When I first heard that Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) was going to be the subject of a book from Boss Fight Books, I was a little skeptical. I was only familiar with a handful of the games, and assumed the series was a fad. What I was expecting from the book wasn’t what I got.
Jessica Doyle and Jordan Ferguson cover a lot of ground here. They take the reader on a journey through the history of street dancing in the 1970s and 80s, the ups and downs of the arcade industry, and a fan base that refused to let their game die. It is a great book that explains much of the history of an arcade game that helped to popularize a genre of games.
The section about the fan base is a story that I’ve read quite a few times, especially when reading about Konami games. A common theme in nearly every Konami game is that the company often seemed to care little about fans outside of Japan. That is kind of what happened with DDR, as it was very popular, but a lack of support outside of Japan and the gradual decline of arcades had a big impact on the game in the long term.
Like the other times I’ve looked at these books, I’ll be writing about the parts I’ve found interesting. This will be skipping around a bit, but it isn’t like this is a narrative or anything like that. You can read these books in any order you’d like.
Rhythm Games
Rhythm games gained popularity in the mid-1990s with titles like Parappa the Rapper, which is also featured in Boss Fight Books. In the wake of the genre finding some success, Konami developed and released several games in the arcades. Eventually, some of them found their way to the home console.
There were a number of gaps in the releases of DDR games. Not just a year, but four or more years between entries in the series. These gaps offered time and space for other games to fill the void in the market.
Yes, Konami had a lot of rhythm games, but they weren’t the only ones on the market. When DDR became popular, other games emerged. Rock Band and Guitar Hero are the two that I know of, but there were a bunch of them that showed up. While some of them received console releases, they felt like fads on the console, attracting casual gamers for a brief period.
I’m not saying this is exactly what happened, but it felt that way from the outside. Much of this happened in the 2010s when I was in the Navy and then in college. I had other stuff going on aside from whatever the video game industry was doing at the time.
This is spread throughout a significant portion of the book. While I liked this more than the history and culture of street dancing, my favorite part of the book was on the fans. Those stories are always my favorites in these books.
Stories about the fans
One of the best parts of this book is how the authors record the story of the fanbase. They follow the ups and downs of the games as Konami would, doing things like not releasing arcade games outside of Japan or only releasing limited quantities of the games. Despite all that, the fans continued to support the franchise.
There is a little talk of how the price of an arcade machine went up, and how hard it was to move them around from one location to another. Konami didn’t always release updates to existing DDR machines or new machines outside of Japan and South Korea. They essentially left the existing machines to rot, creating a secondary market for arcade importers.
I wasn’t expecting to read any of this, and it was fascinating! It wasn’t just about the struggles with getting access to an arcade cabinet, because even if you did, it might not work as well.
I also liked that the authors bring up the international fans, specifically those outside of North America and Japan. The fan base in South Africa was particularly interesting to me. They did a lot of work to document where DDR machines could be found, which is part of a greater problem for the fans.
I appreciated that the authors invested a significant amount of time in interviewing fans of the game and documenting the challenges faced by the fan base. There is a lot in this book that I could mention, but I don’t want to write a summary of the book. All the stories about the fans and their experiences with the game are, by far, my favorite part of this book.
It is always nice to read about people enjoying a game they like. From the tournaments to the conventions, there are a lot of stories of passionate people enjoying it.
Wrap Up
This was a fascinating book to read. I had thought it would be a short story about the game, and then a longer story about the fans of the game. I had no idea this was going to be about a series of games, and of the fans trying to keep the game alive. I had incorrectly assumed that there were only a few games in the series.
The story about the fan base and the struggles to get ahold of arcade cabinets in other parts of the world was the most important part of the book for me. This is where the pandemic part of the story comes in. COVID-19 is one of those societal moments that impacted everything for a few years, and many of the books written around this time are going to mention it.
Despite this, the fan base didn’t totally die off. They found a way to keep going so they could enjoy the game that they love. For a game about which I knew relatively little, it was fascinating to learn more about how it has managed to survive.
If you liked this post, please check out my other posts on books, such as Parappa the Rapper or Golden Eye.