/vr/ - Retro Games

I played DDR a shit ton at my local mall's arcade during it's peak. Very fond memories. I remember playing either Extreme or MAX2 though I obviously preferred Extreme. Remember how it had a bunch of songs from other Bemani games like Pop'n and IIDX and how it kinda belatedly introduced me to Bemani's other franchises.

>>7690426
Bemani is truly awesome!

>>7690442
They were, though Konami has thoroughly fucked them up these days. I still don't forgive them for Bemani Sound Team-ing all the old guard in-house musical talent while also removing their rights to release albums or host live events or just be overall personalities. Truly disgusting move.

my CS collection. since this photo was taken, I've obtained the JP versions of MAX and MAX2, and both Japanese 2nd mix club versions for ps1. I have an ignition 2.0 dance pad but currently live in an upstairs apartment and can't use it.

>>7690454
never underestimate the konmai jews

>>7690418
No I thought stomping on arrows was gay still do actually

>>7690553
I mean I just thought this was common knowledge

>>7690454
>while also removing their rights to release albums or host live events or just be overall personalities
Damn I didn't realize they did this as well. Fucking konami

>>7690621
I so much wanted another Sota Fujimori or Naoyuki Sato album but Konami said no, they don't deserve to be people. Just music slaves.

>>7690418
Still play it today. After an anon's recommendation, bought one of those Polish L-tek solid pads after years of breaking foam ones. Thanks, anon! Shill or not, it works pretty well.

ultimate gamer setup

Yep. Definitely some of the best gaming memories for me involve going to the local arcade (RIP) every friday and meeting up with people from the DDRFreak forums. Probably the most chill and least gay gaming scene I have ever witnessed or been part of. We'd sometimes go and get bubble tea or something to eat afterwards, etc. I miss those days

>>7690997
some ddrfreak users are still active in a private forum called bemanisows. These days, the scene is mostly gay men and trannies. The original community pretty much died with the 2000s.

I played in mall arcades some, maybe it was a bit after the peak cos there was hardly ever anybody else using the machines. I wasn't very good at it. I loved it.

Eventually I bought a pair of Cobalt Flux pads for $600 and started using them at my workplace every weekend or so, with various DDR games and occasionally with clones from other companies. We were a small, tolerant company in a suburban office park and it was deserted on the weekends. Various employees filled the main meeting room with game systems, and I left my dance pads there. It was awesome and I started getting good at the game.

Eventually I became too good for my knees to keep up. They aren't the greatest of knees it turns out (I inherited some kind of mild inflammation problem from my mom seemingly). And also I would exhaust myself trying to move as fast as I needed to to keep the game challenging. I drifted away from the games. I still have the pads somewhere but I haven't used them in years. At this point they might need corrosion cleaned off their contacts or something, and the double pad connector bar got lost somewhere, sometime. They probably still work though.

>>7691257
you could easily sell those cb pads if you don't want them anymore.

I have a fear of having fucked knees by the time I'm an old man and ddr being one of the main causes.

>>7691347
I meant to say CF pads lol

>>7691347

Hm yeah. I probably want them though. My knees aren't THAT bad - I'll probably try playing again sometime. Well the next time I don't live in a tiny apartment, anyway. (I don't work at a cool company anymore.)

I don't know whether I actually damaged myself with the games. Like I said I think my problem was mainly genetic, but who knows. If I were rich I'd try to get MRIs or something and find out the state of my cartilage etc. in detail, if possible. But I am just an anon who lives in a tiny apartment.

>>7691412
I know your pain, anon

>>7690418
No, but my older cousins did and when they got bored with it they gave me and my bro their cobalt flux. I had the ps2 with both ddrmax games, played a lot but just on light mode.

I got back into it about a year ago, its really fucking fun. I would play at an arcade but the D&B near me only has PIU and nearest r1 is 90 min away.

>>7692003
>I would play at an arcade but the D&B near me only has PIU
pump is pretty fun though. it's a nice change of pace

Yes, during the golden days of DDR Extreme 1, it got me into great shape. I'm fat as fuck now, but I still play rhythm games occasionally, and thankfully the demand for the home versions of DDR is very low, so I got all of the mainline numbered releases in my collection. If you have no nostalgia for the cabinets, just set up Stepmania if you wanna play nowadays.

>>7690458
Good shit. I wanted X-2 for the sake of completing my collection, but you can't even find it anymore.

Of course not, that is autistic faggot central. But i had some buddies that were really into it and still are.

>>7690628
I was holding out for a new sota album too and was surprised to see it take so long for another one to come out. Arabian rave night full version never ever it seems.

2003 was the first year that we were in a brand new high school building. The Japanese room had a shared study space in front of it with some tables and a projector, and every year the Friday before Christmas break our Japanese teacher would just have food and let us hang out and party all day. We'd all skip our other classes to be at the Japanese room all day, and we had DDR Max and Max 2 going on the projector all day. We'd spend the whole day just eating Japanese snacks and drinking Ramune and playing DDR (smash bros was hooked up on the projector in the actual Japanese classroom, and one year there was GGX2 going in the science classroom across the hall) all goddamn day. It was a pretty magical time.

