Tag: ddr

Categories
Recommended

Dance Dance Immolation Pics

I’ve been a little frightened at the rate at which DDR has gained mainstream acceptance over the last few years. What used to be this weird quasi-underground game is now readily available in practically every video game store in the country, never mind the knock offs and the clones and everything else.

Despite the increase in popularity, Konami has been keeping the rate of development relatively slow. There hasn’t been a new arcade version since the end of 2002; home version keep coming out but only at a rate of about one per year. (In its heyday, there were two arcade and two home releases per year in Japan.)

Luckily, there are some people that are still finding ways to keep the game interesting.

Most everyone with a passing interest has heard about Dance Dance Immolation, the upcoming flamethrower-based version that’ll be at Burning Man. To steal the summary from the DDI page:

> Dance Dance Immolation is an adaptation of the popular arcade video game Dance Dance Revolution, but with fire! Basically, you play DDR; when you do well, the computer shoots big propane blasts up into the air. When you do poorly, it shoots you in the face with flamethrowers. Yes, you, as in your actual corporeal body. And yes, flamethrowers, like the kind that are on fire.
> Before you play, you’ll put on a full aluminized proximity suit, with a forced-air respirator, gloves, fireproof hood, the whole bit. These are the suits that are used for fighting fires at airports. So, as you can see, it’s completely safe!

My very good friend [Nicole Aptekar](http://www.livejournal.com/users/nicoletbn/) is in fact on the DDI team, working on a number of parts of the project. She’s put up a [fantastic bunch of pictures](http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicoletbn/tags/ddi/) (including the above one) from their first test at The Crucible’s Fine Arts Festival this weekend, as well as lots from the construction efforts. Be sure to check them out.

Categories
Debated

Deconstructing Konami vs. Roxor

*Please note: I am not a lawyer.*

Big news hit the Bemani world yesterday, as Konami filed a 16 page patent suit in Texas against Roxor Games.

Konami, as most of the world knows by now, are the creators of the very popular Dance Dance Revolution (or DDR) video game series. While DDR was hugely successful in Japan in the arcades and has seen large success at home over the last few years, the series has been unofficially on hiatus since the end of 2002, when the last Japanese arcade version was produce. Players differ in opinion as to what exactly represents a hiatus – Konami continues to make home versions, particularly for the US where only one legal arcade mix was created – but many players realize that without constant new versions in the arcade, their interest in the game was diminshed.

In the last two years, one of the many DDR simulator programs – Stepmania – was spun off into an attempted commercial project called In The Groove (or ITG). Available as a PC setup called a “BoXoR” (as in “*RoXoR BoXoR*”; I will refer to them as “kits”), In The Groove raised eyebrows during its introduction to the marketplace as it required to be plugged into an existing DDR arcade machine to be used. People representing the project, as well as fans, hail ITG as a game designed for fans of the dancing game genre.

Konami’s attempt to get an injunction comes just days before the release of the home version of In The Groove, produced in conjunction with Red Octane, arguably the most successful dance pad maker in the US. The court filings, available in PDF form from DDR Freak, include seven separate counts that Konami is seeking damages for.

There seems to be a lot of confusion in the community about what the exact point of the filing is, and what it means for DDR and ITG in the future. So, I’ll try my best to break it down to easy to digest portions. Click through for my deconstruction and analysis of the claims.

Continue reading “Deconstructing Konami vs. Roxor”
Categories
Found

Words Taken Out Of My Mouth

I was going to write this long post about how ridiculous it is that Nintendo and Konami have teamed up to created Dance Dance Revolution With Mario, and how Nintendo needs to really get away from watering down their characters.

But Geeks On Stun nailed all the points I was going to make. Even the bit where I was going to call Donkey Konga a “half-assed version” of Taiko No Tatsujin.