RedOctane. If you play DDR, you've probably heard of them. It seems like every DDR-related website has a link to their store. They sponsor a lot of tournaments. But the real question is: Are their pads any good? Today's focus will attempt to answer that question at least for the new RedOctane Ignition Pad.

RedOctane is asking $129.95 for their new Ignition Pad, but if you pre-order it now, you can get it for $119.95. And considering there are Metal Pads on the market for around $150.00, the Ignition pad has quite a lot to live up to for that price. Let's find out if it does.

NOTE: Since the Ignition Pad was in extremely short supply at the time of this review, I was only able to get one of them to test. Therefore this review will not cover how well they perform in doubles mode.

Plug & Play:

The Ignition Pad came right out of the box and was ready to be plugged in to the Playstation (or Playstation 2). It was nice to not have to assemble anything for a change.

The pad:

If you've ever played on a soft pad before, then you know they're very thin, and very flimsy. The Ignition Pads were considerably less flimsy than a normal soft pad because it has a foam mat attached to the bottom via a zipper. Here is a picture of the pad from the top and from the bottom. The zipper's only purpose is to separate the top of the pad from the foam mat, and all the guts (wiring, sensors, etc...) of the pad are in the top part. I found it a bit strange that you can't completely separate the top and bottom half of this pad due to the way the zipper is attached to the hard plastic at the top, but it wasn't really that big of a deal. That just means if you have two of them, you won't be able to interchange tops and bottoms of them. This is as far as the pads will unzip. Similar to some of the soft pads on the market, the Ignition Pad has lights at the top of the pad that come on whenever you press a direction or button. If you were to examine just the top part of the pad, it feels very similar to all the other soft pads on the market with the exception of the arrows. Most of the pad feels like a big diaper, but the arrows have a harder, "reinforced" foam underneath them that keeps the pad from bunching up and also makes it so you can know where you're standing without having to look down at your feet.

Yes, yes, yes. That's all fine and good, but how does it play?!

So here's the part you've all been waiting for. How does this pad play and how does it compare to other pads on the market? We'll break this out into the following categories: Durability, Feel, Quality, Noise, and Arcade Comparison.

• Durability: One of the best things about soft pads is that you can invite all of your 300 pound friends over (y'know, from your weight watchers group) and let them go buck wild on them without having to worry if the pads will live to tell the tale. One huge difference between the Ignition Pad and almost all of the other soft pads on the market is that with its attached foam mat and "reinforced foam technology" on the arrows, the Ignition Pad doesn't bunch up AT ALL when you're playing (even on carpet). Even with its foam bottom, the pad does slide a bit when you play, although not nearly as much as other soft pads do. And if you put it on a hard surface (such as wood), the sliding is even less. If you want the best experience possible, you might want to secure the pad from sliding either by taping it down, by using carpet tape, or by enlisting the help of a friend to keep his foot on it while you play to make sure it doesn't slide. ;) Soft pads are the most durable types of pads because they won't ever crack under heavy weight. The Ignition Pad goes a step beyond that and eliminates the common soft-pad problem of "bunching up" by having reinforced foam on the arrows and a foam mat attached to bottom of the pad via a zipper. In a home dance platform, you just don't get more durable than a soft pad.

• Feel: RedOctane's DDR-accessory product line hasn't exactly impressed me in the past, so I'll admit I was quite skeptical going in to this review. I had seen pictures of the pad, I examined it out of the box, and I said to myself, "Hmmmmm, I dunno about this", but I figured I'd at least give it the gentleman's chance. And I can honestly say that I'm glad I did! 
  
  • Physical: If you've ever played on the Konami Deluxe pad, this pad feels very similar. Whereas the Konami Deluxe pad has a thick foam layer throughout the entire pad, the Ignition Pad has a thinner foam mat attached to the bottom, and reinforced foam under the arrows (but nowhere else). Although there's no risk in damaging it, I wouldn't recommend playing on the Ignition Pad with shoes on because anything that has traction on the pads will increase the chances of the pad sliding while you play. So I played in socks. One of the big complaints I have when playing on soft pads is that if I play on the carpet, the pad bunches up, it slides around, and I just can't get a feel for where I need to be stepping. But not with this one. Even when playing on the carpet, the pad doesn't bunch up at all because it's reinforced in so many different ways. And even though it did slide around a bit when I played some of the harder songs, it wasn't NEARLY as much as most of the other soft pads do. So as I do with every soft pad, I put this pad on a hard surface to minimize the sliding (which, as expected, worked quite well). The problem with putting a soft pad on a hard surface is that your feet REALLY start to hurt after playing for a while. Since the Ignition Pad has a foam mat and reinforced foam arrows, it doesn't suffer from this nearly as much as a pad without any padding does. Very nice on the feet.
    
