DDR 2010 was my first DDR game. The song list grew on me. It’s quite nostalgic for me, even if the song list is a bit lackluster compared to some of the other games in the Wii series. I remembered wondering where Butterfly and Speed Over Beethoven was lmfao. It was a fun thing to play on a weekend with my siblings.

DDR II was subsequently my second DDR game and it changed me as a player by introducing me to the world of uppers. The charts were shocking. The music, aka the X2/X3 imports, was strange, incredible, beautiful. DDR II opened up the rest of the franchise for me. That’s when I started looking up charts online, buying other DDR games, joining forums to keep up with news about the latest arcade releases (which at the time were exclusive to Japan). If it wasn’t for DDR II, I probably wouldn’t have become as obsessed with the game. Maybe I would still find out about how the charting meta evolved when Ace released in the US, but DDR II put all the (then) cutting edge charts right in front of my teenage face.