Our latest book, Dance Dance Revolution, is now available in the Boss Fight store! To celebrate, Outer Wilds author Tommy Wallach sent the authors some questions about their history with the game, the DDR competitive scene, the original NES Power Pad, and why arcade games sometimes get unfairly left out of the video game conversation.

Tommy Wallach: Did you come at this book because you are DDR superfans/players? Like, did either of you get really good at having people watch you play at arcades and stuff?

Jordan Ferguson: I don’t think either of us would consider ourselves especially skilled players, ha. Where I grew up in Canada I might have seen an actual cabinet once in my life, but it left enough of an impression to buy a home pad and a copy of MAX for the PS2. At my best, playing daily, I could maybe barely squeak my way through MAX300 on a good day, but my tastes leaned more towards the more disco-flavoured songs on the soundtrack. As for any of my attempts since we started on the book, the less said the better.

Jessica Doyle: I played fairly regularly on my PS1, but I was decidedly an exercise player. One of the side effects of DDR going from a ubiquitous to a niche game is that the people who are playing it now are more likely to be closer to "superfan" status than either of us ever were. For a lot of people, it takes a certain amount of dedication and drive to play DDR at all; you might as well get good at it. Which is a shame, because DDR is a lot of fun even if you're terrible at it! As evidenced by the fact that Jordan and I both remembered the game so fondly despite never having been anywhere close to show-off-able.

Other than the "golden age" cabinets (Pac-Man, Galaga, Asteroids, etc.), even incredibly popular arcade games kinda get left out of the critical discussion around video games. Why do you think that is?

JF: I’d agree with that. I think the biggest contributing factor is that, historically, console games provide more fertile soil for critical discussion. In terms of length and narrative complexity, console and PC games just give you more to work with, and have a greater opportunity to form stronger connections with the people playing them. A game like Mass Effect lends itself to that sort of critical investigation much more than something like Donkey Kong does, even if you could argue the latter has a greater cultural impact.

JD: I think also that console games, by virtue of their greater length, are meant to command more attention. Going to an arcade was (still is) supposed to be an activity where the games were part of your entertainment, but not the focus. The modern-day analog is that class of free-to-play mobile games designed more to kill time than anything else. Yeah, we don't talk about Altered Beast or House of the Dead in a critical context that much, but we also don't talk about, say, Cookie Clicker. (Although I definitely want to read the BFB book on Minesweeper!)

As part of the research of the book, did you guys dive into the competitive scene for DDR? Is it still robust this many years later? See anything cool while out at the tournies?

JF: It pains me to say, and if I’m wrong on this I know I’ll hear about it, but in Toronto where I currently live, I didn’t find any real scene to speak of. Most DDR cabinets in Canada are older models found in retro gaming bars or movie theatres. Personally, in my travels I only found one A20 cabinet at a Dave & Buster’s a two-hour transit ride from my neighbourhood. I had to bribe a friend to give me a ride there and even then, on a Saturday, I only saw two folks I would consider dedicated players. But on the other hand, I know Jessica has seen and spoken with people who organize tournaments on the Atlanta-area convention circuit, and has more optimistic takeaways than I do. None of this is to discount the fan based initiatives like Valkyrie Dimension or LIFE4, that moved tournaments and rankings online and opened them up to the widest possible player base.

JD: I was really, really lucky to stumble into a fairly vibrant Atlanta scene, which I talk about in the book (including why it's so vibrant. Spoiler: there are some truly dedicated people working to organize tournaments and social events). On an international level, there was a very brief period where non-Japanese players were being invited to -- and winning! -- Konami-sponsored tournaments, but the pandemic killed that momentum. So officially, there's no competitive infrastructure unless you're living and playing in Japan. But people are still swapping scores online! It's not uncommon for a regional group to have a Discord where people from outside the region check in -- I was hanging out in the Discord for Okashi Houston, for example -- and compare notes that way. The scene isn't as geographically limited as you might assume.

What was the most surprising fact you learned about the development of DDR while writing your book?

JF: There actually isn’t a ton of information about the making of the game itself, much of it being apocryphal or taken from the handful of interviews with Yoshihiko Ota, the original game’s producer. But the one fact that pops into my head every time I hear it again is that a team of 35 people took the game from concept to prototype in four months. I don’t even know how that happens.

