On The Evolution Of Dance Dance Revolution

Thanks to Gaming-Age for its feature discussing the continued popularity of Konami's Dance Dance Revolution series, which starts out by noting "the DDR series now has had nearly 50 different releases, all territories figured in", and interviews Konami's Yasumi Takase about the possibility of being able to use any music CD in a DDR game ("Having access to your personal music CDs is great, but coming up with your own step data for these songs is not so easy unless you are an expert player"), before talking to female DDR player 'Lyra' about her views of female players ("We do tend to have a lot more guy players than girls, the only girls we ever get are people who either try it out once, or sluts who are trying to get a guy.") Elsewhere, DDRFreak points to an academic essay on the history of DDR (PDF link), produced for Stanford University's History Of Computer Game Design class.

Comments

Low # of Female Players?

[Oz0ne]

That's exactly the opposite I see. While there are a surprising amount of guys (surprising to me at least, most guys I know have no rythym at all,) the players I do see are predominantely female. I'd say like 70%.

We've got a DDR machine or two at every arcade in the area (South Florida) and they are always booming with people. There's usually a line, though many are just spectators. You don't see anything like that for the racers, shooters, or fighters in the arcades. Actually, I'm seeing fewer and fewers racers, shooters, and fighters all together :-/

South Park on DDR...

[feidaykin]

Heh... Gotta mention it. A few episodes back, Stan needed help for a dance competition and they go to an arcade to inlist the help of an asian DDR player.

*Stan and a goth watch as the asian kid dances frantically.*
Stan: Oh my god... he's really good.
Goth: He should be, he's spent like $6,000 on that thing.
*Asian kid stops playing, Stan approaches him.*
Stan: You're really good, kid... would you help me in my dance competition?
Asian kid: You mean dancing without a machine telling you what to do?

And as long as I'm trying to be funny, why not look at QDB on the subject of DDR, too.