Any DDR stories?

I was suddenly reminded of an amusing moment one time when I was playing.

This was sometime before DDRMAX was released. I was visiting Singapore one time, and had an opportunity to play a round at some arcade - it had a 4th Mix machine, a mix I never saw yet up to that point. I was playing away, and noticed two grade school kids watching me play. After I finished a song, one of them came up to me and asked in English, “Are you Korean?”

Being Korean, I said that I was in Korean.

She turned to the other kid and said, “See? I told you he was Korean!”

Do you have any random DDR stories?

When DDR Supernova came out in 2006, I gave it a try after quitting for some years since my dad mentioned a new machine.

By chance, when I heard three of my classmates are going to the mall, I decided to join in since I have nothing better to do after school. I asked them to check out the new DDR machine. I still have the skills in Difficult mode so I decided to show off a little.

This scenario inspired one of my classmates to return to DDR. When he would invite me and three of my friends, he'd make it a requirement to play DDR Supernova and it's been like that since then up to 2011. I lent my friends DDR 2nd, 3rd and 4th mixes for the PlayStation for them to practice at home.

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When I was 9 years old, I got a dancemat and Dancing Stage Fever for Christmas 2003. I was too afraid to use it. Once, I took my first steps, I started to love it. I collected more of the Dancing Stage series, and I go to the arcades to play DDR if I happen to see it.

I came across videos of DDR freestyle, and when I was 11 in 2005 I started freestyle.

I continue it today, but in my country there are rarely people who specialize in DDR. I just continue to go on the hunt for more DDR arcades, and one day I came across Zenius-I-Vanisher.

I set up an account, updated simfiles with images of my hobbies and interests, ideal for freestyle tournaments, but some users gave me critical acclaim. I ignored it because I wanted to prove something. But then I started making silly threads about Eurovision singers doing DDR freestyle and playing my simfiles. Users thought it was too much and now it's going to stop, but I won't give up on my dream.

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First time I ever saw DDR in person was at an Aladdin's Castle arcade in Illinois at one of the malls. A guy in a soggy Santa hat was drenched in sweat and playing 3rd Mix. This must have been around 2001 or 2002. As a sophomore in high school around 2003, my best friend got DDR Konamix for Christmas and one of those horrible, cheap plastic DDR pads where the arrows are literally raised buttons. We used to get many calluses on our feet practicing in his basement after school until we were brave enough to play in public at the arcade. By that time, he saved up money for a Cobalt Flux and we raced to his house after school to try it out. He obtained his very first AA ever by using a Cobalt Flux on the song 321 Stars. I have so many DDR/ITG/PIU stories and I've been playing ever since 2003. Made many good friends throughout the years as well just from playing rhythm games.

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A few years ago (somewhere around 2012 if I remember correctly) I went to Dave & Buster's and played some Pump It Up. I thought I was done for the night after playing for a while, but then some drunk guy saw me walking away and said in an obviously drunk slur, "No, you're not going anywhere just yet" and motioned me back on the machine. "I wanna see if I can keep up with you." I wasn't really comfortable around him, but he already swiped his card and I figured I'd humor him, just this one time. So I picked Destination S11, just because it was always one of my go-to songs any time I played. When I got up to that one gimmick in the middle of the song, the other guy completely freaked out. He leaned over to his equally drunk buddy sitting nearby and shouted really loudly "HOOOOOOOOLY SHIT, HE BROKE THE MACHINE, DUDE! HE BROKE THE MACHIIIIIIIIIINE HAHAHAHHA" and then he nearly tripped over himself when the arrows started moving again. He was fairly close to knocking me down by accident.

I figured that was a good time to pretend the rest of the chart was too difficult for me so I could fail and get as far away from him as possible.

I should really revisit that Destination WIP of mine that's been sitting around for the past five years.


I really don't want to be that guy, but... Just so you're aware, acclaim means praise, which is the opposite of what you received. Criticism, yes, but definitely not praise.

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i once passed tsugaru standard

More seriously, when i was 10 there was some mall event going on near christmastime and they had DDR Supernova US PS2 out there. I passed Xepher Oni on their shitty ass pads and some random staff dude noticed me, so some lady with a mic got everyone to watch me and then I failed The Least 100sec Heavy in like 30 seconds. I still got a free nerf gun that I never opened, tho.

After I cleared MAX 300 my first time, I decided to go for PARANOiA Survivor next. At first I could barely get anywhere, but after a few attempts I would consistently make it to the second slowdown and promptly fail in the part right after it. After a while, including days where I would only try to clear it without picking anything else, I was able to make it to the streams right before the ending, but failed about halfway through that part. From then on, I would only fail at those two points and nowhere else.