The other thing, which is less about the development and more about how the game exists in the world, is the sort of tug o’ war that exists between the fans who love the game and the company that made it. The story of DDR is as much (if not more) about the people who love it, promote it, organize the tournaments, and dedicate so much time and effort to keeping the culture around the game healthy during the times when Konami didn’t seem to see it as a priority.

JD: My answer to this is, how quickly the "development of DDR" story became not just about Konami. Yes, Konami is still the manufacturer of the official cabs (and holder of all the copyrights -- our history covers a fair number of lawsuits) but the Stepmania open-source clone dates back to the early 2000s. People were making new music and stepcharts, and coming up with new ideas for the game, pretty quickly. Freestyle play, for example: we have no evidence that Konami anticipated that development.

The Nintendo Power Pad feels like the precursor to DDR. Did either of you play with it when you were younger? Was it front of mind for any of the developer's at Konami?

JF: Playing games with your feet was not an entirely new concept by the time Konami started working on the first game in 1998. Atari had the Joyboard for the 2600 and of course the Power Pad for the NES was a success for Nintendo in North America, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the Bemani team was at least a little inspired by what came before.

Alas! I did not have a Power Pad. But my best friend did! Saturday afternoons were spent in his family rec room, kneeling on the carpet, punching the pad as fast as we could, which is how we all played it, just admit it.

JD: I want to say I never did... my family rented games a week at a time from a now-defunct chain called Phar-Mor. (The Wikipedia entry for Phar-Mor suggests a fascinating business book that I hope got written at some point. It was basically the combination of a drop shipper and a pyramid scheme!) So we wouldn't have rented the pad as well. But did my brother and I whack the heck out of our big Advantage controller? Yes, we did.

We don't think of modern video games as involving movement, unless they're explicitly designed that way like DDR is. But when you look at competitive gaming, and players' needs to customize rigs that shave those crucial fractions of a second off their reaction time, it becomes clear that video games are very much about movement. Given that the Konami folks were already experimenting with different controllers, it's not surprising that they recognized the need for, as the saying goes, a game where you use your feet.

Reading the fascinating Boss Fight Books entry on Breakout (Pilgrim in the Microworld), I was left wondering what it is about games like DDR and Guitar Hero that inspire people to practice the fake dance/instrument every bit as hard as they would a real dance/instrument. What do you think explains that draw? Like, why not just learn the guitar or master the moonwalk?

JF: Wow, that’s a great question. On the one hand, I think both Guitar Hero and DDR approximate the experience they’re supposed to be about, rather than replicate it. I’m not sure the Venn diagram of people who can clear “Through the Fire and Flames" on expert and people who can play the same song note-perfect on guitar have very much overlap. Similarly, people playing DDR at the highest competitive levels require a degree of conditioning most people will never reach, but I don’t think it can be called “dancing” in the strictest terms (this is a tension we actually spend a bit of time on in the book). I think for some, the accomplishment comes from the unforgiving and exacting nature of the scoring: you either hit the note within the timing window or you didn’t. The challenges and successes can be measured, which can be a comfort.

JD: As someone who plays a lot of Stardew Valley and yet cannot grow tomatoes worth a damn, I'd say that video games like DDR take the learning feedback loop, simplify it, and make it much more visible, responsive, and reliable. If you're practicing dancing or playing guitar by yourself, or even with a mentor, it can be hard to tell when you're making progress. DDR tells you immediately how close you've gotten to reaching your goal. And it doesn't care how silly you look, or what kind of face you made as you were working up a sweat; it's going to remain focused on whether or not you make contact with the right sensor at the right time. It's a more forgiving learning environment. In a way, the experience of playing something like DDR or Guitar Hero is the goal for a lot of experiments in educational technology over the last couple decades -- think of Khan Academy giving you a score for completing a lesson.

But also, to pick (respectfully) on your example: DDR isn't the moonwalk! If you were an average arcade-goer in the 1990s, the moonwalk was the signature move of an awe-inspiring pop star. Being told to "master the moonwalk" would have seemed like such a reach you probably wouldn't even have started trying. (Kind of like writing a book from scratch, honestly. Though it helps to have an awesome co-author.) DDR's take on dancing is simple enough that anyone can do it. It levels the playing field, and people can be inspired on that field even if they might not be on a more demanding one. I'm answering these questions soon enough after the Olympics that memes are still circulating about Australian breaker Raygun. You could say that DDR is a space where the Rayguns of the world can thrive. Is it the most technically excellent dancing you've ever seen? No, but it doesn't need to be.

Pick up Dance Dance Revolution in paperback and ebook format today.