I've had a (at this point) nearly life long love and interest in Dance Dance Revolution. I first played some version of the game when I was maybe 12 or 13 in an arcade in Reno. Shortly after that it was 2004 and DDR Extreme was everywhere, even my hometown's shitty dying mall's arcade had a cab. When that went away, I built my own pad. Then I went to college, got extremely fat and didn't play for a long time.
Finally, in 2022 I had lost a significant amount of weight and was thinking about how I really needed some physical activity in my life. Quite honestly, I just find exercise boring. I have ADHD and going to the gym isn't the most stimulating thing. Thinking about it, I realized the only kind of physical activity that I thoroughly enjoyed was DDR and living in a much more populous era, there had to be some cabs around.
Luckily, there was! I found an old cab running DDR X2 vs 2nd Mix, then realized that there was a Round1 somewhat near me with DDR A20+...and it was online! e-Amusement was something that US gamers were only vaguely aware of back in the old times and having an arcade cab connected to the internet seemed like some weird, extremely alien thing back then.
So, I just wanted to share some resources and tips that I've found in getting back into the game and really trying to get as far as I can with it. I'm not the best player ever, it doesn't really come naturally to me (I don't think it does for most, maybe a very small few are just really naturally talented, like anything) and I have to grind a lot, but it's very important to learn from other players and share.
Progress as of 04/22/25: