DDR Pad 2025

Decided that I needed some more excersize and figured a good way to get motived was to pick back up some good ol’ DDR.

Picked up a the Deluxe Foam Pad from DDRPad.com and set out to play some DDR.

While I have a few PS2s dont actually have a hard copy of DDR nor have I moddded them to play from disk images (another project for another day).

So would have to settle on a PS2 emulator on my macbook air (pre M1). Had retroarch installed but quickly realized that none of the PS2 cores were available. Turns out that they dont support macOS. Fortunatly another PS2 emulator, PCSX2 does. So installed that.

With this and the DDR Extreme disk image and mat ready to go. Went to go boot it up and, the mat doesnt work…

Did some searching and needed to get a special program, Enjoyable to map the ddr mat presses as keystrokes to be picked up by the emulator. Great, got that installed and tried to set it up and nothing. Couldnt register any pad presses.

After some searching turns out the problem is quite obscure. The DDR mat operates usb at version 1.1. Not normally problem, except for the fact that macOS since Big Sur removed all non HID 1.1 support. So the only USB 1.1 devices that work are keyboards and mice. Would appear to be the end of the line and all hope is lost. Except that on the same forum there was little tidbit about the notion that if you had a USB 2.0+ hub in between the mat and macOS then it would translated up to that hubs USB version so macOS would allow more than just HID. I had a USB 3.0 hub and gave it a shot.. and it worked!

After quite a ride, finally playing some DDR! DDR itself runs well, but I suspect there is some input lag. Will see how it compares to native PS2 when I get that running.

One note about the hub, its a hub that has two outputs that can be switched between. Every time I fire it up I have to switch the output or the pad gets recongized as something else and then doesnt work. Very weird.

Update: after going through a ps2 hdd softmod, the input lag going through an emulator is extreme. Can easily play standard now where I was struggling to get steps on light before.