Price check on a DDR Solo

driph

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Hey all, looking to pick up a Dance Dance Revolution machine for the new house, and I'm having trouble finding consistent and recent pricing data.

I'm not too concerned about the particular model, but the smaller footprint of the Solo (single player style) might be the best bet for the home arcade, although from what I've read the simple pads on those things aren't nearly as good as the pads on the full-size double machines.

Are any of the older DDR or knockoff games a good value these days?
 
It is hard to find consistent pricing on big stuff because so many locations are going out of business and home buyers don't buy deluxe games. Last auction I went to had big stuff like that going in the $50 to $150 range.

If I was going to pick a dancing title I would go with a 42" Pump it Up. The larger screen makes it easier to play and the button layout on Pump is more consistent to natural movement than the DDR layout is.

I would go ahead and get a twin unit, regardless of title. These sort of games are best with two players and the solo units miss out on the modes where one player runs over both sets of pads. Plus, bigger seems to equal cheaper in today's market of closing operators and home buyers looking for smaller stuff.
 
i have a ddr solo, paid 900.00 for it at st. louis super auctions 4 years ago. i have had zero problems with it and my daughter loves it. ed
 
For those of you with solos, do you have the basic version with the pad that lays on the floor, or the one that has a bar and a platform for the pad? Any difference in how it feels to play on compared to a regular full-sized ddr setup?
 
I bought a DDR solo for $275 and sold it for $800. It probably was one of the best solo cabinet I've seen in a long time, but it went to a friend; so I don't feel bad. Had the deluxe stage (added pad lights and bar), great cabinet condition, and running 4th; so it included the flash card. I also had a Korean doubles, which I bought for $275 and sold for around $500 or so; since it was a bit of a project. Pricing can vary on Solo depending what mix is on it. The "best" version to find is a 4th solo, since 4th and 4th Plus use the flash card; which is needed to install doubles versions from 3rd - 8th. I believe all of the other mixes don't use the flash card.

The solo pads only have two sensors in the middle of the arrows, while doubles have four around the outer edge of the arrow. The doubles pads will be more responsive, but I don't think most people would notice. They don't really feel any different playing on a solo or doubles. They're both steal, and heavy.

If you're just looking to get one and save on space, a solo is fine. Although, a doubles is nice if you have the room, because of the two player aspect. Also, with doubles, you will be able to run more mixes; with solo it's limited, especially depending if you have the flash card or not. Finding a new flash card to add is a pain, since you have to use a specific one; and they don't pop up all that often, plus they're expensive when they do.

As far as pricing, for a Solo running non 4th, I'd pay around $600 - 700 for a good condition one. Solo running 4th or 4th plus, you're looking at $800 - $1000 on it. For a doubles, I would stay away from Korean ones and the namco cabinets. A good condition US or Japanese cabinet running any mix (8th aka Extreme might run a bit more, since it was the last version to run on the 573 hardware) will run around $1200 - $2000. It really depends on condition, cabinet type, mix, and hardware (memory slot or not).

I wouldn't take my prices as 100% truth, since those are just the range off the top of my head on some that I've seen recently; and from owning and selling a Solo and doubles.

I know someone selling a doubles extreme, japanese cabinet and great condition. Plays great, and really no problems with it. He wants $3500, and it's really overpriced. I think the $2000-ish area is where they start to max out right now. That's Japanese, running Extreme, memory card slots, and no problems game wise and cabinet in decent condition. If it doesn't have those things, start decreasing the price from there.
 
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Thanks animesuperj, that really helps!

Out of curiosity, do you currently have a dance cabinet now?

I've been looking into Stepmania, and it seems like a great alternative for a conversion down the road. I know lots of folks have converted doubles machines over (or PIU/ITG cabs), and there's even specific hardware available to make that process simple. The solos are just different enough that converting one to Stepmania (with functioning lights, etc) would be a little bit more of a pain.
 
I don't have any machines anymore. I've owned a PIU Exceed, PIU Exceed 2, DDR Doubles and DDR Solo. Down to only Drummania and Keyboardmania now.

The Stepmania is a good option if you want a lot of song variety. Although, you can run into a ton of issues with it. There's two versions: OpenITG and Stepmania. oITG is what I was trying to setup for my Pump cabinet, when I had it. I had it basically running, but the monitor was giving me problems and finding parts is a pain for them.

I don't know that Stepmania supports 5-panel mode, which is needed for Pump. oITG will, but it's not as "supported" as 4-panel; because not that many people run it. There's also no a ton of songs currently available for 5-panel, unless you find packs of the official mixes; which are out there. Stepmania has a ton of songs avialable. People are still making new ones, and there are communities based around just that stuff (dance games/stepmania/etc...). There is a device that's been made, which I think might have been sold on this board as well; called the "minimaid". It interfaces DDR to a PC, so you can just standard jamma connections and the light connections to run on the DDR cabinet from the PC.

My problem with going open source is in general, people make horrible charts. They're off-sync and in general are just bad to play. You have to weed through tons of crap to find good ones, and deal with machine offsets on the timing.

Going with just a standard mix for DDR is a lot easier, but you don't get as much variety and new content. It's not that it's really hard to get oITG or Stepmania running on a cabinet, there are good guides for both. My problem, is getting everything synced properly so that everything is "fun" to play.

There's most likely more stuff that I'm missing, since I'm not expect in this compared to other people I know. But, again, from my experience; if you just want to play and not deal with setup and configuring systems and programs; just go with a standard mix.
 
I was excited when I ran across the Minimaid the other day while researching, but after exchanging PMs with the creator, it looks like support is limited to the dual-pad cabinets only. Might be able to hack around that, but still, unfortunate, as that would've been an easy path.

Looks like I'm going to get the DDR Solo. First step is to give it some time and vet everything hardware-wise, play the hell out of the stock mix songs, and then start looking at upgrade options, whether I want to run a newer mix (and find sources for the upgrade discs) or whether I want to convert the machine.
 
Thanks for the advice all, here's what ended up in the (in progress) game room today:

ddrdog.jpg
 
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