DDR

[PinballZooner]

Hi everyone!

I was wondering what the going rate for an older DDR arcade is (DDR Extreme with the 2 dance pads and rails)? I know they are around 11k new from cineplex.

Thanks!

 

[ZoomZoomBoomBoom]

Prices seem to vary wildly. I know 2 DDR's sold for around $1K at the last Player 1 auction last year.

 

[Corrie]

Prices seem to vary wildly. I know 2 DDR's sold for around $1K at the last Player 1 auction last year.

That's super low, they may have been US X cabinets which are not great to say the least.

I paid $2200 for my DDR Korean 1st gen cabinet back in 2021. Since then prices have gone up a lot. If you get a first gen cab for under $4k I'd say you did well. (depending on condition of course)

The cabs that are 11k are most likely the second gen cabs. (possibly 1st gen HD cabs) Send the link for that, I'd like to see it.

If you want the second newest gen, a white cab it's going to cost around $12k usd and you can only import them from the US, you won't find one in Canada since they had an exclusive deal with Dave n Busters.
If you can link me to the $11k cabs from Cineplex I can give you more info on if they're worth it.

Types of DDR Cabinets and PCBs

The following is a list of types of DDR cabinets and PCBs. It’s probably not exhaustive but it should cover the majority of hardware you’ll find in the wild. Cabinets Generation 1 Generation 1 cabinets can be identified by their 29” CRT display and marquee that sits atop the base with two

jeffreyatw.com

Here's more info on the types of DDR cabs. All I will say is that any cab can be made good but the american raw thrills cabs and the "crapo cab" are almost unsalvageable. The pads are made of wood and nowhere near the quality of the legit cabs. Raw Thrills is like the joke of the DDR community, so avoid that machine unless you want to put in a lot of hours and money getting it in a playable state.

EDIT: I just asked around and heard the cabs that went for $1k last year were first gen korean cabs. Apparently auction fees scared people off and the price never went up. $1k is very low so do not expect to get that price without being very patient and getting lucky.

 

[PinballZooner]

That's super low, they may have been US X cabinets which are not great to say the least.

I paid $2200 for my DDR Korean 1st gen cabinet back in 2021. Since then prices have gone up a lot. If you get a first gen cab for under $4k I'd say you did well. (depending on condition of course)

The cabs that are 11k are most likely the second gen cabs. (possibly 1st gen HD cabs) Send the link for that, I'd like to see it.

If you want the second newest gen, a white cab it's going to cost around $12k usd and you can only import them from the US, you won't find one in Canada since they had an exclusive deal with Dave n Busters.
If you can link me to the $11k cabs from Cineplex I can give you more info on if they're worth it.

Types of DDR Cabinets and PCBs

The following is a list of types of DDR cabinets and PCBs. It’s probably not exhaustive but it should cover the majority of hardware you’ll find in the wild. Cabinets Generation 1 Generation 1 cabinets can be identified by their 29” CRT display and marquee that sits atop the base with two

jeffreyatw.com

Here's more info on the types of DDR cabs. All I will say is that any cab can be made good but the american raw thrills cabs and the "crapo cab" are almost unsalvageable. The pads are made of wood and nowhere near the quality of the legit cabs. Raw Thrills is like the joke of the DDR community, so avoid that machine unless you want to put in a lot of hours and money getting it in a playable state.

EDIT: I just asked around and heard the cabs that went for $1k last year were first gen korean cabs. Apparently auction fees scared people off and the price never went up. $1k is very low so do not expect to get that price without being very patient and getting lucky.

Awesome! Thanks for the information. I have a 1st gen DDR korean cab that I was perhaps looking to part with to put towards a newer gen cab. This post helped a lot. Appreciate it.

 

[Corrie]

Awesome! Thanks for the information. I have a 1st gen DDR korean cab that I was perhaps looking to part with to put towards a newer gen cab. This post helped a lot. Appreciate it.

Glad I could help. If you are looking to sell your 1st gen cab and get a newer one you will open up your options a lot by being willing to ship from the states or even asia. The availability of cabs in Canada beyond 1st gen is really limited.

You can also put a PC in your 1st gen cab and play data of the newest version of DDR. That's what most of us end up doing,

 

[PinballZooner]

Glad I could help. If you are looking to sell your 1st gen cab and get a newer one you will open up your options a lot by being willing to ship from the states or even asia. The availability of cabs in Canada beyond 1st gen is really limited.

You can also put a PC in your 1st gen cab and play data of the newest version of DDR. That's what most of us end up doing,

Interesting! Is it tough to put the PC in the 1st gen cab? How does it work in terms of all the connections etc?