  • The polyphony test: I'll never forget the first soft DDR pads I bought. They were one of the first Topway pads ever made with 4 arrows and 4 buttons in the corners. So I was playing along with them, and during several songs, I would clearly hit an arrow, but I would get a miss on it. So it turns out that if you were pressing two buttons at once on the pad, then it wouldn't register a third button. This doesn't sound so bad since you only have two feet, but it was often the case that you would step on the right arrow, and your heel would be on the back corner button (thus having two buttons pressed). If a left arrow came up and you stepped on it, guess what? No left arrow for you! What moronic engineer decided to let that by when even the Playstation controllers doesn't suffer from it is beyond me. Thereafter, I referred to that problem as the "two-button polyphony issue" (for those familiar with keyboard synthesizers). Thankfully the Ignition Pad did not suffer from this problem.
     
  • The "accidental button" test: Another problem that almost every soft pad has is that buttons will press when you don't mean for them to. This is normally caused by the pad bunching up and causing the button to make contact with itself as if you're stepping on it. With the foam mat and zipper, and the reinforced foam under the arrows, this doesn't seem to be an issue with the Ignition Pad, and I never once had a button press accidentally.
    
  • The "quick press" test: This is the test that determines how well a pad can handle difficult and/or fast songs. The way most soft pads are designed is that there is some sort of thin cushion that separates the two parts of a button. When you step on it, your foot compresses the cushion and presses the top part of the button down to the bottom part making a connection, and the button registers a press. Then when you lift your foot up, the cushion decompresses and returns back to it's normal position. Not exactly rocket science, right? Well, the problem with most soft pads is that they use a very thin and soft cushion and when you press an arrow down and then lift your foot off, it takes a split second for the connection to be broken and for the cushion to return to it's normal position. The softer and less-springy the cushion is, the longer it takes for the connection to break when you lift your foot off of it. Just imagine squeezing a really soft and fluffy sponge and then squeezing a really hard one. Which returns back to it's normal state faster? The hard one, of course... And since most soft pads don't use hard/springy cushions, this can be a problem when you have to hit the same arrow multiple times very quickly (Paranoia Eternal Maniac Single on DDR 5th mix is probably the best example of this). What often happens is you will press the arrow down and get the step, then you will quickly lift your foot up and press it down again to get the next step, but since the cushion hasn't had enough time to expand, the connection won't even be broken and the game will think you left your foot on the arrow the entire time. The faster you have to hit the same arrow over and over, the more misses you normally get. Okay, now that I've gone through that painful explanation, you'll be happy to know that the Ignition Pad passed this test with flying colors! Yep, the reinforced foam seems to take care of most of the work here, and when combined with the foam mat at the bottom, well let's just say that I never suffered from the pad failing to recognize that I lifted my foot. This is a HUGE plus for this pad because it allows you to do just about any song that you could do in the arcade and do it just as well. In fact, the first time I tried Paranoia Eternal Maniac Single on this pad, I was able to combo all the way through those multiple stomps on the same arrow!

   

• Quality: Don't worry, I'm not going to drop a bomb here like I did with the Metal Pads I reviewed... This is going to be short and sweet. The quality of these pads are roughly equivalent to the Konami DX pad, and higher than any other soft pad I've ever played on. The Ignition Pads get the job done, they have yet to let me down, and they're extremely consistent. Not only that, but the Konami DX pads come with 3 pieces of foam that you have to put together, insert into the pad, and then zip it up. The RedOctane Ignition Pad came in one piece, all zipped up and ready to go. Right out of the box, onto my floor, and ready to play.

