Dancing Game Mania: Where Did Dance Dance Revolution Go?

Dance Dance Revolution is often thought of as a game from the past but it still has a bustling community. Talking to one of the directors of an event called “Infinity Stage," a Dance Dance Revolutions centered event, sheds light on just how passionate the community is about this game. 

Roger Clark is the director for the “Infinity Stage” event and his thoughts on the game showed a passion and long love throughout the game’s existence.  He has also helped produce the DDR documentary that is on YouTube called "Becoming the World's Best DDR Player" which featured prolific and successful players such as "iamchris4life" who took home a championship for the US.

“I have been playing for almost exactly 20 years now,” stated Clark. “One day at school, a friend of mine told me that our local mall arcade got a DDR machine and that it was incredible. So I went to check it out. Then it changed my life.” This is how many Americans found the game as well, through local malls and arcades. Like most players that have been around for a while, his skill level was motivated by others and his own will to get better.

“I saw players better than me when I first started, and I wanted to do what they could do. The same is true today. I try to reach for great scores by playing a lot and by trying to get better every time. That might seem simple on the surface, but it takes a lot of time and effort. Many of my close friends are also top DDR players, so that helps too," texted Clark. "It's easier to imagine yourself achieving something when someone you know has already done it. And it's hard to overstate the motivational aspects of 20-year-long competitive relationships with people across the world."

"No other game compares with DDR's synesthetic fusion of body, mind, music, and machine. With other video games, you have stuff happening on the screen, you're giving it input, and sometimes there's music, but not all of these things necessarily have something to do with each other. With DDR, your eyes, your ears, your entire body, your mind, and maybe even your soul -- are all synchronized exactly with the music and with the game itself. And if you're playing together with someone else, your movements and mental state align in a way that can only be described as spiritual synchronization."

"Dancing bonds people together -- this is an undeniably beautiful part of being human. I can't overstate the ecstatic feeling of hanging out with your friends at the arcade, dancing, sweating, and trying to push yourselves one step further toward perfection. DDR distills the rave experience into a video game, switching out drugs and alcohol for Red Bull and Gatorade. And you can have that experience on a weeknight in your basement or at your local Dave & Buster's."

"DDR has also had a profound impact on our modern multi-media world. It exposed eclectic music and graphic design to an impressionable and influential generation. You can hear clear echoes of DDR in modern dance music, and you can see its effects on pop culture and interactive entertainment."

"Saying I "like" DDR is an understatement -- this game has formed the backbone of my life for most of the time I've been alive. There's really nothing else like it... except all the other games trying to replicate its success,” stated Clark. "The game itself is unique and can't be touched in the eyes of most players because of the experience and life long bonds it makes."

Roger Clark isn't the only one who loves DDR and for some, it's a competitive fire that drives them. Players come from all over to compete in competitions to see who is the best-of-the-best. Before we get to the competitive scene, let's look into the history of DDR, from its high peak to what it is today.

Dance Dance Revolution or Dance Stage, as it was called in early European copies, was introduced to Japan in 1998 and released to North America and Europe in 1999.

Dance Dance Revolution has had many console releases across the world. It has been met with high acclaim due to its stamina based and skill challenging selection of songs produced by in house artists at Konami. There is also a growing competition scene that accompanies the game alongside a passionate fanbase.

The series' current version was released on July 1, 2020.

Initially, the game was released in Japan as an arcade game and then a Sony PlayStation home console game, which became a bestseller on the console. DDR was later released in North America, Europe, Korea, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, and Mexico on multiple platforms, including the Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Wii, and many other systems. Since the Japanese versions of the game are different from those released in other countries, they are usually bootlegged or imported in other places due to high demand. Some websites keep track of where machines are in a given area at any time.

DDR games have been released on various video game consoles, such as the major ones such as the Sony Playstation and the Microsoft Xbox systems, and there are even some copy ports for the PC. These home console versions had added additions, such as when the Xbox 360 version had online multiplayer. There have also been spin-offs with other companies, such as the Disney and Mario expansions.

Since the beginning of the game's history in Japan, the competitive scene has been around. In the West, things were shaking up finally by the early 2000s. Groups began to harbor around the DDR machines and became more common to socialize and make their sects.

One group that has a special place in the early history of DDR communities was Friday night regulars at the Milpita Golfland in Milpitas, California. They were your ordinary group that met up to play DDR each Friday. Still, this group had a UC Berkley engineering student named Jason Ko. The group felt that they wanted to socialize more than just the Friday nights at Milpitas Golfland, and as a result, on March 12, 2000, Ko started the ddrfreak.co website. On the site was a database of DDR machine locations in Northern California and a collection of pictures taken by this Friday night group of regulars in California. 