 

[Corrie]

Interesting! Is it tough to put the PC in the 1st gen cab? How does it work in terms of all the connections etc?

It's fairly easy but requires a few different pieces of hardware. For the I/O the easiest to obtain/cheapest is a j-pac from ultimarc that converts the jamma output to USB.
https://www.ultimarc.com/control-interfaces/j-pac-en/j-pac-jamma-interface/

If you want the cabinet lights to work you can get a LIT board to handle the lighting. (You also need to bridge a few pins on the pad I/O connections to get the pads working, a LIT board will do this for you but otherwise it's just a paperclip or something else to bridge two pins)
https://dinsfire.com/projects/lit-board/

If you still have the CRT monitor in your machine you will need a way to output a signal it can display. There are some video cards out there that can do a 15khz RGB signal, or you can try the CRT emudriver which are drivers that allow some older ATI video cards to output 15khz.
The other option that most people go with is to replace the CRT with an LCD monitor, then you'll have no worries about signal but you won't be able to run the original 573 without some sort of signal converter.

Once you get that all set up then you have lots of options for software. You can run stepmania which is an open source DDR engine. You can load it up with all of the official songs and there are thousands of custom made song packs for it. The DDR clone "In The Groove" was made on a branch of Stepmania and it has a lot of benefits over the official software such as >60 FPS support and the ability to customize just about everything about it.

There's also a version of Stepmania called Beware's Extreme which is a very faithful clone of the DDR Extreme UI. You can then load it with a bunch of newer/custom songs.

Finally there is cracked data. This is the official software that's run on DDR cabinets. You can get data for any version all the way up to the newest which is called A3. There is also an omnimix out there that runs on the A20+ software and has literally every official song ever made for DDR included in it. There are even several private servers out there so you can access all of the online features and save your user profile/scores like you would in the arcade. There's also programs that emulate the eamuse servers so you can emulate a server locally.

It sounds like a lot but it's not hard. The worst part will be getting a nice looking image on the CRT if you still have that in your cabinet.
You also don't need a very powerful PC to run most of these options. I used to run mine on a dell optiplex 780.

 

[PinballZooner]

It's fairly easy but requires a few different pieces of hardware. For the I/O the easiest to obtain/cheapest is a j-pac from ultimarc that converts the jamma output to USB.
https://www.ultimarc.com/control-interfaces/j-pac-en/j-pac-jamma-interface/

If you want the cabinet lights to work you can get a LIT board to handle the lighting. (You also need to bridge a few pins on the pad I/O connections to get the pads working, a LIT board will do this for you but otherwise it's just a paperclip or something else to bridge two pins)
https://dinsfire.com/projects/lit-board/

If you still have the CRT monitor in your machine you will need a way to output a signal it can display. There are some video cards out there that can do a 15khz RGB signal, or you can try the CRT emudriver which are drivers that allow some older ATI video cards to output 15khz.
The other option that most people go with is to replace the CRT with an LCD monitor, then you'll have no worries about signal but you won't be able to run the original 573 without some sort of signal converter.

Once you get that all set up then you have lots of options for software. You can run stepmania which is an open source DDR engine. You can load it up with all of the official songs and there are thousands of custom made song packs for it. The DDR clone "In The Groove" was made on a branch of Stepmania and it has a lot of benefits over the official software such as >60 FPS support and the ability to customize just about everything about it.

There's also a version of Stepmania called Beware's Extreme which is a very faithful clone of the DDR Extreme UI. You can then load it with a bunch of newer/custom songs.

Finally there is cracked data. This is the official software that's run on DDR cabinets. You can get data for any version all the way up to the newest which is called A3. There is also an omnimix out there that runs on the A20+ software and has literally every official song ever made for DDR included in it. There are even several private servers out there so you can access all of the online features and save your user profile/scores like you would in the arcade. There's also programs that emulate the eamuse servers so you can emulate a server locally.

It sounds like a lot but it's not hard. The worst part will be getting a nice looking image on the CRT if you still have that in your cabinet.
You also don't need a very powerful PC to run most of these options. I used to run mine on a dell optiplex 780.

Oh wow! Thanks again for the information. Do you fly out to Calgary and provide in person assistance? Ha ha

 

[Corrie]

Oh wow! Thanks again for the information. Do you fly out to Calgary and provide in person assistance? Ha ha

lol, that would be fun if I could!

If you do decide to convert to PC just let me know if you have any questions. There should be existing guides out there on youtube and some other places too that I can help find.