• Noise: Out of all the hard and soft pads I've played on, the Ignition Pad and the Konami DX pad were the least noisy. You know how it is, you get on a hard pad and you're clacking so loud that the neighbors decide to phone the police. Soft pads are considerably better, but you might as well be jumping around on the floor. The reinforced foam in the Ignition Pads softens the blow to your floors, to your feet, and to your neighbors. Unfortunately, you still won't be able to get away with playing on the second floor of an apartment complex if you have tenants below you, but if they're not home and you don't want to bother the other surrounding neighbors, then you should safely be able to bust out an Ignition Pad and not have to worry. NOTE: If you want to get back at your neighbors for turning their stereo up too loud all weekend when you were trying to sleep, then you'll probably want to buy a nice hard plastic pad. They're the loudest, and therefore the best suited for revenge. But as my fiancée so eloquently put it after enduring an evening of listening to people playing on all different types of DDR pads and platforms at our home, "Dude, those Ignition pads definitely win the no-noise award. That's for sure." :)

• Arcade Comparison: So you've mastered every song in the arcade. You can beat all of your friends. But you don't like to play at home because you're afraid that all that bragging will go down the tubes when you fail a 9-foot song on a home pad because it's nothing like the arcade. Well, if it's any consolation, I was able to do pretty much just as well as I can in the arcade on the Ignition Pad! I put the pad on a hard surface, I popped in DDR 5th mix, and here's the result of my very first game on the pad: Song 1 (Ecstasy Maniac Single) - Full combo with 3 Greats. Damn! That's 2 steps better than my high score in the arcade!! Song 2 (DXY! Maniac Single) - All Perfects, 24 Greats, and a Good. Roughly the same as I would have done in the arcade playing the song cold (And the Good was clearly due to the pad not registering my step properly - just kidding). Song 3 (Afronova Primeval Maniac Single) - All Perfects, 12 Greats, and a Boo. That's actually a little better than I normally do in the arcade in terms of number of Greats, but the Boo kills me (I must be slipping in my old age). Here's the result of the first game. Those of you who know me can tell that these were played on the pad and not a controller because I didn't full combo all three songs. ;) Don't get me wrong though, the steps I missed I clearly missed and it wasn't the fault of the pad at all. I continued on to play more songs, and do roughly as well as I do in the arcade on them. I even played my Drop Out edit called Max260 on this pad and... uh... well... did as well as I could have expected. ;) One thing that's nice about playing in the arcade is that the arrows are slightly inset in the metal so you can "feel" where the arrows are and it prevents you from drifting away from the center of the stage. With the Ignition Pad's reinforced foam underneath the arrows, you get a similar feel and I was able to tell exactly where I was standing without ever having to look down. This is something that you definitely don't get on most soft pads and it REALLY helps on fast or hard songs where you don't want to drift away from the center and you can't afford to look down. Something to note about the Ignition Pad vs. the Konami DX pad: The foam in the Ignition Pad is not quite as thick as the Konami DX pad and therefore it's not quite as soft under your feet, but it's darn close. And I personally felt that you could feel where the arrows were better on the Ignition Pad than you could on the Konami DX pad because there was a much more noticeable difference between the thickness of the foam under the arrows and not under the arrows. Soft pads will never feel exactly like an arcade DDR stage, but they sure are more comfortable!

   

Summary:

When I first played on the Konami DX soft pad, I said, "This is the best soft pad I've ever played on." And then when I heard they were selling for upwards of $200.00, I laughed and said, "They're great, but they're not $200.00 great." When I played on the RedOctane Ignition Pad, I was really surprised at the quality and said, "Wow. This feels a lot like the Konami DX pad... and it's almost half the price!" I've heard stories of people flying out to Japan and purchasing a Konami DX pad for the equivalent of $60.00 USD, but I have yet to find any place to purchase them in the states (or online) for less than $200.00 plus shipping. The Ignition Pad has a foam mat attached to the bottom of the pad with a zipper that keeps it from sliding around too much, it has reinforced foam underneath the arrows so you'll always know where you're standing without having to look down (which is a GREAT feature), the thicker cushioning makes it easier on your feet than most soft pads, and there aren't any wiring or quality issues!

Don't get me wrong, no soft pad will ever hold a candle to the Metal Pads I reviewed in terms of feeling close to the actual arcade stage, but at least these WORK without having to mod them, there's no weight limit so you don't ever have to worry about breaking them, and you don't have to assemble anything when you get them.

I still think that $129.95 ($119.95 if you pre-order it) is a little steep for any soft pad, but in my informed opinion, the RedOctane Ignition Pad is definitely the best *soft* pad on the market for the money. Trust me, I wouldn't say this if I didn't play it and believe it myself. If you want the best soft pad available, and $200.00 + shipping for the Konami DX pad is just a little (okay a lot) too expensive for ya, then you're going to want this pad. It totally kicks a$$.

Thanks for taking the time to read this review. :)

-- GPF Lith --

You can order a RedOctane Ignition Pad here!

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