It almost feels criminal to rate this so low because DDR is the OG to bridge the gap between skeptics and gaming. A non-violent arcade game with popular music that promotes physical wellness - and it kicks ass??? It paved an entire genre from an influence/cultural standpoint and gave the american arcade scene that last 'oomph' it needed at a time when consoles and redemption arcades were driving them to obsoletion.

But I would not play DDR 1st mix - the JP version, specifically, - again if I could help it.

1st mix ain't even poorly-aged - divorced from the context of the later releases, it has twice as many tracks as the competing Parappa 1, few of the same timing/UI issues, and a wealth of modes and modifiers to mix things up. Its failures are purely in hindsight, being a weak and mostly meatless track selection in the grander pantheon.

There's only 11 songs here; I dislike the selection overall, but it the picks here feel 'right', From 1st to 8th mix, Konami's licenses are all taken from iDance and Toshiba Emi's Dancemania series, which has a consistent blend of disco, euro and pop. Bemani took great care in selecting tracks and artists that would become the 'face' of DDR and mirror the series' aesthetic. There's smile.dk's iconic Butterfly, pop culture classics That's The Way and Kung-Fu Fighting, and then Little Bitch sitting in the corner, being a little bit too fucked up for the party. I don't like all these songs, and I hardly pick them when playing newer mixes, but I couldn't imagine 1st entry having anything besides these, y'know? They're the good ol' good ol's.

Konami and Naoki Maeda's original songs Paranoia and Trip Machine - which would become the series' 'mascot' songs and get remixed into oblivion, - codify the two core principles to DDR's loop: Stamina and Technique. When you break down DDR to 4 arrows, it's embarrassingly simple, but the challenge comes from handling these inputs through your physical movement. Timing the notes, controlling your force to maintain stability and accuracy, alternating your legs and pivoting your body to reduce 'double-stepping', among many other lite techniques. Once you reach a certain level, the biggest hurdle in DDR is simply a matter of 'can I last long enough to finish this track before passing out?' You can enjoy DDR without the dancepad (that's how my family played it), but removing the physical component undermines the real feeling of being there, becoming the dance machine, and surviving the tempest.

Which leads into my dislikes of 1st Mix: Energy. Its song selection doesn't really match the 'intensity' of physical play. These tracks are corny with a capital C - charming, but lacking the impact or raw adrenaline that gets you going. Their tempos are slow, their rhythms are goofy, and their stepcharts are all too basic. At this point in time, DDR still doesn't know how it wants to be played as a rhythm game. Konami had no expectations for how audiences would 'engage' with DDR; we've all seen groups get on a machine and just jump around with no regard for the arrows. So most stepcharts are written to give the player breathing room for freestyling - and when things get intense, it's for crowd-pleasing moves like drills and spins. There's an entire scene of players from then and now who play DDR just for freestyle - and more power to them. It's just not what I look for in DDR.

The menus and overall game layout are fucked over because of this, too. We've all come to accept the 'put your quarters in and pick your songs' format of later rhythm games, but as of 1998, Konami's still thinking in terms of traditional level sequencing. As such, the game's song library is awkwardly split between a 'Normal' and 'Hard' menu, and not all songs are selectable. It's also their way of hiding the short songlist, since you gotta play multiple times to see everything.

In certain lights this is one of the best-aged first entries to a historically-foundational breakthrough series - but there's not a lot to find here if you're coming from the later mixes. Luckily, it's (mostly) uphill from here.

Reviewed on Apr 12, 2023


4 Comments


11 months ago

totally feel you on this except with beatmania. iidx is the single greatest rhythm game of all time imo but every time I play either 5-key series it's a stark reminder of how far we've come. even iidx itself didn't really hit its stride until 9th/10th style when some of the really iconic artists joined full-time. this is a good reminder that I should start grinding some ddr though... had health issues last year that were keeping me from playing much but I'd love to get back into it

11 months ago

You had me until you dissed The Specials smh

@Pangburn I'd say IIDX hit it's stride around 11th/12th. Sudden+ is a literal game changer.

11 months ago

I LIKE the specials! I was commenting on how out of place the selection was lmao, sorry I didn't clarify

11 months ago

@bighatpaul totally accurate, I can barely play without the damn towel... moving to a 12 point difficulty scale was also super nice in happy sky. iidx red still has a bit of jank but it has one of my fav osts in the series for sure