The (Dance Dance) Revolution

The fever started in 1998.

It spread quickly, albeit not at all quietly. By the following year, it had become an epidemic. What was this new phenomenon? Why were so many people flooding to arcades? But, more importantly, why was the youth suddenly so darn good at dancing?

It was the (Dance Dance) Revolution.

Dance Dance Revolution, created by Konami in 1998, is a popular arcade game that created a new genre of gaming, something we might classify as dancing rhythm games (or, perhaps to broaden the category just a bit, active rhythm games). If you’ve never heard of DDR or simply have never had the chance to play (which, by the way, if you have the resources to play I HIGHLY recommend it), the video above should give you an idea of how it works. Players use a special game pad on the floor to step on the colored arrows that correlate to the ones that appear on screen. Oh, and it’s timed to music. So basically, it’s a rhythm game. Except, there’s also dancing. Thus the genre, dancing rhythm games.

And, somehow (though I am not at all complaining), it’s still just as popular today. It’s still just as revolutionary today as it was in 1998. And now that we’ve established the “Dance Dance” part, I think it’s time to tackle the “Revolution” aspect of the game. Why was DDR so popular? Why is it still so critically-acclaimed and revered? What made it so revolutionary?

It’s cliche, I know, but DDR wasn’t just a game — it became a lifestyle.

Even aside from the sheer cult mentality that surrounded DDR, the game became a lifestyle. It became clear early on in DDR’s life cycle that the game had applications that went above and beyond arcade play, especially as the game began to move out of arcades and into people’s homes (which we’ll discuss in a bit). As more and more people caught the dancing fever, some avid players noted significant weight loss, using the power of dance to lead a healthier and more active lifestyle. This paved the way for other forms of gamified exercise — take Wii Fit and the new Ring Fit Adventure from Nintendo as examples of this. These types of games began to permeate into real life, giving game-players more reasons to be active and giving everyone exciting alternative methods of exercising. In some home versions of DDR, players may notice a function for tracking calories burned and may even opt to play on “workout mode,” a special game mode that allows players to track long-term weight loss as well as day-to-day physical activity.

But it didn’t stop with the individual. DDR was brought into some school systems, recognized as a legitimate way to fulfill physical education requirements. It was pioneered statewide into the West Virginia public school system’s fitness programs and continued to find its way into a number of other schools’s fitness curriculum. In 2012, Dance Dance Revolution Classroom Edition was announced, a version of the game that was created specifically for fitness programs in schools and can support 48 players and track their individual stats. It was created specifically to reduce childhood obesity and to encourage students to be more active.

Other honorable mention of DDR being used as a means of physical activity include Norway’s recognition of DDR as an official sporting event, holding tournaments and competitions as you would any other sporting event. And, recently, Konami has been championing DDR as an e-Sport. It’s one of the only games that qualifies and is recognized both as a physical sport as well as an e-Sport.

So, DDR was quite literally life-changing. But it was also game-changing. Also literally.

DDR didn’t just have significant cultural impact — it also revolutionized the use of novel controllers in games, especially in the home environment. Originally created for an arcade environment, the original DDR game pad wasn’t exactly engineered to be portable, nor was it designed to be contained in a living room. The original setup looked something like this:

It was engineered using glass, pressure plates, lights — and a whole host of other doodads that made it entirely not living room friendly. In order to be enjoyed in the home environment, which would ultimately open up the DDR market significantly, a new controller was required — the soft game pad. With the release of the home version of DDR, consumers were able to purchase soft, flexible, fold-able game pads that gave enough room for players to dance but could also be folded up for easy storage. These pads did not require a new console to be used — they could be used in conjunction with existing consoles. Now, we might think of DDR controllers in the same way that we think of Guitar Hero controllers, Rock Band controllers, the Wii Balance Board, or other novel controllers that contribute to and define a game’s feel, the way a user experiences the game. DDR’s custom home controller paved the way for these other controllers and gave us ways to translate arcade experiences we love into games that we can also enjoy in the comfort of our own homes.

In a lot of ways, it truly was a Revolution.

DDR changed the way we view games in so many ways. It was one of the first games that we recognized as having tangible effects on players even outside of the actual game itself. It popularized the use of novel controllers in home environments and justified the existence of controllers that could only be used with a handful of games, selling people not just on the controller and the game but rather on the overall experience. So, in a lot of ways, you could say that DDR was a revolution. A (Dance Dance) Revolution.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you continue to dance in all the days to come.