Blog

Hi guys, welcome to the first episode of THE DEPRESSED ARROW, a new podcast dedicated to hating all things DanceDanceRevolution. 

You might wonder why I decided to start a DDR hate podcast after I’ve built up this channel for so many years. Well, I think the best way to explain is to give a little anecdote about a recent arcade trip.

You know, I was at the arcade the other day. I had gone to Round 1 Bowling and Amusement to get a nice practice session in with one of my local friends/rivals. I had no expectations for my session. I just hoped to get in, achieve a few high scores or perfect full combos, and that’s it. I typically don’t plan out arcade visits because I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment in case my muscles are sore or there are too many players waiting to take a turn, and so on.

So I was optimistic. But lo and behold, the session went terribly, as usual. 

First off, there were tons of kids RUINING the arcade experience for me and my fellow DDR players. Two unaccompanied brats were running circles around the rhythm game area and mashing on the nearby games. Do you know the carnival ticket minigame where you pull down on the plunger, the wheel spins, and it pays out some random amount of tickets? It’s like the Big Bass Wheel at Dave & Buster’s, but it’s kind of clown-coded. Well, these little kids kept running up to the carnival wheel game and lifting up the plunger WITHOUT swiping and drop it. And so the plunger kept crashing down and making this terrible noise. They weren’t even getting any tickets for it. It was driving me crazy.

And every once in a while, a kid would come up to the DDR Gold Cabinet and ask if he could have a turn. HELLO? I’m in the middle of a game here. The kid is lucky I don’t swat him away for interrupting my flow state when I’m practicing difficult songs. He should simply be grateful that I’m giving him a MASTER CLASS on how to go beast mode. But, as a respectful arcade patron, I talked to the kid nicely and said “Hey, it’s just 3 more minutes and we’ll let you play. No big deal. But for now, please stand off to the side so you don’t bother me.” And the kid runs off.

Well, did he come back in 3 minutes? No! My friend and I looked expectantly around the arcade to see if he’d come back to have a turn, but he was nowhere to be seen, of course. So we start a new session and get a few songs in, and what do you know? The kid comes back starts pouting because we’re “hogging the machine.” Listen up, kid. If you’re not gonna wait your turn, then maybe you go over and play a game that’s meant for children, like Pop’N Music or SOund Voltex. Otherwise, don’t blame us for making the most out of our arcade session. We can’t stand around all day waiting for someone to come up and play. Kapesh? 

So that’s kids.

And the adults are even worse. Don’t get me started on the dumb questions that people come up with when they see me playing.

• “Wow, you’re really working up a sweat.” Yeah, good observation, Einstein. It’s called a high-intensity cardiovascular activity. Do you go up to basketball players at the YMCA and say “wow, you’re really throwing the ball into the hoop.” Get out of here.
• “How long have you been playing?” The thing I hate about this kind of question is how vague it is. Do you mean in this game? Well, it’s been about 5 minutes since I swiped my card. I did get here around 3:30, so it’s been about 2 or 3 hours in total. Or did you mean in my entire life? I’ve been playing DDR for 23 years since I was introduced to it an arcade in Reno, NV on my dad’s work trip. Unless you mean video games in general. I started playing video games when I was about 6 years old on the Super NES. And I don’t really have the time to explain my personal history with video games because the song selection timer is ticking down. So I invite you to just follow me on x.com. My handle is _sessu if you’d like to learn more.
• “Do you memorize all the steps? How do you read that fast” C’mon on, man, who do I look like? Iamchris4life? Piguy314159 on YouTube.com? No, I don’t memorize every song. But I do watch about 45 minutes of yuisin’s chart videos every evening as sort of an ADHD calming exercise. 

I could go on and on about the frequently asked questions I receive every time I visit the arcade, but I don’t want to waste your time. I know that anyone watching this video is clearly well-educated about dance gaming and the history of Konami, the rise and fall of rhythm games in the USA, and the moral question of whether one should pirate DDR A3. I just wanted to highlight how oppressed and objectified dance gamers are in public. 

How can anyone be expected to set high scores in such a hostile environment? Imagine going to the gym, and while you’re squatting 3 plates, kids are running up and tugging on your pant legs and standing directly in your range of motion. Or imagine that drunk weirdos come up in the middle of your set and ask you questions like “how many times do you come here a week?” I’m sick of it.

Anyway, to talk about my session a little bit, I’ve been working on fulfilling the requirements for the next rank in LIFE4. And if you don’t know what LIFE4 is, it’s a community ranking system for DDR that aims to give players of all skill levels goals to work on. And one of the goals that most ranks require is raising your score floors. You have to get every song at a specific difficulty level above a certain amount of points. So, for example, I’m working on raising my level 18 score floor above 950,000 points. 

Now, level 18 is almost the highest difficulty level in the game. So you’d think that the songs in there would sound badass. Like high BPM, EDM bangers, you know what I mean? Well, unfortunately, DDR has changed a lot over the past 20 years, and now instead of having cool songs like MAX 300 or POSSESSION on the high range, we have Touhou songs and anime songs. 

There’s this song called TRANCE DANCE ANARCHY with really grating Japanese vocals. And the chart is a nightmare. It has tons of jumps, which I’m not good at. Not that I’m making excuses here, but it doesn’t fit the difficulty.

