DDRUK
Encyclopedia
DDR:UK is a United Kingdom
-specific Dance Dance Revolution
(DDR), Dancing Stage (DS), and music gaming community on the internet. Its main components are the website and forums, also collectively known as "DDR:UK". Although the community is mainly focused on the United Kingdom, members from all around the world are welcomed, with a large portion of the userbase being located in the United States of America, and smaller groups from Japan
, Europe
and Central America
. Likewise, the community offers resources not just for players of Dance Dance Revolution, but other games in Konami
's Bemani
series as well as Pump It Up
and In the Groove
. In addition to the website, the DDR:UK community provides IRC servers for public use, organises events and tournaments for music game players, and even has a hand in producing its own arcade game.
feature for paying members. The website also regularly offers up opinion polls for its members to vote in, which deal with everything from opinions of upcoming releases to polling for statistics of connection speed and event attendance.
The section DDR:UK is most well known for outside of the United Kingdom is the simfile downloads archive. So-called "bumper packs" contain Dance Dance Revolution "stepfiles" that allow Dance Dance Revolution songs to be played on simulators such as Dance With Intensity and StepMania
. The archive is notable for two reasons. The first reason is that the "packs" are the most accurate set of simfiles available, with a dedicated staff continually updating the archives to ensure accuracy in steps, music, and graphics. The second reason is that the archive is the most comprehensive, offering downloads of songpacks for obscure Dance Dance Revolution games which were never released outside of Japan or which are very hard to find. A good example of this is the re-release of Dancing Stage, of which only around five working machines are in existence. Without the DDR:UK simfile archive, the eventual decommissioning of the last machine would mean that the unique songs it contained are lost forever.
and displayed them on their website. Eventually the site went down and Lawrence from DDRuk requested a step chart generator. Created by Psyko, the step chart generator now can accept user created step files, to create a step chart with.
On 23 January 2003, DDR:UK saw its first spot in the lime light when an old staff member of the website, Zell_KFF, organised a small section in the British Newspaper The Daily Mirror
. We were put under the "Site of the Day" in "Amyi" area. On 13 November 2003, DDR:UK once again saw itself on TV Sky (free channel), on a show called "Gamerweb", where DDR:UK member Slammer gave a review on the, at current, game "Dancing Stage Fever" for the Playstation 2. A screen shot can be found here Sky and a few radio stations then came to the European Championships which were held in Namco Station, Westminster, London. Sky was there filming for the TV show Gamesville
while the BBC were there taking notes for a news article. The show is no longer shown on SkyTV, however permission to upload the video to DDRUK is still being sought after. On 3 February 2004, BBC
produced the news article on the BBC
News Website. On 5 February 2004, Colin Barker aka Myst was then invited to go on to BBC Radio 5 Live
, which was then broadcast to the UK at 11pm GMT. The audio from the radio show can be downloaded here. On 7 February 2004, The Times
, another British newspaper, then produced an article, for which the interview was taken just before Colin went to the BBC Radio 5 Live
interview, this article was then put in the newspaper. On 20 April 2007, DDRUK helped with the piece on The Paul O'Grady Show
, which featured Kyle Morris on a Dancing Stage SuperNOVA. The show then went on to explain that more information could be found from their website.
In the early hours of the 18th of August 2006, the events equipment store was broken into and burgled. DDRUK prepared a press release, that contained details of what was stolen and how it affected the website. This was then distributed amongst the different media on the internet and newspapers, in which provoked a large Donation Drive to help DDRUK back onto its feet. The information was published on a number of websites and media. The coverage was successful in gaining back enough equipment to be able to attend future events, with the different communities contributing. However none of the stolen equipment was ever recovered.
DDR:UK is a regular, official, exhibit at the London MCM Expo
, hosting two competitions for players and visitors to enter. There are prizes involved for the winners, although many simply enter for the fun of competing. The London MCM Expo
happens twice a year in May and October, and held the DDR:UK UK Championships for the last two years. In the BBC Three
documentary "Lord of the Dance Machine", it stated that these championships allowed the UK Champion to enter into the World Championships. DDR:UK also attends IMAF, where they run the Games Room area. The event this year is being held in County Hall, Westminster, London, UK.
DDR:UK run large scale games rooms at events such as Anime Conventions. The DanceDX machine made its first appearance at a UK anime festival called Tokonatsu in 2004 and again in 2005 and 2006, this was also the first UK anime convention / festival to have an arcade dance machine present. From this DDR:UK were asked to then run its first games room event at AyaCon in 2005, this was a success however the location of the games room compared to the rest of the convention meant that it was difficult to find. The last large scale anime event DDR:UK attended was AmeCon
, where we ran a much larger games room in the central building. This was a huge success also, with consoles and games equipment from all ages, as well as the DanceDX machine making an appearance. In November 2006 DDR:UK attended was Auchinawa, an anime convention and Japanese Culture event which ran in Glasgow.
