The Canada Thread

This post will appear on the next page!

I have updated the listing pages for Ottawa and Québec on my Dance Dance North site. These bilingual pages are about dance games only, but they load quickly and are great for comparing one location to another. Also, when searching for "DDR Canada" online, my pages rank up well. The links are:
• DanceDanceRevolution.ca/Ottawa (includes Gatineau)
• DanceDanceRevolution.ca/Quebec (excludes Gatineau)

I also have pages for that site on social networks: Minds (bilingual), Gab (English and/et Français), Twitter (English) and a few more. Minds and Gab are great because they respect privacy and allow more open discussion compared to Facebook and Twitter. All these pages are my secular, yet family-friendly, gaming and tech pages.

For personal topics like religion and politics, I prefer not to use gaming sites or pages. I have my separate personal pages. I can make exceptions for Dance Praise (bad game), simfiles (Jump5, ZOEgirl, etc.), the Jewish variant of StepMania (seems well-built) and more.

Indeed, that machine is running OpenITG with an In The Groove 3 theme. It's a go-to location for me and although it's rather far from downtown, it is easily accessible by metro. The OpenITG at Cineplex Yonge-Eglinton VIP stinks. It has bad pads also found on ITG in Scotiabank Theatre Saskatoon and Winnipeg. Scarborough's pads, on the other hand, are among the best. The reason that the left menu (not pad) buttons are disabled, from what I'm told by a regular, is to prevent players from getting free games.

I will be updating my Toronto page (http://DanceDanceRevolution.ca/Toronto) once I get the opportunity. Would you be willing to help me find out how the Toronto locations are doing, please?

This is great! Ottawa made the silly mistake of having no Pump It Up. The only one I was aware of was at Laser Quest, with one of the LCD-based dance machines, only to be removed earlier this decade. Montréal has a nice and busy PIU Prime, as you know.

With the upcoming The Rec Room in downtown Toronto, I'm not getting my hopes up too much, but Cineplex might choose to install a dance game there. The issue will be whether or not it gets maintained properly. More often than not, Cineplex is disappointing.

Oakville for DDR A and Niagara Falls for Prime 2 are great, but they're far from the coveted downtown Toronto. It would cost even more for me to take the train there, and service isn't as frequent. I already have DDR A on my home page, though, and I'd like to get PIU Prime 2 on there. If you are willing to help me out with this, please, it can happen. I have a good dozen who visited Dance Dance North on campus on Valentine's Day, so I'm sure that many would be interested in newer DDR games and Pump It Up. :-)

---

I can try, but I can't drive (I have a Metropass which is how I get to the Scarborough cabinet), so Playdium, Cineplex Mississauga and Newmarket are somewhat out of my conventional reach, so someone else has to test those (both the PIU Prime and DDR SN2).

A few things:
-The Dave & Buster's at Vaughan has a PIU Fiesta iirc (It's a PIU game, but I forget which one) the last time I was there (for someone else's party, but hey). Since I can't get there normally, someone else needs to check which game it is.
-Scotiabank Theatre's DDR X pads are not great; they tend to get stuck and in general high level play is not feasible. (I took the pads for a spin on MAX 300; Of which I can AA. I failed.) It's a Betson Cabinet, so this is somewhat to be expected.

D&B Vaughan is actually Prime. Its pads are crap and is offline.

The new Toronto page is now complete and available in both official languages!
DanceDanceRevolution.ca/Toronto

It will be helpful for quickly comparing the ten locations that I found in that region. Those outside of the GTA but in the Golden Horseshoe, including Hamilton and Niagara Falls, will either be sections on that page or separated entirely. Cineplex has a large grip on the dance arcade market. I wish the market was more competitive.

I don't drive either, so those are out of my reach, too. With the comments I'm hearing, only Newmarket might be worth the long trip. By the way, I already have a mostly complete OC Transpo static map on my Ottawa machine, listing which dance machine is closest to or even at the station. I'm hoping to have RTC, STM and TTC maps complete soon. Thanks for offering to help with some listings. :-)

The pads are absolutely atrocious. The minimum that I expect is what La Récréathèque has to offer, which is still bad quality, but fair enough to get full Great combos on Trick/Standard/Difficult. Scotiabank doesn't even offer that, as the techs willingly neglect the machine that replaced a dedicated DDR SuperNOVA 2. Betson and Raw Thrills did build bad DDR X and X2 machines, but it's not stopping La Récréathèque and especially Funhaven from maintaining and running them properly. Cineplex is cheap and gets graded accordingly.