A few weeks had gone by, and I decided to take a new tactic for pacing my rounds out. I would play normal rounds for most of the day, but at the end of the day I would do two fairly chill songs and then pick PARANOiA Survivor and see if I could clear it. One day, I got the first person to ever watch me play while I was in said last round of the day. I forgot what I played the first round, but he started watching while I played Ecstasy (Midnight Blue Mix) as my 2nd stage. He thought I was super good because of it, and I told him something along the lines of "nah there's people wayyy better than me. Wanna see me try something actually hard that I'll probably fail?" and picked PARANOiA Survivor. I made it to the ending, and pushed on and finally made it past those deathly difficult streams and hit the ending with only a few pixels of health left. I was just barely able to make it with my remaining stamina, but I cleared it and we both flipped out! And then I hurt my leg only like a few days into going for MAXX UNLIMITED. Then the arcade I went to most of the time got rid of their machine. Then by the time I got to play again (almost a whole year) I could only clear 8s.

That's probably my proudest accomplishment with anything since I haven't really done much with my life quite yet! I'm still surprised I was able to do it with the pressure of someone watching me.

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One of my first few DDR memories was when I as around 5 or 6 years old. There was one day when I played DDR Best Hits on my PS1 the whole day and then I couldn't go to school the next day because I literally couldn't move my legs. Mind you, I was still new to the game so I kept playing songs on Basic. In fourth grade, it was a routine for me to play DDR at home after school. I would do a few rounds of SuperNOVA 1 and 2, and I actually remembered passing Arrabbiata on a soft pad of all songs. Then after that, I stopped playing console DDR's on pad.

Arcades meanwhile, before 2015, the only arcade DDR that I played the most was DDR SuperNOVA. Even then, I was still not used to playing DDR so I got stuck on Tutorial mode. There was DDR Max, that I would see almost as much as SuperNOVA, Extreme, even DDR USA which I played the latter two in, well, the USA. I only played those other games probably once or twice (or thrice). I didn't start getting better until I got back in 2015 with DDR X3, skipping X and X2. Now I can do Difficult and Expert, and I can reach up to 12's because 13's and 14's tire me too much after even one song. And from then on, I've been playing DDR regularly again (and by "regularly" I mean twice a month lol)

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There's this scenario last 2012 when I played DDR 4th Mix in the arcades.

I saw two players, one male and one female. We took turns playing since it's a 4th Mix Solo cabinet.

Female player: Where's the yellow colored song? Is it still there?
Me: Yellow colored? Not sure which one you meant.
*long pause*
Female player: I remember. It's Wonderland.
I then told her to pick the character that has Wonderland in its song list (to state how 4th mix works, the songs are grouped much like in DDR 2nd Mix's normal and hard mode; all music didn't appear until 4th mix plus)

Male player: Say, is Stomp to my beat still there?
Me: Yep. I'll guide you which set should you choose.

That time I felt so young again. Hahaha.

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I've had to tell so many people that you need to hit BOTH start buttons to play versus it's unreal.

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A while back (~2010), there was this arcade in Florida that had just gotten a DDR X2 cabinet. (which was the shit)

I was playing my own session (with my brother) and had just finished roppongiEVOLVED (or was it ?) when some drunk woman came up to me and challenged me to a match against her (she claimed to be the best of the world, this was before Chris was well-known) and I agreed. Needless to say, I won (FC’d golden sky, played oarfish and some other song), so she gave me her cake (for some reason, I don’t know why) and $20 cash. Never saw her again after that, but at least I got something for it.

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Let's see....

- My first pass on Paranoia Revolution was pretty interesting. Someone who lives downstate came up to play on the DDR Ace at the Albany Dave and Buster's. I introduced myself like I do with pretty much every player I haven't seen before. Somehow we got on the subject of 17's and 18's and I was just like "you know what I'm going to do Paranoia Revolution for shits and giggles even though I'm probably going to fail miserably". I had only passed a couple 17's at this point (New Century and Possession) so I wasn't just doing some sort of reverse psychology by saying I would probably fail. I legitimately didn't think I would pass it. Two minutes later, this happens. The most I could let out was "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST OW" and she just stood there with a super shocked expression on her face. It was pretty cool.

- PFC'ing Nephilim Delta . I kept getting flags on stupid, easy shit like Drop The Bomb SySF Mix and Can't Stop Falling In Love Super Euro Mix and was getting super fucking frustrated. So again, I tried something way out of my comfort zone expecting the worst. And then this happens. I had played the song a couple times before on DDR 2014 so I at least knew the general rhythm, but I was not expecting to get a PFC my 3rd time ever play it.

- This one is from about 10 years ago. The old arcade at the mall was a Namco Cyberstation in the food court, and the DDR Supernova machine was right next to one of the big windows near the entrance. I'm minding my own business while I'm playing when these fatass skater kids sit at one of the food court tables right in front of the window. Naturally, they're making a whole bunch of goofy faces and just being dicks, but then the fattest one of them all gets up and starts pounding on the window. I'm ignoring him and he doesn't seem to be too happy with the fact that he's not getting a reaction from me. He then turns his back to the window and pulls down his pants and starts rubbing his hairy ass against the window. Still, no reaction from me other than flipping him off in the middle of playing a song. I finish my set and then I walk out to sit at a table and while I'm not the kind to start a fight or instigate anything, I do shout at them saying "What are you, fucking 5 years old?". They bolt off laughing, and after sitting for a few minutes, I go back into the arcade and go to the worker there and simply ask if there's anything I should do about the asshat mooning me. Her facial expression goes from being blank to one of shock and anger and she says "you know what I'm gonna call security because that's not right at all and pretty much is harassment". So then she does and hands me the phone so I could give mall security a description of all of those turds. Once that was over, I said thank you and got back to playing. Some friends I was waiting for showed up about 20 minutes after and then she comes over to tell me that those skater kids were ejected from the mall and permanently banned.