Officially sanctioned website "meets" regularly take place through the year. Members typically organise meetings amongst themselves and attend for a variety of activities, typically a stint at a video-game arcade followed by food or, for the older members, a night in a pub. Members can often be spotted wearing customised t-shirts sold by the website.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
-specific Dance Dance Revolution
Dance Dance Revolution
Dance Dance Revolution, abbreviated DDR, and previously known as Dancing Stage in Europe and Australasia, is a music video game series produced by Konami. Introduced in Japan in 1998 as part of the Bemani series, and released in North America and Europe in 1999, Dance Dance Revolution is the...
(DDR), Dancing Stage (DS), and music gaming community on the internet. Its main components are the website and forums, also collectively known as "DDR:UK". Although the community is mainly focused on the United Kingdom, members from all around the world are welcomed, with a large portion of the userbase being located in the United States of America, and smaller groups from Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
. Likewise, the community offers resources not just for players of Dance Dance Revolution, but other games in Konami
Konami
is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...
's Bemani
Bemani
is Konami's music video game division. Originally named the Games & Music Division, or simply G.M.D., it changed its name in honor of its first and most successful game, Beatmania, and expanded into other music-based games.-Bemani video games:...
series as well as Pump It Up
Pump It Up
Pump It Up, commonly abbreviated as PIU or shortened to just Pump, is a music video game series currently developed by Nexcade and published by Andamiro, a Korean arcade game producer. The game is typically played on a dance pad with five arrow panels: up-left, up-right, bottom-left, bottom-right,...
and In the Groove
In the Groove (game)
In the Groove is the first game in the In the Groove franchise, published and developed by Roxor Games, and first released in video arcades around August 30, 2004.-Gameplay:...
. In addition to the website, the DDR:UK community provides IRC servers for public use, organises events and tournaments for music game players, and even has a hand in producing its own arcade game.
Website
The DDR:UK website is home to over 145,000 members from all around the globe. The main website displays prominent news items, relaying items of interest to the community on the subject of topics from new music game releases to upcoming DDR:UK events. The website also features a commercially available blogBlog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
feature for paying members. The website also regularly offers up opinion polls for its members to vote in, which deal with everything from opinions of upcoming releases to polling for statistics of connection speed and event attendance.
The section DDR:UK is most well known for outside of the United Kingdom is the simfile downloads archive. So-called "bumper packs" contain Dance Dance Revolution "stepfiles" that allow Dance Dance Revolution songs to be played on simulators such as Dance With Intensity and StepMania
StepMania
StepMania is an open source and cross-platform rhythm video game and engine. It was originally developed as a simulator of Konami's arcade game series Dance Dance Revolution, and has since evolved into an extensible rhythm game engine capable of supporting a wide variety of rhythm-based game types...
. The archive is notable for two reasons. The first reason is that the "packs" are the most accurate set of simfiles available, with a dedicated staff continually updating the archives to ensure accuracy in steps, music, and graphics. The second reason is that the archive is the most comprehensive, offering downloads of songpacks for obscure Dance Dance Revolution games which were never released outside of Japan or which are very hard to find. A good example of this is the re-release of Dancing Stage, of which only around five working machines are in existence. Without the DDR:UK simfile archive, the eventual decommissioning of the last machine would mean that the unique songs it contained are lost forever.
Step Chart Generator
An extra feature of the website includes the Step Chart Generator. This is a simple script which allows the members of the site to view step charts of songs that they select. A step chart is a graphic that shows where the arrows will appear if the song was played on a dance machine, on a single page from top to bottom, left to right view. The idea for the step chart came from an older website called "ZXY" which created step charts from the arcade releases of Dance Dance RevolutionDance Dance Revolution
Dance Dance Revolution, abbreviated DDR, and previously known as Dancing Stage in Europe and Australasia, is a music video game series produced by Konami. Introduced in Japan in 1998 as part of the Bemani series, and released in North America and Europe in 1999, Dance Dance Revolution is the...
and displayed them on their website. Eventually the site went down and Lawrence from DDRuk requested a step chart generator. Created by Psyko, the step chart generator now can accept user created step files, to create a step chart with.
History
DDR:UK was first thought up in September 2002 by four people currently known on the website as "The Core Four". These people are GalFord, Lawrence, Cellexe and Myst. The domain "ddruk.com" was obtained on the 9th of September 2002, and then configured to point to the web server which DDR:UK was to be hosted on. During the next few days DDR:UK was written up from scratch using a standard PHP and MySQL system. The final parts to the system were put in place on the 11th of September 2002, with the first user being inserted into the database Thursday the 12th of September 2002 at 00:27:52 GMT.On 23 January 2003, DDR:UK saw its first spot in the lime light when an old staff member of the website, Zell_KFF, organised a small section in the British Newspaper The Daily Mirror
The Daily Mirror
The Daily Mirror is a British national daily tabloid newspaper which was founded in 1903. Twice in its history, from 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was changed to read simply The Mirror, which is how the paper is often referred to in popular parlance. It had an...
