Take Your Pick: Dance Dance Revolution or Pump it Up?

Two of the most popular dancing arcade game series make up this "Take Your Pick"- Konami's Dance Dance Revolution series and Andamiro's Pump it Up. It is Japan's Konami vs. Korea Republic's Andamiro in the dancing game realm. Which is better? I invite my loyal blog readers to offer their thoughts. Those of you who don't have two left feet are invited to choose between these two dancing game giants! :)

--- Take Your Pick: Dance Dance Revolution or Pump it Up? ---

Both Dance Dance Revolution and Pump it Up are two games with an exceptional list of songs to dance to. These are either high-energy songs or some dance-worthy remixes of real songs. The songs are divided by difficulty. Some songs are easier to dance to with not as many moves. The harder songs require more movements. If you are not a very good dancer or not very good playing, it is best you start with some of the easier songs before attempting to dance to some of the harder songs.

The goal of both games is to watch the screen and step on the pads as the arrows approach the top of the screen. Try to land each movement at the right time to score the most points. You may see a string of arrows. That means you need to tap on that pad and hold for the full duration. Chain together many Perfect or OK moves to rack up the points and get the highest rank!

There are two stages for both games with the same number of pads to step on. This allows either for one-on-one dance battles or even (and I've seen this happen before) one player using both stages for special challenges.

It is probably a good idea to play this game with some appropriate footwear. So if you wear something that comes off easily (like flip-flop/thong sandals, clogs, mules, etc), or if you're wearing something not suited for sudden dance movements; it is best to take off your shoes before playing either game.

Here is a look at both games at a glance. If you can't view Flash media, click on the link to each video to see the video on YouTube. Thanks to the channels that allowed these videos to be embedded.

Dance Dance Revolution Series.

The Dance Dance Revolution series made its debut to the world in November 1998. A standard DDR stage consists of four pressure pads with arrows pointing up, down, left, and right. A number of DDR games for both arcade and home would be released through the life of the franchise.

Here is a demonstration of DDR:

^ "DDR Arcade - Exotic Ethnic - Heavy" - YouTube

Here is another sample of DDR. This time, DDR Extreme. This is an example of what you see on screen. By the way, this song sounds awesome:

^ DDR Extreme - White Lovers [SP Heavy] - YouTube

Pump it Up Series.

The direct challenger to Dance Dance Revolution is Korea's Pump it Up series. The first PIU debuted in 1999 for PC and arcade. It was made by Nexcade and published by Korea's Andamiro. Pump it Up is played on a stage with diagonal directions. Pads point northwest, northeast, southeast, and southwest. There is even a center stage pad to touch.

Here is a demonstration of PIU:

^ "Pump It Up Fiesta EX 2011 - TX Cabinet - BMIGaming - Andamiro - Remix 3 Final"

This video is an on-screen demonstration of Pump it Up:

^ "[Pump it Up Fiesta] Kara - Wanna"


Both games deliver some great music to dance to as well as unique challenges to keep the dancing interesting.

--- Dance Dance Revolution vs. Pump it Up: My Thoughts ---

So which arcade dancing game series is better?

Why the "Dance Dance Revolution" Series?

The Dance Dance Revolution series is a very fun dancing game series for the most part. Even if you are no kind of dancing star (like my lack of dancing talent), at least this is a series you can enjoy when at the arcades or playing home versions of the DDR franchise. I would say it's more of a dancing game everyone can enjoy without needing to feel like some sort of established dancing ace to play the game to begin with.

Why the "Pump it Up" Series?

Reading Wikipedia in preparing this post, I read that Pump it Up better suits more technical dancers. Mostly your breakdancing types would enjoy this game more than someone who just casually dances. So I probably would make that your primary reason to love this franchise over DDR. I have had only so limited experience playing "Pump it Up."


It's tough to choose one, but if going on experience alone, I favor Dance Dance Revolution on experience alone. That's not to that that Pump it Up is a bad game or a bad series, but I am just more familiar with (and a bit more comfortable with) DDR than PIU.





For more information on either or both series, have a look at these Wikipedia pages:
• Dance Dance Revolution - Wikipedia
• Pump it Up - Wikipedia

So which do you like better? Thank you for reading!

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