Dance Dance Revolution celebrates 10th birthday

Known as Dancing Stage in Europe, the series first arrived in Japanese arcades on November 21st 1998 and quickly went on to become a gaming sensation. Konami ditched the traditional joypad or joystick and introduced a pressure-sensitive dance mat that registers when a player’s foot hits each of the four directional pads.

It didn’t take long for the arcade craze to make the move to consoles, and the series arrived on Sony’s pioneering PlayStation in Japan early in 1999, bringing with it the first iteration of the console dance mat.

Few platforms have proved immune to Konami’s craze, and DDR has gone on to appear on the likes of the PS2, Dreamcast, GameBoy, N64, Xbox, GameCube, PC, Wii and Xbox 360. In total, nearly 140 separate SKUs of the title have been released across all of the global games markets.

In an age where the Wii Balance Boards and SingStar microphones are commonplace, it’s easy to forget the impact that Konami’s dance mat had on the market. But with movement and fitness in gaming only now reaching its zenith, Konami can’t be praised enough for the road it laid out for the industry.

A round of applause from CasualGaming.biz.