one of those boring "which pad" threads

[dancin' fool]

Hi all! I haven't hung out here in ages, but have started playing again a lot recently. My kid is now 7 and a total DDR whiz. He kicks my butt and probably yours too.

Anyway, after wearing out about a million foam pads, we invested in a red octane metal pad, and since my son and I fight over it, I'm thinking we need a second pad. But I'm not madly in the love with the red octane pad, and wondered if I should branch out and try something else.

My main problem - the recessed arrows tend to "catch" my feet on a very fast song. Not a problem for my kid, who has much smaller feet.

I'm also a bit annoyed at the tendency of the plug to fall out, and my son doesn't like not having back buttons that work, because one of his games (Dance Party) requires those.

The separate start and select buttons are kind of annoying too, but probably a necessary evil, for weight reasons.

Any recommendations? Any pad that has working back buttons? (What would be the triangle and square on a soft pad.)

[Grant.]

The only pad that I know of that has working triangle/square buttons would be an old MadCatz one that I had way back when I started playing DDR in 2004. It was just a cheap soft mat though. If you have problems with recessed buttons, perhaps you want to try a cobalt flux (if they still make them). Pretty sure those didn't have any raised portions of the mat.

[dancin' fool]

Do they still make them? I remember hearing about how great they were, and as far as I could tell they went out of business at exactly that same time. :-\ At any rate, they never seemed to be actually available. I'll do a bit of gooling, though.

[verana]

If you mean Cobalt Flux, their website is up and appears active, and the price shown is $20 lower than it used to be:
www.cobaltflux.com/xcart/product.php?productid=16133