Venny, what exactly is wrong with the pads, if you could please tell me? For example: Funhaven currently has a stuck "Up" arrow on Player 1, while Cineplex Ottawa has a weak pad for Player 2. With descriptions like that, I can rate the pads as "Poor" if an arrow is broken or "Fair" if arrows are intermittent. I would really appreciate any help that I could get as I roll out the new machine listings.

---

http://dancedancerevolution.ca/locations/toronto/

Okay, so whoever marked the Yorkdale DDR Extreme as Okay on both Player 1 and Player 2 is dead wrong
P1's pad fails to register up arrows P2's fails to register down arrows, P2 also drops holds really badly
In other words, Yorkdale's cabinet is terrible

EDIT: I'd also like to add that there's a ITG 2 cabinet at Fairview Mall.

IIRC it's not as good as scarborough's, but I remember clearing some 11's on it, so it's not terrible.

I am sorry that the listing was outdated and did not reflect the current state of the machine. The Yorkdale page was created on December 21, 2015 and now redirects to that Toronto page, so the game condition almost certainly worsened in 2016. Both pads and the machine overall now get thumbs down, but if you can get a Full Combo on either side, please let me know so that I can reassess.

I have updated my website with the following new content:

• The front page now lists both DDR A and PIU 2017 Prime 2 at Dave & Buster's Oakville.

• Individual arcade pages are deprecated unless warranted. For example, D&B and Amusement 2000 Plus still have individual pages because they offer exclusive games. Arcades that offer common titles such as DDR Extreme, however, lose individual pages.

• Search by game: from DDR USA to DDR A, search takes just one click! (ITG and PIU coming soon!)

• Details (screen, sound, pads) are shown by default, but can be hidden using the check box. (I may inverse this later.)

• Mock cabinet icons are now smaller to make Venny happy and also to have a more reasonable size.

• There are over 50 arcades in Canada with dance games! The front page was updated to reflect this.

• Maps are finally available! OpenStreetMap links will be placed on every dance game listing.

• Media, which includes photos and videos, can be viewed by clicking on the magnifying glass icons.

• Dorénavant, je m'assurerai que le site web s'affiche aussi bien en français qu'en anglais. :-)

Take care and please feel free to send me any suggestions!

---

d&b doesn't have prime 2 though?

NOTE: Not my video. I haven't been to the location yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ziCq3ux_9U

Dammit. Just when I was getting excited...

That's Venny's video. Don't worry though, one of the techs rotated the sensor units while I was there today. The cabinet is back in relatively playable shape, at least as of this writing!

---

Recently, I've uploaded a slew of new videos. Some are from my own machines, others are from other arcades. Last week was quite eventful. I visited several arcades, including the Player One Amusement Group (P1AG aka. Cineplex) arcade at Merivale Bowling. The arcade is a no-name Xscape. That's the reality of the matter: many arcades that appear to be independent or even run by competitors (such as Landmark Cinemas, who often contracts with P1AG, with some exceptions like at Orléans) are actually run by Cineplex.


Now, over in Gatineau, I was able to test drive DDR SuperNOVA 2 at Fun Junction. The arcade has a DDR Extreme machine, which was neat years ago, but I told the owner that upgrading the system board would allow many more songs and features. I did forgot the wires needed to map the Up and Right arrows properly, which cost next to nothing, but I still passed a song on Beginner! The arcade owner seemed very interested in SuperNOVA 2 to modernize his arcade. I gave him info before reinstalling Extreme… for now.


I've even acquired a PercussionFreaks 9thMix machine! Fun Junction had a great deal on its PF machine, and given that both Montréal and Toronto discontinued their public machines, I decided to buy one. Both the System 573 and Python 2 run on it.

While I think it's too bad that Merivale lacks music games, they do have Kung Fu Panda Dojo Mojo, which reminds me of Dance Maniax and ParaParaParadise in some way. I'm also very glad to have visited Fun Junction. I hope more can enjoy these games.

---

uh hi

Some observations with ITG cabs in the GTA since I've decided roaming for them the past couple of weeks on top of the posts made earlier on the thread:

STC: load times are pretty eh, could really use more songs than Mungyodance

Fairview: Went two days after the report made by wrsw, didn't see his post until now. I'm guessing the coffee cup sleeves were left on top of the cab for a reason, shit was hard to balance when the whole thing is rocking around.

Newmarket: Only P2 side's USB seems to work. One of the arrows on P1 side was said to be not working, a fact that I learned after visiting. Could be the case, but I didn't notice on the run or two I had for that side.

So earlier today I went down to test the Fairview ITG Cabinet.

