All you DDR people-

I decided that I am going to join you on the DDR bandwagon, since I already have a PS2, and a game and a pad are much cheaper than any other home exercise equipment.  Now the question is:  Which game do I get?  Are they all about the same quality and level of fun?  Is there one that you would consider better for beginners?  Please enlighten me.

Also, I have read several posts saying that the red octane pads are good, so that is the one I am considering at the moment.  Any others I should look into?

Thanks in advance for your help! ;)

I keep going as long as either time or energy levels allow.  For the first month or so, I was quitting after 15 to 20 minutes due to severe pain in my calf muscles.  I would recommend doing exercise on the calf muscles & quads to supplement the DDR experience.  It will up your endurance considerably once those muscles have a little more power in them.  I can now play up to 2 hours, but it's my own breath running short that quits me now or a general feeling of fatigue all over (no specifics, just low blood-sugar).  Good luck to everyone doing DDR, I think it's great and it's fun too!  I'm still waiting for another calorie burning interactive game to play.  The Nintendo Wii was fun to play but you can easily adapt and find ways to play every game sitting down and just flicking your wrist while lounging in the recliner.. LOL!

Have those of you who do DDR on a regular basis noticed any increase in the size of your calves?  Because I definitely don't need that...

My calves have increased, but i don't know if it's that, the biking or the jogging. I'll assume it's all of them.

And.. so what if you have muscle, sqwish? Muscle is sexy on a gal.

sqwish - yeah, anything that requires you to jump up and down for extended periods is going to hit your calves.  Fortunately, because we're girls we're never going to get tree trunk legs or anything (unless you're ending your DDR time with a steroid smoothie).  I do a lot of dancing both on DDR and otherwise, and even when I was chubby in other places I always had rock hard calves, which was cool :)

And about DDR, I got one of my friends on the wagon over the weekend.  It wasn't a workout thing (we were all pretty tanked and decided it would be funny to play) and he tried it for the first time and he's totally all about it now.  He wants to come over all the time and play DDR to work out together now.  Awesome :)

Trust me, I am already fairly well endowed in the calf department.  But, DDR is a convenient way to exercise at home... *sigh* Maybe I will just have to let go of my dream to someday be able to wear knee socks...

http://www.freecreditadvice.com/june/redblkso cks.jpg

and knee-high boots...

http://stores2.safeshopper.com/10/00/35/62/03 /images/e01kq6n.jpg