. We were put under the "Site of the Day" in "Amyi" area. On 13 November 2003, DDR:UK once again saw itself on TV Sky (free channel), on a show called "Gamerweb", where DDR:UK member Slammer gave a review on the, at current, game "Dancing Stage Fever" for the Playstation 2. A screen shot can be found here Sky and a few radio stations then came to the European Championships which were held in Namco Station, Westminster, London. Sky was there filming for the TV show Gamesville
Gamesville
Gamesville is a casual gaming portal founded in 1995 in Boston, Massachusetts by Steven Kane, Stuart Roseman and John Furse. Gamesville was acquired in 1999 by Web portal Lycos for $232 million in stock...
while the BBC were there taking notes for a news article. The show is no longer shown on SkyTV, however permission to upload the video to DDRUK is still being sought after. On 3 February 2004, BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
produced the news article on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
News Website. On 5 February 2004, Colin Barker aka Myst was then invited to go on to BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live is the BBC's national radio service that specialises in live BBC News, phone-ins, and sports commentaries...
, which was then broadcast to the UK at 11pm GMT. The audio from the radio show can be downloaded here. On 7 February 2004, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, another British newspaper, then produced an article, for which the interview was taken just before Colin went to the BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live is the BBC's national radio service that specialises in live BBC News, phone-ins, and sports commentaries...
interview, this article was then put in the newspaper. On 20 April 2007, DDRUK helped with the piece on The Paul O'Grady Show
The Paul O'Grady Show
The Paul O'Grady Show was a BAFTA award-winning British comedy chat show hosted by Birkenhead-born comedian Paul O'Grady. The format was originally devised by Granada Television and was broadcast on ITV before moving to Channel 4...
, which featured Kyle Morris on a Dancing Stage SuperNOVA. The show then went on to explain that more information could be found from their website.
In the early hours of the 18th of August 2006, the events equipment store was broken into and burgled. DDRUK prepared a press release, that contained details of what was stolen and how it affected the website. This was then distributed amongst the different media on the internet and newspapers, in which provoked a large Donation Drive to help DDRUK back onto its feet. The information was published on a number of websites and media. The coverage was successful in gaining back enough equipment to be able to attend future events, with the different communities contributing. However none of the stolen equipment was ever recovered.
Events
DDR:UK is a regular visitor to many different events around the United Kingdom and Ireland. DDR:UK has also hosted tournaments such as the "DDR:UK UK Championships", "Burning The Floor" (named for the Dance Dance Revolution song) and "DDR:UK Xmas 2K4". The events are advertised on the page and typically have a high attendance rate, both of participants and spectators. Events may be added to the website's event calendar. From here, members may flag themselves as attending an event, allowing for automatic attendance sheets to be generated. Event organisers can use the calendar therefore to book restaurant seats or simply get an idea of the numbers that will be attending an event.DDR:UK is a regular, official, exhibit at the London MCM Expo
London MCM Expo
The London MCM Expo is a multi-genre fan convention held in the London Borough of Newham twice yearly, usually on the last weekend in May and October...
, hosting two competitions for players and visitors to enter. There are prizes involved for the winners, although many simply enter for the fun of competing. The London MCM Expo
London MCM Expo
The London MCM Expo is a multi-genre fan convention held in the London Borough of Newham twice yearly, usually on the last weekend in May and October...
happens twice a year in May and October, and held the DDR:UK UK Championships for the last two years. In the BBC Three
BBC Three
BBC Three is a television network from the BBC broadcasting via digital cable, terrestrial, IPTV and satellite platforms. The channel's target audience includes those in the 16-34 year old age group, and has the purpose of providing "innovative" content to younger audiences, focusing on new talent...
documentary "Lord of the Dance Machine", it stated that these championships allowed the UK Champion to enter into the World Championships. DDR:UK also attends IMAF, where they run the Games Room area. The event this year is being held in County Hall, Westminster, London, UK.
DDR:UK run large scale games rooms at events such as Anime Conventions. The DanceDX machine made its first appearance at a UK anime festival called Tokonatsu in 2004 and again in 2005 and 2006, this was also the first UK anime convention / festival to have an arcade dance machine present. From this DDR:UK were asked to then run its first games room event at AyaCon in 2005, this was a success however the location of the games room compared to the rest of the convention meant that it was difficult to find. The last large scale anime event DDR:UK attended was AmeCon
AmeCon
AmeCon is an anime convention based in Leicester, United Kingdom, typically of three days in length, and is one of the largest anime conventions in the United Kingdom. The convention was formed after several committee members of the Leicester Anime and Manga Club decided to run a small,...
, where we ran a much larger games room in the central building. This was a huge success also, with consoles and games equipment from all ages, as well as the DanceDX machine making an appearance. In November 2006 DDR:UK attended was Auchinawa, an anime convention and Japanese Culture event which ran in Glasgow.
Officially sanctioned website "meets" regularly take place through the year. Members typically organise meetings amongst themselves and attend for a variety of activities, typically a stint at a video-game arcade followed by food or, for the older members, a night in a pub. Members can often be spotted wearing customised t-shirts sold by the website.