Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

19 Mar 2008, 9:35 a.m.

Getting Rid of Gimmicks and Hand Markers in Dance Dance Revolution

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2008 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Here's a tip on making DDR for the Wii much more fun.

By default, the game adds all these "gimmicks" (exploding arrows, bouncing and swiveling arrows, etc.) and makes you shake the nunchuck or Wii remote (Wiimote?) to hit certain markers. But the gimmicks just clutter up the dancing, and the Wii doesn't register those nunchuk and Wiimote shakes or button hits consistently. I got really frustrated.

So: at the song selection step, go to Options and turn off Gimmicks and Hand Markers. You'd think this would be in the general Options in the main menu, but it's not. And you have to do it anew for each DDR-playing session (every time you turn on the game, basically). But it makes the game feel much more like the arcade experience.