I'm really big on DDR (Dance Dance Revolution, a video game, see icon). As possibly unnecessary backstory, all of the arcades in my city have either disappeared or got rid of their DDR machines, so I've been relegated to playing at home on really crappy $20 foam pads. For my birthday this year, I asked for nothing of my family except money to help me afford the grandaddy of all DDR pads, a Cobalt Flux. Most people agree these are pretty much the best DDR pads ever, and it shows in the fact that they cost $299 each, plus $40-something in shipping. This is probably the most expensive piece of electronics I will ever own, short of my laptop.
Now, I'm not really keeping up in the gaming world -- my console of choice is an original Playstation. It suits my purposes, since I don't play much except for DDR, and in my opinion all the best home versions came out before the PS2. Before I ordered (well, before I even considered getting one), I checked to be sure that their pads would work with a PSX. According to their order page, they do. This was exciting! So I went ahead and ordered, and it got here today.
When I first got it, I flicked through the owner's manual before trying it out, since, you know, this is a $300 piece of machinery, I don't want to somehow make it explode. And I noticed that in the manual, they say that the platform may not be compatible with the PSX. Well crap, I thought, but I tried it out anyway. I got my game all set up, plugged in the pad, and played a few songs with no problems -- well, except the timing was slightly off. I went to the options menu in the game to fix that, and after I tweaked the timing and went to get back to the main menu, it told me there was no memory card inserted. Which was strange, since there was. I closed it without saving, and tried pulling out the memory card and blowing on it. Like 20 times. And it still said no memory card. I tried taking off the gameshark and switching from an imported game to an American game, no dice. It wouldn't load my unlocked songs, anything. Finally, I just assumed either the memory card or my system were just crapping out, since both are old. I went to put the whole thing up, when I remembered... when I first set up the game I was using a hand controller, and it had worked fine. I unplugged the pad and switched to a hand controller, and everything loaded fine.
So apparently the dance pad is preventing the machine from reading my memory card, somehow. This doesn't make the pad totally worthless, but it's REALLY FREAKING IRRITATING having to unplug the controller every few minutes to let it save, or to plug in a different controller when it gives me an error. Considering how much I paid for it, I would really like it if it, you know, worked flawlessly, especially when it SAYS it's supported for the PSX on their website.
To whom it may concern,
I just recieved my dance platform (order #xxxx) today, and I have run into a problem. On the order page for the Cobalt Flux Dance Platform, under product details, it is specified that the dance platform "comes ready to use with your Playstation(R) or Playstation 2(R) console". However, when I attempted to use the product with my original Playstation, I discovered that, while the platform works, the system cannot read my memory card while the platform is plugged in. It can read the memory card fine when I have no controller plugged in, when I have a hand controller plugged in, and when I have a $20 foam pad controller plugged in, so it must be a problem with the dance platform. As I looked through the owner's manual, I noticed that it also specified that the platform may not work with original Playstation systems.
I chose to buy a Cobalt Flux platform because I had heard that yours were the best there was, after doing my research and seeing that they were compatible with original Playstations. While this does not make it impossible to play on the system, it is rather irritating having to unplug the controller every single time the game tries to save. Is there anything I can do to troubleshoot this problem, so that I can play without having to switch out controllers every few minutes? I know that Cobalt Flux does not give refunds, and it would be a shame to end up with an oversized $299 (plus shipping) paperweight.
Thank you for any assistance you may be able to provide.
-My Real Name
I haven't sent this yet. Is the paperweight comment out of line? Am I just being an EB? I probably will end up just dealing with it, since... I don't really get a choice :D, but this is really frustrating.