Through this online message board, players socialized with each other, discussing topics such as freestyling and other playing tips, machine locations, or making plans for their next get-together. Other message boards communities based on DDR popped up, such as bemanix.com, ddrspot.com, or teamgwailo.com. People who had never played DDR could come to these message boards to find out more and where one could play, increasing the awareness and popularity of DDR. According to Ko himself, these message boards were the primary catalyst for making DDR as popular as it is now in the West. Many websites still follow suit by showing machine locations and having local groupings on places such as Discord.

 In 2004, the first official DDR club, "DDR Oslo," was created. Another game-changing occurrence in 2004 was that Norway made DDR an official sporting event. The tournaments were divided into two parts in which there was a group play where the two or three best players from each group went to the final rounds. This still runs through competitions today. People will let their opponent choose the song or a song that everyone must pass to the next part of the tournament.

Throughout the years, the community continued to grow. Still, as more dance games came out, the more difficult it became for DDR to stand out among competitors. As technology rapidly began to upgrade, competitors such as "Just Dance" began to emerge without the need for a dance pad or big and bulky controllers. In fact, Microsoft Kinect only needed a camera as its control. It would catch the movements of players in front of it.

Moving from history, here is the current competition talk. The biggest competition to date was 2019's "Big Deal" in Dallas, Texas. In recent years Konami has been promoting DDR as an esport. These community-run competitions have been rising in popularity since 2017. They have been growing ever since the release of Dance Dance Revolution A, especially in North America.

In the US scene, most players play for hobby and the fun of getting a high score on the cabinet. There is usually no money up for grabs. There is a community around getting better improvement rather than prize money. When someone improves, it shows their love for the game, and that's the main focus of getting people into the game. Newcomers are always welcomed and are given information when asked how to improve. The community's primary focus is like games of the past, getting the best personal score you can, and having fun. 

There is so much of a need to improve players that keeping up with scores is a journey. A website called "Life 4" is a way for players to improve by making trials to finish and ranks for them to achieve. Players have to make submissions of their ranks, and it is a timely process to get to the highest of ranks.

Organizers now face the challenge of keeping the momentum going because of the virus's current situation. There has been a mass shutdown on all events till things go back to a new normal. The great thing about the DDR community now is its ability to cross borders. Discord it as if the community is still alive and running online just like it would offline.

According to "ranatalus," a national event organizer for the DDR scene, "The entire competitive scene is basically paused. Thankfully, there's really good communication and support between event organizers around the country, and we've all agreed running an event right now would be an absolutely terrible idea. We canceled some of the largest events very early on in the pandemic (The Big Deal in Texas for late March, Mistake on the Lake here in early May, Infinity Stage in SF for August), and no one has even jokingly suggested we start things up again. Konami recently announced that their world tournament (Konami Arcade Championships) is still on at this time, but no other details about how it's going to work. Players that are lucky enough to own home setups (or purchase pads from Step Evolution, makers of StepManiaX) have continued playing to some degree. Some other players are still going to arcades occasionally. Still, I would say pretty confidently that everyone is playing less than they would normally.”

As for Roger Clark, his statement about the current situation and how things were going was unique in its own right. “Things were really heating up. Hype levels were steadily increasing since the comeback began in 2016 with DDR A. 2019 had some of the biggest DDR tournaments ever in the US -- The Big Deal 3 in Dallas, Texas and Infinity Stage 2019 in San Jose, California. American players had been competing in Konami's official world tournament for several years. It feels inappropriate to mourn the loss of something like the DDR hype train as a result of the pandemic. But the truth is, I honestly believe we were having another cultural moment with DDR. If this ends, I believe that we can continue where we left off. But even if that doesn't happen, I'm thankful that the comeback happened at all, and that we got 4 more years of magic that we never expected in the first place.”

So while things are bubbling under the surface, there is a feeling of dread in the wait for the virus to subside and arcades to open back up. These statements represent the raw feeling for the competitive scene at this time, and for now, it will be a long time until we see the light for in-person competitions.

Rhythm-based games are still present and played in one of their earlier forms at arcades, remaining still very popular in Japan and homes. This genre remains popular among many today due to how global music is involved in everyday life in our world and how easy it is to pick up and follow a rhythm or "beat to the music." Because of the ease and popularity of rhythm games, video games' technology continues to evolve; we see rhythm-based games still present for this developed technology.