What s up guys! It s Jason here and welcome to my YouTube channel, Fun Insight. Let s
take a stroll down memory lane and go back in time. The year is 2000, the start of the
new millennium. The world didn't crash and burn in the fiery conflagration of the Y2K
bug. Having survived into the new millennium, you feel a pang of nostalgia, so you walk
into the local arcade.
When you walk through the door, and your eyes adjust to the lights--you are treated to a
flashy spectacle. Japanese techno-pop punctuated by neon lights blares out at you. Sweaty arcade
denizens stomp on a metal platform's arrows in time with the scrolling arrows on the screen.
The crowd is cheering, and your interest is piqued. You've caught the Dance Dance Revolution
fever.
It all started in 1998, when arcade workers wheeled the first Dance Dance Revolution,
also called DDR, into a Japanese arcade. The arcade workers plugged the machine and were
greeted with bright neon lights and thumping techno. People flocked to the device, and
a cultural phenomenon was born.
The dancing fever pandemic spread across Japan, across the Pacific, and took root in the United
States. Dance Dance Revolution's hold on American arcade culture flamed out shortly after it
started. It came, burned bright, and now resides with a narrow niche of gamers. The game is
all but dead in the United States. What follows is the story of the rise and fall of Dance
Dance Revolution.
But before we begin If you wouldn t mind just tapping that LIKE button for the YouTube algorithm,
I would really appreciate it. If you ever played DDR, be sure to subscribe and hit that
notification bell for new videos each week. Thanks for doing that and now let us continue
on with What happened to the iconic Dance Dance Revolution.
The Rise
Dance Dance Revolution's popularity coincided with a rise in the popularity of rhythm games,
a type of video game that tests a player's sense of rhythm. These types of games focus
on simulated instrument playing or dance.
Rhythm games steadily gained popularity in Japan from as far back as 1970. By 1997, Konami
released Beatmania. The release of Beatmania paved the way for Konami to release an arcade
version of Dance Dance Revolution in September of 1998. The game was a huge success earning
Konami an enormous financial windfall.
Part of the appeal of the game is its unique physical presence. The game cabinet stands
eight feet tall, has gyrating spotlights, neon lights, a thumping speaker system, and
an attached dance floor with pressure-sensitive pads.
Another thing that made the game popular was the elegant simplicity of the gameplay. You
watch arrows scroll up to the top of the screen. When the arrow reaches a cue on the top of
the screen, you step on the floor arrow that corresponds with the screen arrow. Follow
the signals, hit the steps, and rack up a high score. If you miss too many steps, you
will fail the song, and your game is over.
The imposing physical presence and the ease of gameplay made the game a hit in Japan.
A year later, the Dance Dance Revolution craze would begin in Northern California. In 1999,
Bay Area natives Jason Ko and Cynan de Leon discovered the game, fell in love with it,
and created DDRFreak.com to connect people with local events and places to play the arcade
game. The website facilitated a robust social scene centered on DDR.
Across the Pacific, the game's continued popularity in Japan drove innovation. For example, Japan
started having DDR tournaments as early as 1999. The US lagged with no real tournament
scene until the latter months of 2000.
The game's widespread adoption wouldn't occur in the US until 2001, when it became a national
phenomenon. Teenagers played the game in every arcade that had space to house its considerable
size.
There was a nascent push in the medical community to fight America's child obesity epidemic
by leveraging music and dancing games. A 2006 study for the International Journal of Sports
Medicine concluded that playing DDR provided an aerobic workout in elevated heart rate.
DDR was so popular that "The Governator" himself encouraged the use of the game in schools.
The game became so popular in the US that schools adopted it as part of their physical
education curriculum.
DDR rode a wave of success into the US. So, what killed it in the US? Let s find out!
The Fall There are several reasons that DDR died in
the US. Some were self-inflicted wounds by Konami, and others were reasons outside the
Japanese game developer's control.
Reason #1 Dance Dance Revolution arcade cabinets were expensive
A typical arcade game cabinet cost about $8,000. DDR cabinets cost about $16,000, and they
took up more space than a traditional arcade game. The high cost of the cabinet, coupled
with the area it took, made the game a high-risk investment for most arcades. The monitors
and footpads cost hundreds of dollars per year to maintain.
Reason #2 Japan had superior DDR cabinets I want to provide a little context and a mini-history
lesson on rhythm games and their place in Japanese arcade culture. Back in the late
90s, Konami created a series of rhythm and music games called Bemani. Concurrently, Sony
released a game called PaRappa The Rapper.
Sony's quirky rhythm game snatched the attention of Japan's gamers. Thus, the broad appeal
of rhythm games was born. While PaRappa surged in sales, Konami released the first of its
Benami series games called Beatmania.
Unlike PaRappa, Beatmania was an arcade game that required players to act as a DJ, follow
on-screen cues, press buttons, and work a turntable. Beatmania was the transition from
button-based games to the dancing platform that DDR used.
Beatmania was incredibly popular in Japan. In September 1998, Konami released DDR. The
game was so popular that people would wait hours for the chance to play. Within a year,
more than 3,000 DDR cabinets populated Japan's arcades. The game's popularity saw Konami's
net revenues jump to almost $174 billion by 2000. Japan could not get enough of DDR, and
Konami was interested in keeping that market segment happy.
American demand was high. To keep Japanese gamers happy, Konami made some sacrifices.
As a result, Konami created a limited number of officially licensed cabinets for the US,
and the price of the cabinet remained high.
