There is perhaps no image of the aughts era arcade quite as iconic as those giant Dance Dance Revolution machines, paradoxically because it’s difficult to imagine anything quite so antithetic to the arcade experience prior to that point than dancing to often obscure music. While not the first rhythm game by any means, Dance Dance Revolution is noteworthy for inspiring an entire subculture that persists to the present day. Jessica Doyle and Jordan Ferguson tell their story in the latest offering from Boss Fight Books.
In the sense that all Boss Fight Books just discuss gaming history, Dance Dance Revolution is something of a sequel to the PaRappa the Rapper by Mike Sholars, in that it opens up with a discussion of Masaya Matsuura essentially trying to make a video game that encouraged musical experimentation. It’s from this context that we need to understand producer Yoshihiko Ota’s quest for novelty. While beatmania was decently successful, it had a generally lousy interface. Besides, DJing was a bit of a niche activity. But everybody loves dancing, and the idea of foot pads for gaming was hardly new, it just had never gone anywhere before.
Ota is quoted as describing Dance Dance Revolution as being similar to a karaoke machine, in that shy people not inclined to sing in public can still be persuaded to get up on stage and do so anyway. The literal pedestal of Dance Dance Revolution in the arcade doesn’t just make good use of the concept, it actually improves on it. A person focused on dancing is typically quite literally incapable of seeing the crowd form around them. Likewise, the setup of Dance Dance Revolution welcomes spectators in ways that other arcade games simply do not. Because the prompt screen is elevated even higher than the pedestal, any passerby in the arcade can see and hear what’s going on. And so, a crowd forms.
The logistical genius of Dance Dance Revolution is the main interesting core concept of this book. Though Masaya bemoans how successor concept games to PaRappa the Rapper tended to emphasize the need for a perfect score, rather than creativity, we also see how the competitive Dance Dance Revolution scene, once upon a time anyway, utilized many different strategies to play the game effectively, like leaning on the safety bar. The more seemingly impossible levels that Konami made, the more determined players became to find new ways to beat them anyway.
Konami itself as a corporation occupies an odd place in this history, bearing a surprisingly large amount of similarity to its present-day notoriety as a company more interested in branding than making new games. Even more surprising, the book shows that in many ways this was actually a fairly reasonable approach. Guitar Hero and its successors burned out much faster than Dance Dance Revolution did due to sheer overexposure. Konami’s stinginess in terms of making new machines and games appeared to be motivated mostly by skepticism that anyone overseas could find the concept interesting, given the eclectic music library. But in terms of artificial scarcity, there’s no denying that this approach amplified the excitement for the arcades that were willing to gamble on the concept.
If there’s any flaw in this book, it’s that the history provided is quite broad. Did the designers, the music artists, the players, or the arcade itself make Dance Dance Revolution a true revolution? The simple answer is that all of them did. The game is a unique historical conflagration of all these factors with an enduring appeal even in the present day to those who can locate the proper equipment to play it. And of course, it certainly helps that the game is good exercise.
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