A few observations:
P1's side works pretty well; I'm not that good so it's hard for me to really gauge, but I managed to clear Utopia, Energizer, Vertex^2, Pandemonium, (, I'm not a ITG-13 level player, and the brackets on Vertex^2 worked!), Robotix , And failed Euphoria : (I don't know why I tried; that chart is of questionable quality).

P2's side, on the other hand, has a bad habit of dropping the left arrow.

Other notes:
-I found there was sometimes (it's very inconsistent) pretty bad visual lag on the cabinet, HOWEVER, it was never bad enough that I failed because of it.

It's the Anime North season, and BBC is bringing Bemani setups to the Sheraton again. This year, we're going be having:

CS Setups
- 3x K-Shoot Mania (SVRE9s)
- beatmania IIDX INFINITAS (Real Edition Double)
- Lunatic Rave 2 (2x FP7)
- Pop'n Music CS
- Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone

AC Cabinets
- 2x In the Groove 2 (dedicabs)
- Jubeat

There is going to be a 600g IIDX tournament at 8PM on Saturday. Additionally, we are also going to be doing an ASC group photo after the tournament - bring your controller at 9PM on Saturday to join in!

Some photos from last year:

There's a $50 pass on sale at Dave & Buster's that allows unlimited play on blue games, non-redemption, through August 31.
https://DaveAndBusters.com/Summer-Weekday-Pass

It works from Monday to Friday until 18h daily. It can be used at Vaughan and Oakville for PIU Prime, Oakville for DDR A and other blue games. The $50 loaded can be used for other purchases. Hopefully this helps get a good crowd around dance games.

Edit: Thanks for the correction, NewbStepper. I'm not in the region, so I wasn't aware that dance games are pink at D&B. Sorry for the mistake. I guess I don't blame them for making them pink games. At the same time, play time can get expensive.

---

Unfortunately, Pump It Up and DDR A are not blue games, they're pink. They did that earlier this year to prevent time card abuse.

---

why does your site still say d&b has prime 2?

it doesn't.

Rec Room in Toronto opened

It's gonna be rubbish lol

I apologize. I changed it on the front page, not the Toronto page, but then I changed the front page to have videos instead of location news. I didn't realize that I forgot to change the Toronto page. It's changed now. Too bad there's just one Prime 2 in Canada. Oh well.

The concern that I have is that The Rec Room isn't advertising any rhythm games. When I asked them about it for the South Edmonton Commons back on September 13, 2016, they sent me a vague tweet about "over 120 arcade games", but no specifics. I see nothing about that on their website or social media, but based on the stuff they do post, most of these are redemption games.

Square One in Mississauga, which currently has Playdium nearby, will be getting The Rec Room soon. I wonder if Playdium will close. If so, its games might get moved over to The Rec Room. Now if only this VIP experience would result in proper game maintenance…

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

With the way the arcade scene is going, I haven't worked much on the Dance Dance North site recently. Sure, it lists over 50 arcades, but many of these are not worth the money due to bad pads or low-quality LCD screens. Most are Extreme or ITG2. Cineplex ordered very few DDR X machines (only two in public listings), poorly maintains its Toronto one and didn't order any newer DDR games. It has one PIU, maybe a few more. Meanwhile, two non-Cineplex arcades in Ottawa imported DDR X2; the Brookstreet one is being moved and might be paired with a PercussionFreaks machine that's not mine. If so, that would be great because these games are hard to find.

I will also have my PercussionFreaks paired with a DDR machine. I'm thinking of pairing PF 9thMix with DDR SuperNOVA 2. Outside of Ottawa, though, are PF 3rdMix and KM 2ndMix still at Skylon Tower in Niagara Falls? Also, does Regina still have a GF&PF setup?

---

It's time for ConBravo 2017! We are running rhythm games in the Game Room again this year.

EDIT: Rhythm game room has been moved to the 1UP Games store for the convention.

Game List
- 4x K-Shoot Mania (2x Turbochargers, 2x SVSE5s)
- beatmania IIDX 16 EMPRESS (2x FP7)
- Lunatic Rave 2 BMS (FP7 + FPS)
- Lunatic Rave 2 BMS (Pop'n Dao)
- Pop'n Music CS (Pop'n Dao)
- Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone
- 2x Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F 1&2
- Stepmania (Laptop)
- In The Groove 2 (DDR Upgrade Machine)

Photos From Last Year

Sorry for bumping a thread that hasn't been bumped in over a month, but I recently tried out the Dave and Buster's Oakville DDR A cabinet.

It's working great; I got PSMO with 3 misses (which has never happened before, wtf I'm not even that good), several full combos (best was a Great Full Combo, but that's because of my inaccuracy), I actually passed Elemental Creation on Challenge, so yeah.

DDR A in Oakville is looking really good.