Although I’ve played DDR years ago on my friend’s Playstation (2?) and in the arcade at Dave & Buster’s, I considered myself a newbie when I got my own copy of the game to play on my Wii console. If you’re an expert, this post probably wouldn’t be helpful to you, but if you’d like to share your own tips, please feel free to do so in the comments section. I won’t repeat the tips that could be found on the dance pad, in the instruction manual, and in the first venue of Groove Circuit Mode.
- Konami recommended using bare feet and to avoid using “shoes or stocking feet”. When I played barefoot, it limited how long I could play because my feet eventually got sweaty and even though I tried to wipe them on the carpet, it eventually affected game play. I wasn’t sure if stocking was the same as socks so I didn’t take the chance in the beginning. Then one time I forgot to take off my socks and realized that I was fine. Sweat was no longer a problem.
- I had a lot of trouble beating the “boss” level of the second level of Groove Circuit Mode called Genesis Venue. No matter what, I could not win. Finally, I turned off the Hand mode and my score improved. I don’t know if it’s my incompetence but the hand gestures don’t seem reliably responsive, and thereby messing my score.
- To turn off Hand Gestures, go to the Options menu during the view that shows the songs.
- Be careful about where your feet are while in the menus. I was using the Wiimote to navigate so I wasn’t even aware of the dancepad’s controls. I kept having my foot on the left arrow, which is used to select the songs. Because of that, the song selector kept going and going, which made me think it was in some spin-the-wheel selector mode. Not that everyone is as silly as me.
- Since the hand gesture icons are diamond shaped instead of arrow-shaped, I had a hard time with the timing. I finally figured out how to do it correctly. The right and left points of the diamond need to line up with the horizontal line of the arrow, or think of the right and left points lining up with the arrow points. Once I figured that part out, hand gestures didn’t mess up my score as much.
- Think of parsing the step arrows like reading words out loud. When reading, it helps to glance ahead and to group words that go together. In DDR, try to look at the arrows before they reach the top, and group them based on some common patterns that will become obvious with some experience (e.g., ???? or up-right-up-right if the fonts don’t turn out) and prepare to be in position for them.