What was your first experience with DDR?

[psisar]

Just out of curiosity, how did everyone here get into DDR?

My first time was when I was 16 or so, and I slept over at a friends house. Her brother had a crush on me, and wanted to show off I guess... I had always wanted to try playing, and he had Stepmania, I think, since we played on his computer. He broke out two dance pads and told me to step on. I was so nervous about looking like an idiot, but he started me off on beginner and let me go. He "taught" me how to play, telling me not to concentrate on the arrows as much as I would the beat of the song, and he tried to get me to stay off the center of the dance pad (which I refused to do We played for about an hour. I was hooked after that. I played at the arcade a few times after that, but it wasn't til I was 18 I got my own game.

So, how'd everyone else get hooked?

[abrannan]

Some strange combination of webcomics (The MacHall where Matt's brain goes on a 'round-the-world trip, the Mosh Mosh Revolution from Megatokyo), seeing (but not playing) DDR in Las Vegas on a vacation there, and seeing people play PIU at Dave & Busters got me to look into the game on the web. Form there I downladed DWI, and found a copy of Exotic Ethnic (heckuva first song to try). Did a LOT of playing by keyboard on DWI until I was given DDRMAX and a soft mat by my wife for Christmas 2002.


Still haven't played DDR at the arcade, have played PIU twice in the arcade.

[iamjay]

in our local town there was a small video game store runned by idiots (It's now shut down cause ebgames came along) they had two 52" big screen t.v's with 2 metal ddr pads attached to it. Right when i saw that, I found out that this was my oppurtuinity to lose lots and lots of wieght. I was 186 when i was first introduced to DDR. Bought a cheap pad and mix6 and played at home for hours. The first year I didnt care what I ate I just played DDR 3-5 times a week. I lost 12 pounds in a year. With a stricted diet I lost more wieght. Diet and DDR have to go hand in hand if you wanna see quick results

that's sucks that the family store went out of bussiness but I got hired at EB so i'm happy

N.E.R.D.S UniTE!

[urbanjunglekitten]

My first time seeing it was when my roommate brought DDR Max home after he played it at a friend's place. I'd never seen anything like it before, but a bunch of my friends at college were addicted to it. I watched my roommate and my boyfriend play for a few hours, then got it out by myself when I was home alone one day. I was terrible at first. I stayed in the center, and the arrows threw me off, but I was hooked on the music. A year later I got DDR Ultramix 2 and some dance pads of my own . . . and the rest is history.

UJKitten

[Sinistar]

I saw two kids playing it at a LAN party in early 2003. Having had no idea what the game even was, I was just amused watching two guys jumping up and down like maniacs in front of a TV. My first thought was, "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. No way I'd ever play that."

Three months after that, I found out that one of my own LAN party compatriots was a DDR player and got to check it out at another LAN party. This time, however, they had a good sound system so I could hear vocal trance and J-Pop wafting my way. That got my interest up.

I then started crawling all over DDRFreak trying to figure out what the game was all about and then bought the Ultramix 1 bundle for my Xbox (since I didn't have a PS2 then) the day it was released. I think I must have played "After the Game of Love" for about a month straight before really being able to move onto harder songs.

Since then, I've expanded my DDR across 4 platforms (PC, Xbox, PS2, Dreamcast), bought more soft pads than I care to count, participated in two local DDR clubs, bought a hard pad, built custom DDR hardware, imported mixes, started two DDR web sites, and, uh, played in the arcade once.

[SSC]

My little 11 and 13 year old cousins had it. I thought it would be funny to see how badly I would do...

[legend of croft]

i played kick the can in my friends basement a few years ago. i played on and off for a while but only got into serious playing maybe around february this year.

[DDRMom]

2 years ago my son came home from a party and couldn't stop talking about the "most fun game in the world!" I went to see them play it at the arcade and thought "I could do that." 2 years, 3 soft pads and a metal pad later -- I'm still doing it!

