Thanks for the information you guys. Sounds like fun.
Just to clue others in, getting a B on Max 300 is like saying you are a male sprinter and could only match the women’s 100m world record. I suspect that for the large majority of posters in this board, if they were Matrixed in the skills to get their body to do this, their hearts would probably explode when trying.
Ok, and what have you gotten on it? Just wondering…
I tried to come up with another good sports-based comparison, but I don’t think they work, because many people have some idea of how much training and talent are involved in, say, running a six-minute mile. How good one can get at specific games with lots of practice is much less of a common knowledge thing.
So, inspired by a recent thread, I think a reasonable comparison to getting a B on Max 300 is getting an Expert minesweeper time under 200. It’s definitely an accomplishment that requires a lot of skill at the game, but many people have far surpassed it. And at the same time, many people who play the game a lot will still look at it in awe, partly because information on how good people can get at it isn’t common. For example, back in high school I refused to believe an acquaintance had managed to get a 3-second time on Beginner until he showed me, because my only frame of reference at the time was the 10-second times that another friend and I had been getting.
Back on topic, any version of DDR should work fine, except the American PSOne games, which have very limited song selections. The others are all mostly interchangeable from a casual player’s standpoint, except for the song variety and the 4-player option that the XBox versions provide. A cheap soft pad is a reasonable buy to try out the game, but beyond the beginner levels you’ll have to start taping it down or anchoring it to avoid sliding, or want to get a more expensive anti-slip pad. For that, I second TheOnlySaneOne’s recommendation for Red Octane’s soft pads. They’re the highest quality pads I’ve used without getting into really expensive hard pad territory.
As for the health benefits, I’m a pretty thin guy (5’7", 130 currently, male), and since picking up DDR three years ago I’ve lost fifteen pounds and kept them off without much change in diet, despite scaling back my playing time recently. I do worry about my knees a bit though.
For me, the best part is that there are so many different ways you can play with it. As avid a gamer as I am, I’ve had more fun with DDR than any other game since I was a kid. Enjoy!
I haven’t tried! Would be a waste of credits. I will work on it maybe if the import copy I ordered of 8th edition, which contains 111 songs and most Max versions including MAX300, but I’m pretty sure I will never win the 10 footer, or any 10 footer for that matter. Unless I do get hooked again of course, my heart holds out, and I do decide to get that metal pad one day. Anyway, although I occasionally played Dance UK and had the mat lying around for a while already, I didn’t really play it much. I only discovered DDR a few months ago, and then I was hard at it for a while. But then I haven’t been able to play for over a month due to a foot injury (could be partly DDR related actually, I played without shoes for a while on a hard wooden floor, not a good idea) and now I’m back at it again.
So in other words, my score on MAX300 is even less than ‘Failed’. 
If anyone is interested in comparing scores on any seven footer or less though … 
(I’d still lose, but at least I’d have something to compare!) I have full comboed SDG on one beginner song of about 100 steps, AA*'d. That’s it, as far as impressive stuff goes - at least I have a sense of rhythm. :o
@velvetjones: sorry didn’t pay good attention - I would definitely recommend getting a PS2 for this. It has better timing, easier to set up and play with, you don’t have to get a converter and so on. You should be able to pick up a decent PS2 second hand, or you could go for these really neat tiny little PSTWO’s that are out there now. By Jove they’re so small I’d lose them in a heartbeat.
Even cheaper would be to pick up one that frequently suffers from read errors - you might find someone willing to get rid of it for free (or something very close to it). This is a fairly common problem with PS2s, that is however extremely easy to fix (usually a matter of cleaning and regreasing the rails that the laser platform moves on).
The newer DDR editions have eyetoy support, which is very funny. And with the help of swapmagic/fliptop or a chip, you can play all Asian versions of DDR, which are extremely import friendly (nearly everything is in English, for some reason).
I finally got DDR 8th Edition, and finally figured out how it works too - couldn’t get it to work initially, turns out it uses different buttons for confirm (circle instead of x) and I couldn’t tell because the first questions (no save game found etc) were in Japanese and I just tried all combinations but the only way to confirm was by using circle … in the end I decided to just dance around on the mat for random attempts and all of a sudden there it was.
And … wow! So many songs! (110 eventually) And a lot of fun variations in the stepcharts too. I think I’ll set myself as a challenge to get a D or better on all standard difficulty settings (mostly 5-6 footers) to begin with.
If anyone feels like a little competition on a particular song, just let me know which one and there’ll be a decent chance I have it. But I warn you … I’m not good. Don’t ask me to do 8+ steppers … :o