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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.
"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."
Or Jealous bitches. Gee, I wonder which one she is?
In all seriousness, I stopped playing ddr for two reasons. 1) The music sucks ass and 2) the people that play also suck ass.
While my local group of players may not be representational of the entire subculture, they did remind me of the old jock assholes from Highschool.
I was quite good at ddr. Did SSR/MANIAC/whatevertheyarecallednow with no problems. I actively encouraged others to play. Now it seems that being a beginner ddr player is a reason to ridicule someone. Sorry, no, Ill not be part of that group.
Why not just analyze the music and create step data based on certain beats, patterns, etc... Don't they do this sort of thing in visualizations already? Granted, it won't be as good as hand created step data, since you can make it harder or easier depending on your preference. But then, you could just fine tune the data by editing it yourself.
DDR is a pretty cool game (especially to watch) except it can get very annoying after a while. Case in point, I was at the CPL in Dallas and they had a DDR2 machine set up close by. Not many people were playing it so it sat at the title screen with some annoying dj announcer guy repeating D-D-R over and over again. It is pretty cool to watch some of those guys dance, nut no matter how good any DDR player is I can't imagine they are better than this guy.
They need to figure something out, because this would be terrific. Especially for people using the home game for exercise purposes and have gotten bored playing to the same stuff.
I am up for the challenge, Konami.
The sad fact is, just as Street Fighter II brought the glory days of arcades, DDR is its last leg. I'm not saying DDR is at fault-- far from it. DDR is keeping what few arcades that are left alive and they were failing for other reasons (primarily the quality of home systems and the fact that while the cost of home games hasn't increased as far back as I can remember (I remember all those new Genesis games I used to force my dad to buy me costing $40 and $50), arcade games have at least doubled in price, and the larger games often cost a dollar or more per play. Of course, if you go to Japan, the games run off 100 coins which are the equivelent of ~$0.90USD, so even for the "cheap" games they're paying twice as much as we do in the US, but they in return get a much better atmosphere. The games are all a bit shorter and have comfy stools so you get to sit down and enjoy them. The games are also kept in tip top condition... If you don't like the way a joystick feels, you can tell whoever's working there and they will have the technical skill to replace it, have replacement parts handy and be more than happy to replace it for you. I can't count how many time I've been bored and gone into the arcade at a mall and put a couple quarters into Marvel vs. Capcom only to find out that I can't move backwards or use middle punch. Then again, maybe all the mall arcades actually just set the machines on the secret "uber" mode hoping to attract die hard fans looking for a challenge? :)
I'm not saying DDR is at fault-- far from it.
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But in a way it is, DDR is the type of game that is intimidating to new players. Sure, Teenagers don't mind getting on that thing and jumping around but don't you think that DDR by it's nature alienates the 20 - 30 something players? Or players with poor dexterity? While you might get embarassed playing street fighter for the first time, you can REALLY get embarassed playing DDR in front of a crowd for the first time. Not to mention the fact that a DDR machine probably costs at least double what a standard arcade machine costs.
I could make an argument that the stagnation of fighting games, along with the rise of DDR is what killed the popularity of the arcade scene. Sure there are a lot of kids watching each other play DDR. But are there as many people in the arcade as in 94 - 97 when Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter were peaking?
If you don't like the way a joystick feels, you can tell whoever's working there and they will have the technical skill to replace it, have replacement parts handy and be more than happy to replace it for you. I can't count how many time I've been bored and gone into the arcade at a mall and put a couple quarters into Marvel vs. Capcom only to find out that I can't move backwards or use middle punch.
Fixing a button is easy, replacing a joystick is a bit of a pain in the ass. Plus you want to have the correct joystick for the game at hand, most players can tell a Namco stick from a Midway one. (Or at least it was that way when I was playing..). If you are at a small arcade they will usually replace a joystick if you ask nicely, the mall arcades often employ people who wouldn't even know how to change a joystick. They just give you your coins back, put the game out of order and tell whoever the tech is to fix it when he comes in that week.
Then again, maybe all the mall arcades actually just set the machines on the secret "uber" mode hoping to attract die hard fans looking for a challenge?
Usually what happens is the game comes in new, they put it on a middle setting, then ramp it up after it's been out for awhile and it's making money. Sometimes, they will forget to turn it down when the game becomes less popular or the game is moved to another location.
Other times the arcade worker (ie coin chaser) might just turn up the skill level to piss off a regular who comes in to play the game all the time.
DId cause Konami to bascicly say "F*ck it" and not release anymore US only release's since USA the rest are all import units from either Japan or Korea. Also the articles 50 diffrent releases includes the home releases included the append disks were one still needs the original game. ah fun with techincallitys.
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