[Judas]

my little bro and i were at the mall's arcade... this dude named eli was there and he was free syling songs... my bro got on and got to heavy in 1 1/2 months... 4 or 5 months later i started playing..... 6 1/2 months later i was on standard.... (big gap)..... in 2 more i was doing heavy, i have been playing heavy for about 10 months now and i love it

[bigb]

I was at a little sleep over at my buddies house and everyone was asleep except me and my friend justin. Justin was a fairly big DDR fan and he asked if i wanted to play it with him since we had 2 mats. I laughed and said the game was dumb and a waste of time so i just told him i'd watch. But after watching him and listening to him tell me to at least try, i finally said sure why not and get on it. Make a long story short, within 2 days i had already bought a game and mat for myself and i play it daily now for about an hour during the day and 2 hours before i settle for the night.

[xstatic]

back when I was attending the university I was in a japanese language course. There was a kid in it who called himself gojiira and wore funny hats and didn't speak to anyone. Yet he would do bizzare things like shove an entire piece of paper in his mouth for no reason, or wear a bathrobe to class and sneak against walls to get to his desk and other crazy and odd things... Well I became friends with a guy in my class who introduced me to the university's anime society. When I started to attend the meetings I found out that this gojiira had a reputation for being the mysterious DDR player. People told me that he played this DDR game every day and every night in the dormatory. Apparently he was this huge underground hit.

This Gojiira person joined the anime society and once they created their anime convention he was the man that organized and ran the DDR tournaments. The first convention I attended back in 2002 was the first time I witnessed DDR for myself. I saw a lot of people in costumes dancing and singing and gojirra looking like one of the blues brothers bashing it out. Some people asked me to play and though I was intreagued by this game... the people scared me. So I passed.

A year later I saw the game appear at the mall and hesitantly and timidly got up to play my first game. I enjoyed it so much that I vowed to play this game, and to play it well. It was about 2 or 3 months later that I noticed the drastic weight loss effects and found this site due to web browsing curiosity.

[Voco]

Three of my friends had DDR and I had never really played it before so for my friends birthday last year she had 10 of us over and all we did was play DDR on and off. For the whole night. I was the worst one there by far. I couldn't pass a 2 foot song. And that night with my dancing style I was dubbed the constipated rhino, which makes no sense at all. Now all my friends are into DDR and I have gotten so much better and we hold DDR parties constantly during the summer. In fact I was at one last night...

[MATS]

saw it at the mall,played it, got addicted, bought it, played it longer, AAd everything, and now its boring.

[bananalova669]

About 2 or 3 years ago I had been seeing Pump It Up at our mall arcade (which as far as I know is our only arcade in town except for the ones in bowling alleys and skateland...and all DDR machine in town suck) and I had seen people do it and heard about DDR somehow and I begged my friend to try it with me. She wouldn't unless I went first. So I went and looked like a complete idiot, but we both got hooked and I am now addicted. Now if only we had a decent machine left in town. Or even within 50 miles. Stupid Central Illinois.

[irisheyes07]

I saw it at an arcade where I went to college (Central Mich.) and watched some my students play. (I teach.) I thought it was intriguing, yet stupid. Then I went to a friend's house who had it. I saw the dance pad in the corner and said "Is that Dance Dance Revolution??" with incredible scorn in my voice. He said yes, and set it up. I tried it. I LOVED it. I bought DDR Max2 off ebay that night....and received it a week ago, and have played it every day.

[SSC]

irisheyes07 said:

I saw it at an arcade where I went to college (Central Mich.) and watched some my students play. (I teach.) I thought it was intriguing, yet stupid. Then I went to a friend's house who had it. I saw the dance pad in the corner and said "Is that Dance Dance Revolution??" with incredible scorn in my voice. He said yes, and set it up. I tried it. I LOVED it. I bought DDR Max2 off ebay that night....and received it a week ago, and have played it every day.

Off-subject, but I may go to CMU!

[irisheyes07]

Fire up Chips!!!

[Manga]

With me... It was at Katsucon2K. It was DDR 2nd Mix, I heard Butterfly and thought "Dude, this game has Aqua?"

I was already a huge fan of Bust a Move(Groove) so this game was a natural progression. I saw that same con, BeatMania and Pop'n Music, and also Konami's forgotten retarded cousin of a game, Dance!Dance!Dance!, and the totally awesome game that gets no love- Vib Ribbon.

But anyway, I saw DDR, and was just... So entranced by it. I knew it was the thing for me... And that summer, without hesitation, I got DDR 1-3rd Mix, both Append mixes for 2nd, and I got Guitar Freaks. It was seriously an immediate attraction