Another song, MEGALOVANIA, is a level 18 with shock arrows, which are basically a rip-off of mines from In The Groove (a superior dance game). If you don’t raise your feet off the dance pad high enough, you hit a shock arrow, and it makes everything on the screen disappear for about five seconds. All the while, there’s this meme video in the background from some indie video game that nobody’s ever played. 

I just can’t score well on these songs; they’re not fun to play, and they don’t cater to my specific skill sets and musical tastes. So they’re trash. But I’m forced to play them so I can get the next rank and get the acknowledgment I deserve from my peers. So that’s just been a struggle.

So after such an exhausting session, I realized that DanceDanceRevolution sucks. It’s not a fun game, it’s not an e-sport, and it doesn’t have cool music from the 90s like I used to enjoy. It’s not a helpful self-improvement tool.

I decided to create this podcast to highlight some of the negative aspects of being a DDR fan and talk about how the game has declined in the last few years.

—

This next segment is CURRENT HAPPENINGS. I like to talk about some of the recent content released for the game.

Last week, we got a new chart for the song YUNI’S NOCTURNAL DAYS. It’s level 18, of course, and it’s the worst chart I’ve ever seen. The song itself gives off chill, relaxing vibes. It’s honestly one of the few recent DDR songs I’ve liked. But the new challenge chart they released is just a dump of arrows of all different colors and time signatures. 

A very intelligent DDR player commented, “Seeing an 18 here feels really off for this song, especially when the song gives off much more chill, relaxing vibes compared to GL songs like ALPACORE or Muteki Buffalo. It’s like Reiwa all over again.”

I totally AGREE.

It also has some very fast drill patterns, which I am not good at. So, THANKS, KONAMI, for ruining my level 18 folder once again.

Another song released recently is called 9th Outburst, by an artist named Zekk, who is South Korean but lives in Japan and does a lot of work for rhythm games. This song is kind of a banger, I won’t lie. The chart is level 15, so it’s kind of in the middle of the road, and it has some gimmicks, but they’re pretty manageable. I’m overall pretty happy with the song and chart.

One problem. It’s locked behind this event called GOLDEN LEAGUE. In this event, Konami forces you to go out to the arcade every month and play to get points. If you miss a month, your rank goes down and you lose access to the songs you already grinded for. God forbid you get sick or get in a car crash and can’t make it out to the arcade for a few weeks. Even worse, this event is locked to the GOLDEN 20th ANNIVERSARY DDR CABINETS, which have so many problems that I could do another 25-minute podcast ripping them apart. The gold cabinets don’t even exist in countries outside of Japan and the USA. Hmm… nationalistic much, Konami??

Anyways, needless to say, I respectfully abstained from unlocking it. I guess I’ll just wait 10 months until Konami gives me the privilege to play it on the white DDR cab, which is apparently for scrubs.

—

OK, the last segment is going to be called “MAIL BAG,” and it’s where I go to read some comments from social media. Ideally, in the future, I’ll have people write in and ask for advice about DDR or pose questions to me.

But for now, An anonymous user on X writes,

‘If you play dance games primarily for h2h competition as opposed to online competition, actively “going for lamps” other than the clear/life4 ones is a dangerous path for overall growth.’

These DDR advice tweets always rub me the wrong way. I took it a little personally and reported this user for terrorism, but then I felt a little bad and thought, “Hmm, maybe this will be good material for my YouTube channel.” So, I rescinded the report

My main issue with this tweet is that it insults me personally and my play style. Maybe I love to go to the arcade and grind the same song for 4 hours. 

A few years ago, I was trying to get perfect full combos on every level 14 song in the game. One of those songs was called B4U Voltage Special. If you’ve never played it, most of the song is very easy for level 14, but one specific passage has a mess of arrows with ambiguous patterning. I spent weeks studying it.

I would go to the arcade after work. This was when I was living in Korea, so I took the bus for about 30 minutes. I’d go to the mall, grab a large iced americano, and just start grinding it repeatedly until the arcade closed. (Laughs.) And I used to get so mad. I’d start screaming into my towel or kicking the selection buttons on the cabinet. Sometimes, a couple would walk by and watch me play for a few minutes, distracting my focus. I hate seeing happy couples at the arcade. So, I’d say something rude, like, “What are you looking at? Am I just a dancing monkey to you?” And they’d walk awkwardly. One time the manager approached me and asked me to calm down, so I told him they were recording videos and laughing at me and harassing me. They weren’t allowed to come back after that.

But anyways, eventually, after about 100 plays, I finally achieved the perfect full combo, which sealed my level 14 gold lamp. It was one of my proudest accomplishments in DDR. Did it really help my overall growth? Well, that’s debatable, but I did get bragging rights. And I got about 35 likes on my Twitter post. And that was like a huge dopamine hit. It really made me happy and kept me motivated for the rest of the … session. And then, it was onto the next goal. 

So hey, if you see someone grinding the same song over and over again, give them some respect. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you don’t get quality results without a little elbow grease and discipline.

—

Anyway, that’s about it for the first episode of my podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for supporting me over the years, even though I haven’t put out much content lately.

I think this is a really great concept. There are so many things that I can complain about as a DDR player, and I’ve got a huge list of topics I’d love to cover. 

Next week, I’ll talk about why there’s too much Japanese music in DanceDanceRevolution and why Konami hates its American audience. So that will be a constructive discussion.

Do you have any things you hate about DDR? Leave them in the comments below. Talk to you soon!

(IMPRESS PLAYS FROM DANCERUSH STARDOM)