On September 26th, 1998 a little game was released into Japanese arcades which would wind up becoming a very important part of my life for a great many years and, indeed, would even be one of the root causes of this website existing.
That game is Dance Dance Revolution.
Over its quarter of a century this much loved step-rhythm game has garnered an incredible following, had several games of similar style be produced, both by the original makers of the game, Konami, and other companies around the world, and while I have generally retired from active play of the game it still, in its early forms from 1998 to the mid 2000’s, holds an incredibly special place in my heart.
This March of 2022 marked 20 years since I began playing dance games, and I believe July would have been the anniversary of the first time I played a DDR machine. In this case some variant of 3rd Mix. We would, later in 2002, upgrade to 7th Mix -MAX2- before the Summer of 2003 upgrading to Extreme.
After that my personal history with Arcade DDR gets less active, mostly due to the closure of the arcade I would always play the game at. Still, from those early days in 2002 I was hooked, and played the game religiously. Listened to the music constantly, got into the DDR and Music Game online simulation community in August of 2003 and would spend the next near decade with that being my biggest hobby.
By 2012 I had reached my limit with the online community and left it, abandoning a personal DDR style game project to boot (more on that in the future) but my love for the classic games never left me. Over the years since 2008 the game had really begun to change in ways that I didn’t much care for, and I somewhat can’t recognize DDR as the game I loved so long ago. I still could play on even the most recent versions without any issue — it isn’t a game where the fundamentals change much — but the change in overall style and music choices is alienating to me: it’s just not the same feel as it was in the early years.
Still, I’m happy to know that it, and the many siblings it has, like Pop’n Music, Beatmania IIDX, and others, are alive and well and still being enjoyed by many of us; some of us, like http://aaronin.jp/ have been with the game literally since the beginning, and it’s forever tied to our personal identities.
The past month I’ve been using MAME to emulate some of the arcade versions of DDR that I never got to play, and have been enjoying myself quite a bit. It may not be perfect but it’s still fun, even just using a keyboard to play. Maybe in the future as the emulation improves I’ll re-invest in some equipment and play on pad again for exercise. Who knows.
All I do know is, that game series brought me incredible joy, helped me meet some amazing people, and I’ll always love it, even if I don’t play it anymore. The old games will still exist on PlayStation, Xbox, and the like, and I’ll always have the memories, for good or for bad, in some cases.
Here’s to another 25 years.