Welcome to the DDR thread...

[Saurian]

If you are playing on a mat wear socks and secure the mat in place if possible. The reason I say wear socks is because you can slide you foot over panels to activate them - practice working with the command arrows and how you can move with each pattern. Everyone plays differently but I feel this approach of learning to recognise sets of steps and taking them with footwork you've practiced dont need to think about works well.

For example (DDR, numeric keypad style)
846 would be:

Right foot to 8
Left to 4
Right to 6

624 could be something like:
Right to 6
Right to 2
Left step on 4

Or
Turn to face left and walk 624 Right, left right

To take multiple rapid steps quickly - instead of stepping try putting that foot on toes and twist the foot left/right to catch each beat. You can do that with both feet too (opposing toe/heel to glide left and right) but that comes later! What I'm giving is just examples - I'm sure you'll find stuff that works much better for you, thinking about the relation between steps and the arrows is the best way to pwn the game tho!

[Zanzaki]

How good are you all?
In Megamix and Fever I can handle most eight-footers without any problems...I could probably do a lot better with a new mat. I've been playing on my cheap joytech mat which I bought for 10? at HMV when I visited London last summer. DDR Extreme and an Ignition 2mat is now on it's way...muah! Hope I'll have as much fun with DDR Extreme as I had with Megamix and Fever.

[?pint]

I'm playing on a cheapie GAME brand mat . It does the job though, so that's alright.

Is Dancing Stage Fever any good, by the way? I'm not quite sure what dancing games I should be getting. The songs don't really tickle my fancy to be honest, they're boring pop songs and there are only about 10 in the game .

And I would say I'm fairly decent, even though I've only just started. I can do some of the songs on expert, and all of them on difficult, though I still hold on to some self respect so I can't yet do the insanely fast songs .

[Zanzaki]

I prefer Fever over Megamix, some really good songs can be found in Fever, but it's all up to your taste...
It's pretty cheap isn't it? You should buy it if you have some extra money laying around.

[phillai]

Dancing Stage Fever is crap.
Most of the tracks are manufactured for the UK market with really cheesy songs from Kylie, Madness and The Cure.

The hardest track on it is Max 300 which is about 2 years old.

Don't wanna sound rude but get a Jap PS2 and DDR Extreme.
It's so much better and it's got some really insanely hard tracks too.

[Zanzaki]

Well...Fever is still the best game which you can get on PS2 for a PAL-system.
DDR Extreme is on it's way to me...and a japanese PS2....sweet
How many songs does Extreme have? Roughly?

[?pint]

Is it just me, or are UK dancing games really, insanely easy? I had a go on a demo of a DDR game I have, and it's absolutely mind boggling more difficult. Will need a bit of practice . That's where the problem with plastic mats come in - they start to bend and fold etc. because of the uber-fast dancing .

I still look like a prat when I'm 'dancing' though .

<wishes for the day he can become half as good as Saur>

It seems that Saurian is good at everything

[Shimmyhill]

Anyone on extreme on a chipped ps2 yet ??

If so does it have sync probs ?

[phillai]

Nope not yet but my mate is apparently getting his chipped soon just to play it so I'll let you know when I know!

[Nisa]

I have a modded PAL PS2 and every DDR game I've bought for it thus far namely the Japanese Max & Max 2 and the US Max work fine.

I ordered the US Max 2 + mat bundle & DDR Extreme yesterday from Another World (Max 2 bundle was 50 quid and Extreme was 40) and should have both either tonight or sometime on Friday, to be honest I havent heard of any problems with playing Extreme on a modded PS2.

The only DDR games that have the sync problems are 3rd,4th,5th and Extra Mix, you can get over this problem by using speed fix codes on an Action Replay or Exploder cheat disc howver that solution does not work 100% as tracks will jitter from time to time. The only way to play these versions as intended is on a Japanese PS One/PS2.

[phillai]

Correct me if I'm wrong but don't the original PS One DDR games detect if your PS One or PS2 is chipped or not?

I remember this was the case with the PS One but not so sure with the PS2.

Konami implemented some very clever stealth chip software in it's original games and if it detects that your consoles been chipped a massive red circle with a cross over it comes up with some Jap text saying get something like get lost you can't play me!

[Shimmyhill]

Cheers Nisa thats set my mind at rest.

Ill get ordering !!!