How do I play DDR on my computer?

You can't. Well... you can't play Dance Dance Revolution. What you CAN play is Diet Diet Revolution '99, a Korean DDR 'clone' like all those Pac-Man and Tetris clones you've seen. It does the arrows, it does the timing, but you play with the keyboard and it lacks all the flashy graphics of the real DDR.

But more importantly: it's expandable. And that's where Rock Rock Devolution comes in, a set of songs you can add to Diet Diet Revolution so you can groove and move to the latest hardcore rock and roll vibes.

Mind you, getting Diet Diet up and running on your computer is no small feat. You better have guts. You better have patience. You better know what a WAV file is or you can go home crying to mommy right now. This is a basic install guide; but any problems you have beyond this, it's your own affair.

First of all, are you running Windows 98? No? I've heard Diet Diet only runs under 98, sooo... you can try, but good luck. It likely isn't going to fly under 95, but NT or 2000 might be viable. Linux junkles... too bad.

Because it's a Korean program, most pages dealing with it are in -- surprise! -- korean. The best english based page I've seen is at http://www.piru.com.br/ddr/pc.htm. If that link is bad, don't panic; I've gotten good results searching for "diet diet revolution" (with quotes) at Google and other search engines. (I won't mirror the program here, on chances that it may be mildly illegal.)

Unpack the Diet Diet Revolution ZIP file into a directory somewhere on your computer. C:\GAMES\DDR springs to mind. If you don't know how to do this task, then you're in for a bumpy ride... once unpacked, it's ready to go and is preconfigured to work with like 65 DDR songs! YEAH! Unfortunately, it doesn't come with any music whatsoever, so you'll be hitting the arrow keys in abject silence. Otherwise, the little 3.2 meg download would be 600 megs and extremely illegal.

If you're not planning to use any of the music it came with, now would be a great time to open DiskSet.dat in your DDR directory with Notepad and delete all the entries. Then go into the MSD folder and scrap everything there, too. That way you won't have these 'silent songs' clogging up your play list. (Most of these MSD scripts don't work with their respective songs, anyway; see section below if you want to use real DDR music.)

Download the ZIP files linked to those song buttons on the main page. You can add all of 'em or just selective ones. Unpack the ZIPs into your DDR directory; the files should drop into the appropriate subdirectories without hassle. Follow the directions in the provided README.

I'll warn, the directions get hairy. See, I'm not distributing the files WITH the digital recordings; that'd get me in jail. So you'll need either an official store-bought CD or a legal MP3 file to work from, and be able to make a WAV audio file off it. If you're used to encoding your own MP3s, though, it shouldn't be too bad. More details are in the READMEs.

If you have the official DDR soundtracks, MP3s, or can rip the music off the imported games, you're in luck. I can also help you add these classic beatbox tunes to your game.

Here's the problem... the MSD (arrow script) files that Diet Diet comes with... well, they suck. They generally don't sync up to the music very well and are totally unplayable. Take all the ones the game came with and throw them out the window (clean out DiskSet.dat while you're at it). You want THESE FILES -- that's a ZIP archive of 30 songs I've gotten to work perfectly, ranging from 1 foot difficulty to 6 foot difficulty. Not too shabby!

If you have the WAV file set up similar to how you set up Rock Rock Devolution WAV files and it still doesn't work, odds are you have an extended mix, alternate mix, or otherwise incompatable version of the song. You want the ones straight out of the game itself -- no funky extra note leadins, no outtros, just a roughly 1:30 minute song. Sorry, I can't help you obtain the music beyond that.

There are other programs out there that act like Dance Dance Revolution... but they're hard to find. If you're willing to do a web safari hunt, the names are Dazzle Dazzle Realization and CyberGroove. CyberGroove can import Diet Diet style files, so you can play Rock Rock Devolution on it. I haven't tried the former, and I can't find a link for the latter, so good luck.

What, you wanna do what I did? It's a lot of work... but VERY rewarding. Try opening an MSD file in a text editor. The structure's pretty simple; numbers represent the arrows and double-arrows (think 'numeric keyboard pad') with A and B as Up+Down and Left+Right respectively. Every character is a half beat. Two together are a full beat. 0 is a half beat pause.

Sure, it LOOKS overwhelming, but a lot of testing and patience will do it. The hard part is figuring out your BPM. You can search online for BPM lists that DJs use to mix songs, but these won't always be right -- and sometimes songs have a long intro that will mangle the BPM's accuracy. Songs with live drummers are notoriously screwy with their BPM; I had a lot of setbacks before I gave up completely on adding songs by Smash Mouth. (Remind me to send a nasty letter to their drummer!) Plus, if you go over about two minutes, DDR becomes an amazing memory hog...

Yet, it's still POSSIBLE, and it can be a lot of fun. ^_^ If you make any good rock songs, send me the MSD file! How about a little 8 foot amazing difficulty Metallica 'Creeping Death'? WOO! Rock on!

Scared off yet? Or are you ready to rock? Don't e-mail me asking for more help; this should be enough to get you going. Have fun!

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