For reference, I am using the original name DDR. In europe, the game became known as Dancing Stage.
To some people, this may not be a surprise but I used to play video games a lot when I was younger. I became a fan of music games when I got introduced to DDR. I was given a dance mat for the PS1 when I was 12 (before DDR came out in europe) as a way of keeping fit (as if that wasn't enough rubbing it in that I was fat when I was a kid). At first, it didn't make sense hitting the arrows and I felt like a prat dancing in a 3x3 square but after a while, it got pretty interesting and as a natural competitive gamer, I was determined to beat every single song. All 11 of them. At the time, completing the last song seemed like a massive achievement especially given how tiring I thought it was.
I stopped playing it after 3 months since there wasn't that many songs. I occasionally bought new mixes but the harder songs I cheated and started to play on pad. It's funny how game developers make things more physical yet gamers always find a way to find it more lazier (see Wii Sports and how to cheat on it :P)
I then stumbled accross the TV segment on CITV. It was quite interesting how people were surprisingly better than me and it made me want to try and get this good! So after a bit of searching on the internet, I came across a website called DDRUK. It was a DDR fansite that had a forum which I began chatting to. I started making friends on there and began meeting up to local events.
At first, I didn't realise how good everyone was then I realised there were much harder songs in the arcades so I was encouraged to learn to play harder songs (in particular, passing a catastrophic song aka a 9 footed song). These took a lot of time to actually pass these songs. Even passing a 9 and 10 footed song was a huge achievement at the time since not that many people in the area could do them.
Eventually, I started getting better and even began playing competitively in tournaments. Mostly for casual knowledge and getting to know people since the standard of skill was near and far. It became easily distinguishable who would win and who would lose.
I started playing the new copies of DDR and dancing stage when they came out and became a lot better at them but a year later, In The Groove (ITG) came out. What I felt was a knock off to DDR. It was mostly in the arcades and while I did play it for a while, I couldn't get into the game even though it was exactly the same gameplay but with different songs. In my opinion, the steps were harder and the songs sounded more awful. I couldn't get into the game both physically and mentally.
I still continued playing Konami's dancing games in the arcade and still had certain achievements to beat such as achieving a perfect score and completing some of the incredibly hard songs. I still played tournaments but the standard was becoming higher and higher and I wasn't getting as good as the rest.
There was a point where I was filmed playing DDR in 2005 as part of a TV show I was in. It was such a niche thing the producers found that they filmed me for national TV. I was even asked to appear on the Paul O Grady show at one point! (True Story! But couldn't do it at the end because I lived too far away)
I qualified for the UK tournament in 2007 (only because all the other entrants in the north east couldn't head there and I was the closest to London) and was knocked out in the first round. It was then I realised I can't play this competitively anymore and decided to play on a more casual basis and concentrate on other things.
I still headed to events after then and meeting up with friends during then. But the DDR scene went to a frigid state about 3 years later. Arcades were closing, regular sites I haunted shut down and people moved on to other games and other things. I still speak to everyone and throughout the whole scene and I made a ton of friends and still stay in touch with everyone. The DDR scene wasn't just about the game but was also about meeting other people that had the same and similar interests as I did. I've always enjoyed the meetups and events I went to and they're experiences that I will never forget :)
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