>>7692540
Thanks for sharing that. The early 00s was a great era in weebdom, perhaps a golden age really. Brings back memories of my high school japanese class

>>7692003
Pump is pretty fun, I wrote it off as a cheap bootleg DDR back in the day but I actually would probably be more interested in playing a current version of that than ddr these days. i also really like kpop though so that plays a part for sure.

>>7692743
yeah it's when anime was really starting to hit it off in america but hadn't become super mainstream yet

>>7691257
cobalt flux pads? what are those?

>>7692819
I'm pretty happy to have gone through my phase with that stuff when i did, when anime fans were mostly just cringey spergs with some furries sprinkled in rather than nazi trannies/"radical socialist non binary" fags

>>7690418
i tried it at the arcade before but i was horrible at it

>>7690418
I love DDR but I hate the 30+ guys who are there pretending to be in the scene just to groom teenagers. I did my part to keep them away from my group and I think it paid off because many of them are now in jail :)
>do you still play today?
no because covid but I'm hoping my local arcade is still a thing after all this shit ends.

>>7692003
My biggest problem with PIU is that it has timing windows you can drive a goddamn truck through unless you screw around in the menus trying to find the option to fix it.

>>7692757
oh yea same. I just wish I could play both at the same place.

>>7690418
That was actually my local machine! Was at the Castles n' Coasters in Phoenix.

>>7692528
>No Arabian Rave Night full version
One of the biggest losses. That song was low key one of his very best and I'm surprised he never decided to make more high energy hardcore like that again (so far.)

>>7690418
I didn't play it at its peak. I caught on in the late 00's thru 10's. Never play against anyone anymore though, because the last time I did a little girl (she had to have been between 8-11 years old) kicked my ass in a dance off in a mall arcade. Thank god that Mall was virtually empty and only just one friend witnessed that.

>>7692852

Some pads you could buy online that I understood at the time to be the best ones available. They're pretty simple, just some plastic (melamine?) slab with nine pairs of sheet metal plates screwed into it to make the foot-switches and lexan panels atop that. The output line ended in a standard plug (D-sub I guess?) that could feed the raw on/off switch data to whatever you wanted. At the time they came with a PS2 adapter so you could plug this into a PS2 but I built two Xbox adapters as well so I could play the DDR Ultramix games (and some version of Pump It Up I think). I also hooked them up to a PC somehow for StepMania; I can't quite remember how that worked. The pads were probably quite overpriced but I loved them and my job paid fairly well so I was totally satisfied anyway.

The brand appears to be functioning still, for whatever reason: https://cobaltflux.org/collections/cobalt-flux-pads
I guess they're still one of these small and semi-reliable operations like the ones that make specialty arcade panel stuff or Paprium or what-have-you; they're sold out of the most important stuff, including the actual pads. So you can't immediately see what the prices are today. But judging from how much those adapters cost, they're probably still somewhat excessive. I see they're now selling adapters for more than just PS2 though, which is nice. Maybe look into it further if you like these games and aren't poor the way I am now. Or maybe somebody else is making equally good pads today, I wouldn't know.

>>7692905

That is part of the magic. Everybody is horrible at first. It's like learning to play a musical instrument. If you like it you'll find a way!

>>7693451
Hell yeah, this was one of my favorite cabs to play on. Shout outs to their itg cab rip

I remember the times playing certain songs on Heavy and actually getting a couple people around the machine watching me. Felt kinda cool.

>>7693791
one of my favorite things about ddr is how it draws crowds

I had Konamix and a deluxe pad at home.

>>7692243
>implying /vr/ isn't autistic faggot central

never forget

>>7690997
>least gay
Come on, anon... I mean come on

>>7695813
You can think what you want nigga doesnt matter to me. Cant speak for every arcade out there but mine had a pretty cool crew of regulars

>>7695871
ddr is cool but you can't deny that it attracts gay people hahaha

wow look its the same autist from the /jp/ thread who hates all marginalized and minorities and is desperate to find a cool hangout for fellow white supremacists. back to jp fellas

>>7695935
novi-san

>>7695935
Holy shit, just listen to this fruit!

>>7695935
Sounds like a based fella.

>>7695935
Sounds like he's based as fuck, /vr/ is a place for whites and based nippon, run along now.

back then I saw a quadriplegic playing DDR at Castles 'N Coasters, still can't believe it
wonder if they still have that machine

>>7696059
nope

>>7695913
Does it? It only seemed to attract autists and weebs as far as I can tell. It's too weird and doesn't have enough western sassiness to appeal to fruits.

>>7695997
dms open

>>7690418
Got into it some time between '03-04 with a Red Octane Ignition pad and MAX2. Never was much of an arcade goer but I'd play it whenever I saw it. Last time was in Japan a couple years ago. Doubt I'll play it again in public any time soon.

