Dance Step Pad for PC
My second youngest kid wanted a dance pad for his birthday that would work with a PC.
I went to Wally World (Walmart), no such, they have one for the game cube, WII, PS2, Xbox and Xbox 360.
Well, I thought Fry's would have one. Called down there (since it's a 30 mile drive), yes, they have one. So I drove all the way down only to have the sales puke assure me that not only did they not have one but that none existed. I've seen them advertised on websites, so I know they exist. But he says they don't because Dance Dance Revolution was never licensed for the PC.
I told him that my son wanted to use it with Step Mania anyway. He told me the control schemes for Step Mania and DDR weren't the same so that was yet another problem.
Well, next I tried Best Buy, the guy there was slightly more enlightened. He said the Xbox 360 used a USB connection and so conceivably an Xbox 360 version could work if the software supported it.
I ended up buying a Konami Dance Dance Universe 3 Revolution pad for the Xbox 360.
It turns out that this works fine with a PC running Windows-XP and Step Mania. All the crap the sales people told me about the control schemes being different was bogus. We didn't even have to load any drivers, Windows-XP SP3 already had the necessary drivers and recognized it as soon as we plugged it in.
So if you're looking for a Step Pad for the PC, you don't have to spend the extra exhorbitant bucks for the "PC" versions advertised on the web, the Xbox 360 version made by Konami works fine.
Do be sure to get the Xbox 360 version and NOT the vanilla Xbox version. The latter does not have a USB connection and will not work with a PC because there is no way to connect it. The versions for the Xbox 360 are about three times what the versions of the vanilla Xbox go for, but then again they're about a third of what the web-advertised PC versions go for and they work fine.
I went to Wally World (Walmart), no such, they have one for the game cube, WII, PS2, Xbox and Xbox 360.
Well, I thought Fry's would have one. Called down there (since it's a 30 mile drive), yes, they have one. So I drove all the way down only to have the sales puke assure me that not only did they not have one but that none existed. I've seen them advertised on websites, so I know they exist. But he says they don't because Dance Dance Revolution was never licensed for the PC.
I told him that my son wanted to use it with Step Mania anyway. He told me the control schemes for Step Mania and DDR weren't the same so that was yet another problem.
Well, next I tried Best Buy, the guy there was slightly more enlightened. He said the Xbox 360 used a USB connection and so conceivably an Xbox 360 version could work if the software supported it.
I ended up buying a Konami Dance Dance Universe 3 Revolution pad for the Xbox 360.
It turns out that this works fine with a PC running Windows-XP and Step Mania. All the crap the sales people told me about the control schemes being different was bogus. We didn't even have to load any drivers, Windows-XP SP3 already had the necessary drivers and recognized it as soon as we plugged it in.
So if you're looking for a Step Pad for the PC, you don't have to spend the extra exhorbitant bucks for the "PC" versions advertised on the web, the Xbox 360 version made by Konami works fine.
Do be sure to get the Xbox 360 version and NOT the vanilla Xbox version. The latter does not have a USB connection and will not work with a PC because there is no way to connect it. The versions for the Xbox 360 are about three times what the versions of the vanilla Xbox go for, but then again they're about a third of what the web-advertised PC versions go for and they work fine.
posted by Nanook at 7:01 AM
2 comments
