Dance Dance Revolution: A Personal Retrospective 

You can thank the Dancemania Nonstop Megamix series for the older licenses in DDR!

I'm from the UK and DDR was fairly well received here. I was eight years old at a fire works night in a very busy arcade. Young adults would pay me to keep playing cause they loved picking the songs for me to hear new ones and I would never fail any because I was fairly decent, even on hard except (heavy) difficulty. The dance machine was rather magical and always a very humble and unique story from everyone who played it ^^

How do you not have more subs? This is epic!!

I love these perspective takes on the game, more so than those vids/old interviews that have to explain what DDR is every single time. You step on arrows, 20+ years and counting lol. I enjoy seeing how it's evolved through the experiences of the players. Great job!

I've been missing playing the old DDR machine at the mall since covid hit. Can't find my foam pad either. It's cool to hear about someone else's experience with the series and this video definitely has me eyeing Extreme if I decide to take the plunge again. Good stuff!

DDR Extreme 2 was my first (and rly, only) DDR experience. Speed over Beethoven was my effin jaaaaaam as a kid haha. Hopefully youma still happens this year and we can tear it up again!!

I’m surprised your not at over 100 thousand subscribers. Your videos are amazing

Your first was DDR extreme, if you played it, did you end up getting blindsided by Bag the first time? I saw the 65bpm and thought it would be a cakewalk, it humbled me very quickly.

"DDR had introduced me to entirely new genres" I found this line so relatable. I also do believe that DDR taught me to love different genres and explains how I'm such a music explorer even today. DDR is also my first rhythm game and I think it introduced me to the world of music. My first DDR game was the JP version of DDR Extreme US, DDR Festival. I think I was four (on 2004) and my aunt bought our fam a PS2 and the DDR Festival bundle (sadly no eyetoy). The Japanese licensed songs were tattooed on my mind like Cutie Honey, and introduced me to Cher with Believe (even though it was covered). Then I came to arcades with 2nd Mix as the first DDR cabinet that I played (i dont remember but maybe i was six), followed by 3rd Mix when I grew older. It was like 2006 when I first came to DDR cabs and you might ask why is it so outdated? Idk I'm in a country where people don't really enjoy games like these. (Yeah I realized that our cabs here were so outdated when I grew much older) Not to sound like I'm a pro but I realized how wild I was when I was a child. My mom said I always chose fast songs with Light-Standard (Basic-Another) charts. When I play on the arcade, people would always watch me do fast songs on DDR cabs despite being "just" a child. My mom remembers every "most played" song I played on those cabs. Sometimes I play with pro adults and play with them while I was on Basic (bc of course I was just a child) and they were on Maniac. They were so amazing. I wonder where they are now. My DDR bestie is still my mom and we play on StepMania now. She always plays the songs I played on Festival, 2nd and 3rd Mix because we grew on those titles and she's familiar with the song list. Yeah I guess that's my story about DDR. So glad this franchise is still loved by many. Just kinda sad I don't have much friends who enjoy it just like I do. By the way, I felt that when you said you don't like mainstream songs. Nice video by the way. Subscribed

I started on SuperNOVA 2, and I think you'd have liked it more than 1 (they put some stuff from arcade EXTREME in there), but yeah, the sound really changed. You should hear what the arcade series sounds like after 2013, good lord. I know long-running series evolve, but it's more like DDR's music devolved...

Awesome video! It's still possible to play Stepmania and the arcade releases via USB dance pads.

I think your experience mirrors a lot of people's experience when it comes to home versions. People who can look past the interface for the US version of Extreme will find a great game, especially if you don't have an imported or modded PS2. The licenses and lack of eurobeat fundamentally changed how the series felt starting with SN, and the unlock methods made me go out and buy an Action Replay MAX Drive to just download a fully unlocked save file. DDRX and X2 were better in terms of unlocks, but needing to play 20 songs to unlock a new one (since unlocks were every 5 songs and had courses, note skins, and characters mixed in) was so much less rewarding than the every 5 song method the older games had and really made me miss the way DDRMAX did things by adding speed unlocks like AA Healing Vision to unlock HVAM or pass Synchronized Love to unlock Rhythm and Police. I stopped playing for a long time but got back into it again about a year ago and with the weight I lost I feel like a different person. Yeah, having the metal pad (L-TEK in my case) sitting around isn't ideal but it's better than not playing at all and definitely preferrable to how big I used to be. I love a lot of games but I really think DDR might be my favorite series of all time. None of the other games I've played have the same rewarding feeling as getting that PFC I've been trying for or passing that hard song I've been working on.

oh god the jungle book ddr rip-off game, OH MAN THAT HIT ME WITH NOSTALGIA. and I use to even play DDRMAX2 as well when i got it as a charismas gift. I still miss this franchise, and still in japan they actually had new ddr games coming out. Once is also Dance Rush, still wanna play that, but sadly those are only exclusive to round 1 you know, if your local arcade has one.

My first ddr game was the Original DDR for the ps1 that I bought in 2019 or something and the mat was from ddr game but it broke after a year of playing on maniac mode smh. Happens millions of times to soft pads like that. I have a Konami Pad now for the ps2

great video! i started with Extreme 2 but ended up with 18 home DDR games in total though and loved DDR although tha series is still goin' with tha new release of DDR A3 sadly only for tha arcade! i still got DDR but haven't played since new years because i have backlog from 2021 i still need to upload on youtube :/