Plateau'd pretty early on at ~9/14 difficulty, was Maxx Unlimited being my peak. Maybe I'd be better with a bar but fuck that shit. Exercise is half the point.

>>7696360
send me a DM immediately

>>7696367
>Maybe I'd be better with a bar but fuck that shit.
based

>>7696328
think about all those dancemania licenses anon
>mr. wonderful
>oh nick please not so quick
>butterfly

I think you were just hanging with a crowd where that wasn't a thing. But it's always been around.

>>7696497
BABY LET'S COOM TOGETHERRRRRRRR

>>7696503
I WANNA FEEL YOU AS LONG AS I CAAAANNNNN

>>7696497
Every goddamn dance club in Germany was playing E-rotic and Captain Jack back then. There was nothing gay about it.

Bought a dance pad for PIU about 4 years ago, it's really well made and it still holds up, I still use it every week. A little worn out visually and malfunctions but nothing that can't be fixed.

>>7696612
implying clubs aren't filled with fags

Reminder that the best DDR player in the world is gay.

>>7690997
>Least gay
>Meets with men weekly to sweat and get bubble tea
lol

When I say gay I mean gay as in retarded, or fag, or retarded fag, it's not really a sexuality thing. There are many straight guys these days in heterosexual relationships who act extremely gay (as in, like a bitch/fag/retard), I thought this was well understood but I guess not.

To put it another way, when I say least gay, I guess I mean, least reddit. Everyone there were legit weirdos and cool people who were just there to chill and git gud at DDR/other games, not tryhard posers who just do and say whatever some eceleb or reddit golded comment guides them to. Culture at large has been redditfied these days but gaming has been impacted especially hard. It was nicer back then is all

>>7696905
>>7696927
shut up take meds nobody uses gay like that anymore

>>7696704
he also has the guitar hero guinness world record lmao

>>7696497
Even then the only people playing it were big city arcade goers, Japs, and weebs/weirdos who cared enough to seek it out from word of mouth. That shit was only in the early games anyway. It's now just a bunch of techno-ey stuff, jpop, and moeshit.

Aight time to just start posting bangers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6zFFLm-N7E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlOrdYqAGq0

Love love love 5th mix

>>7696497
I can definitely see how fags would play this game, but my anecdotal and observational take is that most DDR hardcore players are dorks that want to lose weight and Japs. I never lived in a big enough city to get a feel for the western "scene".

Kinda hard to pick a favorite e-rotic song that was in DDR but I will say this or Cat's Eye for now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE3JhTq0u9c

>>7697783
For me it's Do It All Night. But the truth is that E-ROTIC's non DDR music is among their best, such as Max Don't Have Sex With Your Ex and Help Me Dr. Dick.

>>7697891
That's because E-rotic swapped out the female vocalist around 2000. The music they produced before that was noticeably a hell of a lot better. Most of the stuff in DDR is from her replacement. All three of those songs you mentioned were the original (along with Moonlight Shadow, Kiss Me, and Oh Nick Please Not So Quick).

Captain Jack is the same deal (they're a group, not a guy). Captain Jack and Drill Instructor are the only two songs in DDR with the original vocalist and they have a noticeably different sound than everything produced after.

>>7696704
only westerner to win at KAC, based
he won ddr and sound voltex back to back at raj, he is a beast

>>7698073

Is the original E-Rotic singer this lady?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1DOTiUMgL0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocI4ngyl1_U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp0Jg0Q5WWc

I seem to mainly know her from the game In the Groove. I really liked her voice.

Unrelated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KYLU0YXnzY

>>7698594
The original singer is the blonde, who actually rejoined in 2014

Played Extreme back in the day and before that 3rd mix
PIU is better nowadays, the old games had shitty pads but the prime2 cabs were a major upgrade and the pads are basically perfect now.

>>7699154
It's a shame they haven't really done much since. I really dug Video Starlet.

>>7690721
>ultimate gamer setup
>a fucking soft pad

Get a hard pad numbnuts.

What’s the best DDR game to emulate?

>>7690997
...were you in the Toronto scene by any chance?

>>7692927
I'm 30+ and I could not give a shit about teenagers. In fact I'd rather they weren't around when my rickety knees are clicking.

>>7699335
DDR Extreme 1 japanese release.

>>7699335
Are you emulating on PC? Then Extreme 2 US. It's got the best single-player campaign in the series and a pretty decent songlist. There's very, very little reason to touch any of the others instead of just dropping their songs into Stepmania.

>>7699338
No lol, in BC actually

>>7699335
get stepmania instead

>>7699313
>being this easy to troll

>>7699335
in all seriousness you should just download stepmania. it's a pc simulator for ddr. a quick google search will lead you to it, and song packs exist for pretty much everything. it can run on a toaster and you won't have any sync/stutter issues, which you're bound to have with emulation

>>7699593
I fucking knew you were Canadian

>>7699606
How exactly was I trolled? Explain it for me.

>>7699643
because it was obviously a joke you retard

>>7699606
>>7699643
They look pretty hard with that plywood underneath...