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Playstation 2 Two DDR Dance Pads Combo Review (continued)
More User Submitted Playstation 2 Two DDR Dance Pads Combo Reviews
Date: 2008-01-21
excellent product
Our dog had chewed up the original pad. These pads are almost identical and work perfectly. I bought two for my kids to play with friends. When it's cold and nasty outside this is one way to get moving!!
Date: 2008-01-16
Great product, for a greater price
This is a nice add-on to your PS2, is really cheap and it works really nice, i have a lot of fun playing with, i have been able to make my mon and even my dad to dance with this.
You can beat this for the price.
Date: 2008-01-01
Addicting
Dance Dance Revolution has become evening entertainment in our home. All of us- both parents, teenage son, preteen daughter, and preschool daughter, play together. You can adjust the difficulty for the individual even while playing two player, and it can be as competitive as you like...or not. We take turns dancing and laughing.
The ONLY downside to this game is the fact that these dance mats do great for the average user, but they do not do well with big feet. Size 12 is ok, but the size 14 flippers my son has constantly push more than one button and actually cause the buttons within the mat to move some. After he plays we smooth the mat out some and it is back to normal use. If a user is a bigfoot, you may want to look into other dance pad options to eliminate the frustration.
Date: 2008-01-01
Great for Modding
THE PROBLEM: EASILY WARPED FOAM
These were a great buy for us, the cheapest we could find on Amazon. However, after about 10 heavy uses, one of them started to become drastically less sensitive. The game became virtually unplayable with it because we felt we couldn't trust the pad.
After some searching on the Internet, we discovered what the problem probably was: the foam both on the inside and the bottom of the pad was becoming deformed because we were playing with them on the bare carpet. I discovered this by going to the first site returned by the google search "how to fix ddr pad". It explains the structure of the pad and what happens to the foam.
THE SOLUTION: MOD THE PAD
I wanted to salvage the pad so I looked up how to use the original pad to make my own, high quality, superior pad.
First, I had to fix the foam. I accessed the foame by cutting off the black borders on the left, bottom, and right sides of the pad as shown on the site above. I then straightened out the sensor layers and pulled the lumps out of the foam. The foam required backing tape to fix. I had to make folds and tape them. The important part was that I made sure the sensors didn't have bunched up lumps blocking the sensors (as shown in the site above).
Next, I had to keep this foam problem from happening again. I did this by sandwiching the pad in plywood as shown in the first site of the google search "halo 3 ddr pad". Basically, I needed each pad to have a thick base plywood for support on the bottom and a thin, more sensitive plywood for covering on the top. The bottom layer keeps the pad from getting squished around in the carpet. The top layer keeps your feet from scrunching the pad against the bottom layer.
I made my bottom layers out of two 37"x32" cuts of 1/2" plywood. I made the top layers out of two 31"x31" cuts of 1/8" plywood. The people at Home Depot made the cuts for me out of boards that costed $16 and $7, respectively.
After placing each pad on their bases, I discovered lumps in one of them. These lumps came from the black bottom foam of the pad. I cut the lumps out with scissors. This way the whole pad surface was level and smooth on the board. This is important because otherwise, when you step on the top layer, the step button with the lump under it will be pressed, causing annoying things like the up arrow constantly changing the selection on the main menu.
Once both pads were fixed (all sensor layers straightened, white middle foam straightened/taped, black bottom foam lumps cut out), I taped them to the thick bottom plywood with clear packing tape. Then, when we play, I throw the top, thin plywood on top of the square part of the pad. Since we play the game a lot, we know where the arrows are. However, I drew a circle in the middle so we can quickly reposition ourselves when we get off-center.
ADVICE: MOD BEFORE YOU USE THEM
I don't know for sure, but I probably could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I had bought the plywood right away after receiving these in the mail. Those 10 heavy uses really seemed to have messed them up. If I'd modded them right away, I might not have had to cut them open and fix them. So I suggest trying that: just get the plywood and stick the pads on and under it. They might work and last without internal modification.
CONCLUSION
These pads are great. For about $20 plus some packing tape and about $23 for plywood, you can have two pads that probably rival the quality of metal pads (which cost a minimum of $150). You can even use your shoes on them since they will be protected by plywood (except for the start/select buttons, on which you would need to be careful). Since modding them, their sensitivity has been excellent.
But you have to mod them. They won't last nor be anywhere near as sensitive or durable if you use them on the carpet.
Date: 2007-12-29
Excellent Dance Pads!!
These pads are excellent! Super sensitive, very durable. An exceptional deal for two dance pads.
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