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You're a nicer guy than my cheap ass lol

I've had to tell many people that they need to put in a credit for each player. And I've had to sternly tell some people that they're not stealing my credit.

Alright, I guess I'll actually contribute. November 2016, id been playing DDR A for a while, but for the most part I'd shy away from anything difficult. One day I was playing with a regular and he picked paranoia respect and was like 'you're doing this'. And I got a pretty bad grade, but that was the day I cleared my first 16, and then literally 2 months later I cleared my first 17.

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Some drunk guy walked up and started footworking in front of me while I was playing. It was probably the most infuriating shit ever to experience and when I was done he wanted to high five me for not breaking my combo while he was clearly trying to distract me.

#ReasonsToBuyImpulse

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my greatest shame is still being forced to play STILL IN MY HEART (MOMO MIX) twice in a row because i pressed the wrong button

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one time i played ddr and then got laid

ha ha, get it?

Anyways, real story. At that same mall, I remember being ~7 and seeing a massive mid-centre ITG PS2 demo. At this point, I had never heard of ITG, and I talked about how much I hated the shitty DDR ripoff and how the music like Disconnected ripped off Paranoia (lmao I was a fuckin NERD). 7 year old me was dumb. My first impression of the game was highly tainted though, because for some reason only Battle mode was being played.

Another one, I remember being on an NCL cruise around age 9 and there was a DDR Extreme machine in their tiny arcade... Except this thing was running a forced-into-normal-mode DDR Extreme US PS2... Okay then. I taught a bunch of kids how to play which definitely caused them to think me as more stereotypical of my race, but whatever, the girls had fun I have no complaint

This happened on Sunday, so very recent. Had to explain to a woman in Dave & Busters in Hollywood and Highland, while resting after a DDR session as to why one dude who was waiting after me is playing by himself after she attempted to join in while he was in the middle of his 3-song set. (He was playing on the Player 2 side, I was hovering over the Player 1 side as to prevent kids and adults from interrupting a set, it sort of became an unconscious thing if you're been in the arcades for so long)

I told her that she cannot join until he finishes his set.

She then asked why is it that people cannot join during someone else's set if they're playing solo.

I told her that:

1. DDR can be played solo if the person chooses to.

2. You have the option to play solo or 2 players only at the beginning of the session when you choose how many people are playing (aka Singles, Versus, Doubles), and if a person chooses to play solo, no other person can join until after the set is over. And this has been how the machines intended to work since the very beginning.

Flabbergasted at what I had explained to her, she just left in confusion. And I'm like, "Not surprised. People ask this all. the. time."

Heh. I got some good stories for you guys.

During my initial runs to arcades after getting back into Dance Games a few years back during my junior year of High School. I went to play some DDR Extreme after doing a bit of practice back home. I see this one chick playing and opted to just watch and finish her credit. (she was on final stage when I showed up) Once it was my turn to play, I asked if she had another credit and wanted to play Versus Mode against me. So we did.

I picked first and chose Healing Vision . We fought hard for our scores that round but needless to say, I beat her. She then picks La Bamba , and truth be told, this song is boring. I honestly gave up trying just under a minute in and BS'd the rest of the chart. She won. Then the last song in which I picked was Brilliant 2U Jazz Groove . I only practiced it once, I did win (whatever) but we still as a whole did poorly. She was actually quite nice and after that, I never saw her again.

During the short time that an arcade was a short driving distance away from my house two years back, there was another DDR Extreme machine and I would frequent it a lot when not going to college. The price for admission was exorbitant ($12 for an hour of play and $15 on the weekends, wtf? There was a discount for High School students (dual enrollment woot!), but I never got to use that deal before the arcade closed) but the machine and the rest of the arcade were okay for the most part. What would happen there many a time would be elementary-aged students or summer campers who would go to this arcade for field trips or whatever. I once got some notable recognition from a fellow arcade patron (a kid) for passing notably hard stuff from DDREX.

Another time was when one of the employees actually commended me for being the best DDR player on the side of town I came from. (literally no one else went to this particular arcade but me) And I once tried my very hardest to get a good score on TRIP MACHINE CLIMAX , that employee was filming me and I pushed really hard and still only ended up getting a C rank.

Honorable mentions: I once was commended for getting an A rank on PARANOIA EVOLUTION and B4U on DDR Supernova from some employee who worked at that arcade.

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I remember when i had PS2 console my first game was Dancing Stage SUPERNOVA 2, it was really suprising for me, it was a big change for me because I was playing DDR in PS1. I felt really delayed completing SN2. It was my first time that I have to unlock many things.
Before I had a oppportunity playing SUPERNOVA in cabinet, It was fun. I really liked it a lot.

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