR evolved over the years and I was pretty shocked at how different it was. The charts were a LOT more harder and there was a new cabinet design and whatnot. So I re-installed Stepmania onto my computer and tried out all the old songs that I used to remember, and I can remember the huge sense of nostalgia that I had listening to songs like Boom Boom Dollar and Trip Machine. Well it made me feel really happy for some dumb reason, so I guess I remembered how DDR used to be my favorite game back then.

Came summer, my family had planned a trip to go to Osaka. Since it was a major city, I utilized this opportunity because I knew somewhere they had to have a DDR cabinet. Well I saw the arcade with the DDR cabinet in the front, and I remembered that I saw in on a youtube video somewhere. Still being in my "DDR is just for fun, not for score" state, I was more than excited to see a DDR cabinet and I didn't care how bad I was. Well, I was really bad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz4evyzfLB8

Believe it or not, I was really tired after this song and I didn't even come close to a full combo. Oh well, all that mattered was that it was fun and I still needed work to do.

Well eventually I realized how much fun it was aiming for accuracy. As a child I always wanted to get an AAA, but I never did. Well time went by, I picked up In The Groove, started playing harder songs from like Mad Matt on keyboard to practice timing, I watched youtube videos of great players, and eventually found a cabinet that's an hour away from me that's DDR X3. Even though I only got to play at the arcade once a month due to the distance, I went from failing Max 300 one day, getting a D on Max 300, getting a B on Max 300, getting an A on Max 300, and then an AA without practicing inbetween. However, if I want to get better, I should really practice more, but it's hard considering I can't drive and toll fees in Japan are really expensive (but with the cabinet, it's 100 yen for 8 songs (2 credits) or 12 songs if you get an encore).

And here I am today. I know this score even then still isn't good, but it was just a test to measure my stamina since I never played the song, and plus I wasn't that tired after I completed it.



So uhh, yeah. That's my story on how I got into DDR and what keeps me interested. I acknowledge that I'm still pretty bad at the game, but because I love it and am totally addicted to it, I just have fun with it. It's hard to grind to be better considering I have to play with my older brother all the time, and mainly we just want to have fun instead of replaying songs for a better score, but I make use of what I can.

My cousin bought Ultramix 2 when it came out to lose weight. I decided to buy Extreme CS to lose weight as well.

I lost weight. He didn't.

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I saw DDR Max on Toys R Us with 2 pads for 20 bucks and thought it'd be a great way to kill time.

I have a cabin "up north" that my family shares with my uncle's family. My cousin brought a PS2 and DDRMAX2, and I got into it, so I bought DDRMAX2 first thing when I got home. I remember my brother, sister, cousin, and I trying to pass Conga Feeling Expert with each of us kneeling and hitting one pad with our hands. Those were the days...

WOW. Almost thirteen years, and you're the FIRST person I know that BEGAN with simulation. That's just qwesome.


You was right.


Funny fact, there was a point where I was consistently SSS'ing BRILLIANT 2U , and then failing IF YOU WERE HERE in the same game. Those 1/8s were MURDER.

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