Exploring DDR had a bit of a troubled writing process for what was originally supposed to be a simple video. I started early writing and notes in May, but the final draft wasn't ready until the end of August. And even then, I was adding and removing lines up until the final edit of the video was complete. I have a tendency to go into a lot of unnecessary detail, and while that appeals to me and I'd hope that it does to you as well, I do worry that it can be a bit much. (and I also worry about my jokes actually landing quite a bit! i'm still new to this!) The intro to the video was one of those things that I just felt that I couldn't get right. But one new thing that I tried to do for Exploring DDR was to not delete anything that I wrote. If I planned to significantly rewrite something, I'd save it. If I intended to remove it, I'd highlight it with a note that it was removed, but leave it in place. As a result, the Google Doc for this video is a bit of a mess. I'm not sure exactly what my objective was with that exercise, but this meant that when I completely reworked the intro at the very end of the writing process, I cut and pasted the original intro at the bottom of the doc for safe keeping.

When looking back at it now, I really don't think that it's as bad as I originally thought. My primary concern was that it wasn't focused enough, went into too many specifics that could be explored later on in the video, and was just a bit much for the very start of the video. The final version is a lot straighter to the point and I think it's a better opening for the video, but I think I can hear my own voice a bit better in the earlier version, in a weird way. Aside from slimming it down a bit, I think that swapping the order that the topics were introduced in was definitely the right call though.

The Intro

The popularity of rhythm games during my childhood cannot be overstated. It may be hard to believe with their explosion in recent years with popular indie games like Friday Night Funkin’ and even a triple-A spotlight with the Fortnite Festival, but it was kind of a dead genre for a while. At best, you’d see the rhythm gaming die-hards spending hours at specialized arcades or Mad Catz going bankrupt from a failed Guitar Hero revival. But when I was a kid, oh man, these things were everywhere! You couldn’t walk into a GameStop without seeing giant boxes with plastic instruments being prominently displayed on the shelves. The genre was dominated by games like Guitar Hero when I was growing up, and of course where there’s success, there will be clones. But that’s not actually what I’m talking about today. Sure, there were plug and play Guitar Hero ripoffs like Guitar Fever and Guitar Superstar, but the wave of instrument-based rhythm games is a little too new for the clones to be interesting enough for this channel in my opinion. 16-bit clones with terrible MIDI renditions of songs may be interesting to some, but it’s a little too modern for my blood. Surely we can go further back.

And indeed, before sets of Rock Band drums were being shoved into closets everywhere, it was all about Dance Dance Revolution. First launching in 1998, it quickly grew into a whole series with multiple iterations and spinoffs. Its addictive gameplay and intuitive control scheme, making use of foot-controlled pads, made it immensely popular both with fans of the emerging rhythm game genre, and for those who wanted an excuse to exercise without being insulted by fitness-focused video games. Of course, when a game is successful in the arcade, there will be attempts to bring it to the home! And in 1999, a PlayStation 1 release hit stores in Japan. But despite the PlayStation-based arcade hardware likely making porting a breeze, there was still one major hurdle to overcome: the controller. The original arcade machine made use of a large, rigid play surface, which wasn’t really practical to bring home. Sure, you could play with a standard controller, but then you’re losing a major part of the appeal. So, bundled with the PS1 release was a soft, rollable pad which wasn’t quite as good as what was in the arcades, but hey, you’ve gotta compromise somewhere. This was like opening Pandora’s Box, and soon enough, they were pumping out console releases with new songs, new licenses, and for different consoles. You know, come to think of it, the soft pad is actually pretty similar in execution to the Power Pad which came bundled with many NES systems. Speaking of which…

The plug-and-play scene of the late 90’s and early 2000’s is quite possibly one of the most interesting facets of gaming history, like, ever in my opinion. While you’d see a lot of development on specialized hardware from Winbond and later Sunplus, in the early years especially, another option was exceptionally popular. In the late 90’s, prevalent clone chip manufacturer UMC started putting out chips that condensed all of the hardware from a Famicom onto a single chip, a technology that is now widely known as NES-on-a-chip. In both standard forms like the UM6561 and the enhanced UM6578, these cheapified NES clones were small enough to fit into just about everything, and soon began to flood the market. A lot of these consoles simply stole licensed NES games, with Power Player consoles notably having been spotted in the late 90s, but that wasn’t all these things were good for.

See, the market for unlicensed original Famicom games and consoles was in a bit of a rough spot at this point, with many companies moving onto newer hardware or abandoning ship altogether. But these new clones brought with them new opportunities, and there was a wealth of developers whose industry was about to go the way of the gaming industry circa 2024. So many studios pivoted, with some splitting off and forming new companies, and with this, we saw a wave of newly-developed Famiclone games for plug & plays. Original simple games, clones of existing games, bizarre licensed plug & plays, and just generally a whole lot of crap. And as I alluded to earlier, these chips were no longer restricted to a standard console form factor. So many companies sought out novel control methods and form factors, contracting these experienced development teams to bring their ideas to life on the cheap. And with that, we finally get to the point. We’ve established that Konami found a cheap and effective, not to mention lucrative, way to bring DDR to the living room, and we now have a cheap and effective way to stick a Nintendo into just about everything. Put the two together, and we get a boatload of plug-and-play dance mats running on Famiclone hardware. See, now that’s right up my alley!**

Another thing

One portion in the final cut of the video that particularly bugs me is the one where I'm talking about Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I ended up cutting out two parts: one that I thought was too long winded, and one that was actually supposed to make the final cut but accidentally got trimmed out somehow. Both instances kind of wreck the flow of the passage in my opinion. I probably should've rewritten it, but I made the decision for the part that I intentionally trimmed after I had finished recording. The intentionally cut portion is in italics, while the unintentionally cut portion is bolded.

The popularity of rhythm games during the time that I was growing up cannot be overstated. It’s kind of hard to believe that it was a dying genre for a good while with popular indie games like Clone Hero and Friday Night Funkin’, and even a recent AAA spotlight with the Fortnite Festival, more or less revitalizing the genre. But these things were absolutely everywhere when I was growing up, before more or less vanishing for a good few years as a result of oversaturation. When I was growing up, it was all about Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and you couldn’t walk into any store that sold video games without spotting at least one massive display of plastic rhythm game peripherals. Of course, as we’ve established, popularity brings imitation, and there were certainly a number of shovelware games and plug-and-plays that tried to cash in on the trend. On the plug-and-play front, however, most manufacturers had already moved past Famiclones by this point. At best, you got 16-bit plug-and-plays with crappy MIDI renditions of songs, and while those can certainly be interesting in themselves, it’s not what I intend on looking at today. For that, we need to go further back.