Dance Dance Revolution made its way into our North American arcades in 1999 and would make its way into our PlayStation owning homes in 2001 with Dance Dance Revolution Disney Mix. The first version I had the pleasure of playing was DDR Supernova on my friend's PlayStation 2. This was arguably the first home version worth playing.
I remember being in love from day one. Not only was I being introduced to a type of music that would later become a passion but I was interacting with a game like I had never before. Instead of sitting down and just holding a controller I was moving my body to the beat in the hopes of improving my timing. For hours groups of my friends would take turns going 1 v 1 till we were all just too exhausted to keep going. Then we play some more.
For a while, this game was THE arcade game. If you wanted to play you were usually waiting in a line behind several others waiting to show their "dancing skills" or timidly stepping up to try to break into this world of dancing with a machine. I played with groups well into college and then the lines arcade stopped existing. Fewer remixes were coming out and then it stopped releasing them altogether for the console. There was a mix that came out in 2016 called Dance Dance Revolution A but it's only an arcade release.
So what happened to this game and why have we not seen any more releases or innovation to the title? There can be several reasons but I think the first and foremost is Konami themselves. While many of us associate Konami with video games, it is only one thing they do. (Greenwald,geek.com) As can be seen in the linked article Konami has been producing fewer and fewer console games because that is not where their money is coming from. They don't seem to be changing courses either as Wesley Yin-Poole of eurogamer.net points out they are doing well with their new model. It can't be a surprise that a company willing to give up on IPs like Castlevania and Silent Hill would drop another title like DDR.
I know there are those that would blame this on the decline of its popularity because of the decline in arcades. While the arcade was suffering for a while, it has seen a new rebirth with barcades opening all across the country. Dave and Buster has been showing this on a macro scale with their continued growth over the past few years. Even though the past two D&Bs I have been to let their DDR machines fall into disrepair. I would also argue that piracy for DDR songs through free pc emulators like StepMania came from a lack of accessibility of new DDR games. The price point per song could be a bit contentious as well but still there doesn't seem to be any other reasons why a new title couldn't exist.
The game isn't completely dead and there are still large pockets getting down to Max 300. In fact, a US dancer took first place this year in the DDR world championships.(Gach, kotaku.com) Still, I wouldn't mind seeing a new release with maybe a nice new dance pad and maybe some interesting modes on top of that because Just Dance is not cutting it for me. In this micro-purchase economy, you would think this would be a perfect time for a game like DDR to thrive.
Whatever the reason and much to the chagrin of many dancing gamers we haven't had a home title for a while. While our downstair neighbors are living a jaded life, many of us who want to move like fools are going to have to wait until something better comes along. That or drop a serious dime on a custom mat and put up your pirate sails to scrounge the web looking for the next musical score.
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