02.10.04 Dance Dance Revolution Clones (PC) I've used a number of DDR clones on the PC. Well actually I've used three of them. There aren't really that many others out there though. Which one to use is your choice, though you'll probably only want to chose between two of them. Delight Delight Reduplication This is the first DDR I played. A friend of mine had been playing it so I decided to get a copy of it as well and try it. One thing I've found is that the home page for this one is hard to find. In fact I couldn't find it to provide a link for this short review, which is just as good, it's pretty crappy really. It uses it's own format for the stepfiles, so it's not compatible with DWI files or SM files. This mean there is generally a limited selection of songs available for it. I did manage to find a couple dozen or so, some official, some not. Also I never could get the background images to display properly, though you may have better luck. Basically it means though I'm always playing against a black backdrop. Finally the arrows are absolutely HUGE in this. I couldn't get a screen shot to go, but trust me, they are probably twice as large as they need to be. The interface is generally bland anyway. You're much better off going with one of our next two options. A bit of an after thought from when I originally wrote this review. I have recently discovered one additional feature of Delight Delight that doesn't seem to be present in SM or DWI. It seems that BMS files (used by Delight Delight) have the ability to match sound effects to the arrows as you hit them. This can be different effects for different songs as well. So I suppose for the sake of playing some interesting BMS files, Delight Delight may be worth having. If you can find it. Dance With Intensity (DWI) (http://dwi.ddrei.com/) After putzing around with Delight Delight for a while, and after actually playing the arcade version of DDR, I decided I really wanted more official tracks for use on the PC simulator. It seems Delight Delight has a general lack of step files available, official or not. So I changed over to Dance With Intensity as my primary DDR simulator. Since both Stepmania and DWI support DWI step files, there is an excessive abundance of them available. Anyone who wants to hit the largest possible audience with their custom step files uses DWI. There seem to be a few less features supported by DWI files (background changes seem to be one of them) but for the most part they do the job well. Essentially as a plus to DWI, you won't have trouble finding tracks for it. It also has several other nice features. I really like the profile system. It lets you separate scores for different players or even just scores from pad and keyboard play. It's simple and easy to use as well. Additionally DWI support lyric files. While this doesn't really affect gameplay, it's a fun extra feature. Finally DWI just runs generally very well. These are probably the largest benefits of DWI over Stepmania. While I currently use SM primarily, I still keep DWI around in case I ever need it. Stepmania (SM) (http://www.stepmania.com/) While DWI and SM are fairly close to being equally useful, Stepmania probably wins by a short margin. The newer version of Stepmania (available to use but still in the alpha phase) may completely eliminate the need for DWI altogether. This review is primarily based on the last full release (3.0). Probably the largest advantage SM has over DWI is that in addition to support for SM files, SM supports DWI files. So potentially there are twice as many songs to download and try out. On the other hand, SM files still make up a considerably smaller percentage of the available files than DWI files do. Also, Stempania generally looks nicer. You could argue that both programs support skin files, so the look is arbitrary, but generally I find SM looks nicer and smoother overall. That smoothness is in the graphics however, the gameplay generally is not quite as smooth as with DWI, especially in the newer Alpha version. I tried using the alpha version for a short bit but turned back to my old 3.0 copy in the end. Even with nothing else running in the background it is still a bit jerky at times. The Alpha version did this even on the lowest graphics settings (which also made the game look ugly as shit). Stepmania does however support some other nice features. There are several additional gameplay modifiers than DWI doesn't have such as Tornado effects (arrows "swirl" as they rise). Also SM seems like it has better support for background movie files. One other drawback though is that SM takes forever to load, especially when you have an upwards fo 1500 songs like I do. Anyway, though it seems like I'm badmouthing it more than I'm supporting it, SM really probably is the better choice. If anything it lets you play SM files, and having more songs is more or less the top priority here. Honorable Mention - Flash Flash Revolution (http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/) I may as well make a short note of this little guy. Basically it's a flash version of DDR, though no official songs are available. The real benefit here is that you can play it anywhere you have access to the Internet. No installing of anything required. The downside is that the Arrows are kind of big and are all the same color, making them slightly more difficult. Also you'll need a fairly fast connection if you don't want to wait forever for the song to download. It will never compete with DWI or SM, but it does a decent job at what it's meant to do.