Creative arcade owners flaunted the law and ordered DDR cabinets from disreputable sources.
The import of unofficially licensed DDR cabinets is technically against the law, so fewer protections
in place and quality control became an issue.
The bootleg and black market DDR cabinets were old, had missing components, and did
not work as well. The perception of the game took a hit as frustrated gamers played on
shoddy cabinets. Then Konami partnered with Betson, an American distributor, to release
Dance Dance Revolution SuperNova. The release was a disaster; American arcades received
lower-quality machines than their Japanese counterparts.
As if the botched release was not enough turmoil, Konami failed to offer upgrade kits to American
arcades. The upgrade kits converted older generation machines to new ones. Japanese
arcades could purchase the upgrade kits, but American arcades had to fork over thousands
for a brand new device.
#3 The importance of arcades Back in the day, arcades were fun places to
hang out. However, in the US, the death of malls presaged the death of arcades. That
is not the case in Japan.
Japanese audiences viewed home console games and arcade games as separate entities. For
Japan's gamers, arcade games served one type of function, and home console games served
another function. Konami regularly publishes new content for arcades. For instance, 2020's
Dance Dance Revolution A20 is the 17th game in the DDR arcade series. For Japan only,
Konami released DDR A20 Plus, which included 84 songs and additional content.
You can find arcades in most towns or cities in Japan. Arcades are part of Japanese popular
culture, from multi-story behemoth arcades in bustling city centers to single-room buildings.
Arcades made a much bigger splash in Japan, and society embraced this form of entertainment.
The advent of gaming consoles (Nintendo, Playstation, and Xbox) killed arcades in the United States
and Europe. Western gamers' preference for home consoles drove down arcades' popularity.
The death spiral of malls made arcades whimper out of existence all across the United States.
Arcades disappeared; DDR cabinets vanished with them.
Nowadays, you would be hard-pressed to find DDR cabinets out in the wild. Your best bet
would be to head to Dave & Buster's or Round1, a Japanese arcade that has been popping up
around the US. While it's not impossible to find an arcade with DDR, arcades are becoming
endangered species. A natural result of the shortage of arcades is the absence of Dance
Dance Revolution.
#4: The Console Wars, computer games, and mobile gaming
On October 18, 1985, arcades died when Nintendo released its groundbreaking console, Nintendo
Entertainment System (NES). The Japanese gaming company tested out the eight-bit video game
console in New York in 1985 and then LA in early 1986. After widely successful tests,
the NES became available nationwide in September 1985.
Nintendo and Sega would engage in a visible console war to dominate the United States
video game market. Sony's entrance into the United States market was Sega's death knell.
Microsoft entered the video game console marketplace on November 15, 2001. Nintendo, Sony, and
Microsoft currently duke it out for dominance in the $41 billion industry.
Computer games rise and fall and rise again in popularity also cut into the popularity
of arcades. In 1983, the video game crash occurred, but the industry bounced back strongly.
In the 90s, home consoles dominated the market, but since 2000 their popularity has surged
among gamers. Now, PC gaming is a $37 billion industry.
The mobile game industry dwarfs other gaming industries. In 2020, the mobile gaming industry
was worth $90 billion. As smartphones become ubiquitous extensions of our bodies, the rise
of mobile gaming has no ceiling.
The option to play from your recliner with a console, from your favorite gaming chair
with a PC, and on the toilet with a mobile game made arcades redundant. As a result,
an arcade-driven game like DDR never stood a chance.
#5: Too many competitors
DDR has its time to shine, but other more popular rhythm games supplanted it. In the
US, games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band cut into DDR's fanbase. The games included periphery
instruments and could be played from home.
DDR had a console presence, but American releases were lower quality and less polished like
with its arcade cabinets. American consumers had to modify their machines to play superior
Japanese versions of the game or settled for the worse product.
The lack of good gameplay and inferior product made DDR console games perform poorly relative
to other titles. Then in 2011, the bottom dropped out of the rhythm game sector with
the discontinuation of the Guitar Hero series. In 2013, Rock Band shuttered its operations
shortly after. Overall, the rhythm gaming industry cannibalized itself with oversaturation,
and Dance Revolution became a casualty.
Conclusion:
As mentioned before, there is a small dedicated niche community of DDR gamers in the US. In
2017, an American DDR savant won Konami's Arcade Championship. The following is small
and emotional about the game, but the game's long-term health does not look good. Citing
the cost of maintaining the machines, Dave & Buster's raised the price to play DDR.
The continued cost of running a DDR cabinet is probably not worth it in the long run.
People don't go to Dave & Buster's to play DDR. It's billed as a restaurant, bar, and
arcade, and people behave accordingly. Where else can you grab a cold pint of beer and
then shoot velociraptors with your free hand in Jurassic Park?
Eventually, the last bastion for the dancing games might toss them aside, and the game
will be relegated to the garages of fanatics, warehouses, and storage units of out-of-business
arcades. It had a good run, but the game is no longer relevant outside of the DDR cult.
It's a blip in the history of the decade arcade industry.
So with that said, thank you so much for watching my video. There was a significant amount of
research, production and video game playing that went into making this video possible.
If you haven t seen already, check out my video on the Rise and Fall of Toys R Us or
the Rise and Fall of Google Stadia Video Gaming System or the Rise and Fall of Cyberpunk 2077.
Those are my personal favorites on Gaming on my channel. As always, stay happy and healthy
and stay tuned for another episode of Company Insight next week.