Deluxe Ignition Dance Mat
Added October 13th, 2005 by Barnolde
Dance Dance Revolution, salvation for overweight nerds who don’t like to leave the house, or just people who like the game, you know which one you are. Regardless of the reason why you play DDR, having a good dance pad is absolutely essential to playing the game the way it was meant to be played. Of course, as with any accessory, there are bound to be loads of both bad and good third party ones. One popular DDR pad is RedOctane’s Ignition pad, which is popular because it has a foam insert which you stick in the pad for a more arcade-like experience. I don’t want to say that the Deluxe Ignition Dance Pad is a cheap knockoff of RedOctane’s pad, but it is, but it’s cheap in price, not in quality.
The Deluxe Ignition Dance Pad from Lik-Sang is just like RedOctane’s pad, only it’s $70 cheaper. From my experience, the quality is pretty much. Assembly is simple, you put a three piece puzzle together: take the foam insert (if you can’t manage this, stop playing DDR and go back to school) and then place it in the dance pad and zip it up. The foam insert is about 2.5 cm thick and provides a significantly different experience than using a regular pad that doesn’t have the foam insert. If you’ve been exclusively playing on regular soft pads, you will need some time to adjust to this new, harder pad. One of the best features about it is that it doesn’t slip and slide nearly as much as a soft pad does.
At first I had my doubts about this pad due to it rivaling the price of some soft pads let alone the RedOctane pad. Upon playing it for a few minutes, my doubts were immediately removed; it played flawlessly, with the only faults being my own (before this, I was a primarily soft pad player). It took me a little while to get used to it and I also found that playing in socks only (not slippers or anything like that) give you the best experience in my opinion. Once used to the pad, it plays pretty much like your regular pad, albeit being firmer and sturdier, it doesn’t have that flimsy feel to it. There are two memory ports on the front of the pad, presumably for the Xbox Live communicator. The pad sports the look of the soft pad that I own, so it looks adequate as well.
I like RedOctane’s Ignition pad a lot, it’s a great pad, just not worth $100 in my opinion. I like my soft pads just fine and their $20 price tags even more. The absolute best feature about this pad is that it’s only $30! You get the same quality pad, nearly the same type of pad for $70 less than the name brand one. That’s literally insane! The pad performs excellently, the response is fluid and as a whole, it’s a very responsive pad. Even if you discover that you’d rather play without the foam insert, take it out and voilà, you now have a soft pad! While I found that the RedOctane pad was a bit more responsive as a whole, it’s not $70 more responsive. The quality of this pad is excellent and the price simply cannot be beat. With DDR Ultramix 3 coming out later this year, if you’re into DDR at all, I highly recommend this pad; it’s simply magnificent and an incredible deal to boot.
