By Bradley Rosenberg

In 1979, disco band Lipps Inc. posed a question that to this day goes unanswered: “Won’t you take me to Funky Town?” Sadly, the world could only answer with a shrug.

Much progress has been made towards that goal since then. With the emergence of such artists as Beck and Jamiroquai, the search for the ever-elusive “Funky Town” has become less bleak. Despite these aids to the hunt, the greatest guide towards “Funky Town” today has only recently been unleashed into the consuming public. Its name is Dance Dance Revolution.

Dance Dance Revolution, DDR, a “follow the arrows” dance simulation, was first released by game developer Konami throughout Japanese arcades in October 1998. Since that time, it has become a dance dynasty, spawning 13 Japanese arcade versions, two Japanese Dreamcast games, one Japanese Nintendo-64 game, five Japanese GameBoy games, and 12 Japanese PlayStation games.

Locally, DDR has been sweeping America since the summer of 1999. Konami has been able to dominate the U.S. market with four American arcade versions and three American PlayStation games, including the recently released DDR Max for PlayStation 2. So what makes this series such a global sensation?

“It’s just really fun,” said James Wald, a Northeastern freshman computer engineering major and avid DDR player.

“It’s a workout, [but] you don’t feel like you’re working [because] the music is really fun to dance to.”

Wald, too embarrassed to play in the arcades at first, bought a version of the game for his Sony Playstation about a year ago. Since that time he’s gone through two dance pads and several games