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AAHPERD is a fitness trade show for schools with products on display for PE classes. AAHPERD was held in Ft Worth, TX from April 09 through the 11th. EvilDave was also there working at the Konami booth. AAHPERD is similar to the IHRSA show I posted about a few weeks ago.

This show had a few more interesting booths than the last show. Below are the four companies which featured music and rhythm dancing games. These companies market towards schools, fitness centers, and community centers like the YMCA.


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Konami made an appearance this time around most likely due to the fact that the market for fitness video games is really starting to turn out to be a very profitable industry. They currently do not have much in the terms of say a specially designed fitness DDR title and it was stated that currently no plans are being made to create such a game. However, Konami plans on releasing a more robust dance pad. At the show they only had soft pads on display connected to DDR SuperNOVA 2 PS2. The pad that they plan on creating is similar to Red Octanes soft pad with the foam insert padding. Konami has actually produced a pad previously which looks exactly how the Konami representative explained, "A durable rubber pad (insertion piece), similar to soft pads, at an affordable price available for retail sale." The pad should be available this holiday.


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Next up is C'MOTION which i've not heard of before. They are running similar setups that other companies have shown before. Their system is a portable storage case with built-in 600watt (good lord) loud speakers, 42" HD plasma monitor, and a pc. They actually had ITGPC on display unlike other companies which just use PS2 DDR software. The owner of the company was very friendly and was the only person that I've found out of all these companies that actually plays the game they are selling. He said that he had been playing DDR for about 3 years now.. so thats pretty cool. I hung out with him a majority of the time during the event. This company is very knowledgeable of the many aspects of these games.


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Sportswall, who was also at the IHRSA show, was also in attendance under their fitness gaming division is called XerGames. Nothing new was shown this time around. The booth featured the Pump PRO X multi player software using the same software revision as the last show. You can check out a full walk-through of the software in the description on my youtube video from IHRSA. Something I will add though is ..PRO X is a modified version of the arcade game. It runs the exact same software and includes all the features of an arcade game. Though the game is marketed to a young audiences (6th to 9th graders), Sportswall still needs to take into consideration of the kids who actually will make an effort to reach that intermediate and higher levels of play; or those who have dancing games at home and already have that experience. Its very disappointing to me that they cannot take this game and use it to the level that it is capable. This is mostly due to the inexperience of the directors running the XerGames division. More of my thoughts on this game have been posted on the Pump PRO forums.


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Finally we have GamePAD? I'm not sure if that is the name of just their pad or their company, either way it doesn't really matter because the pad was horrid and thats about all I need to say about them. OH they were RIGHT across from the Konami booth lol, it was pretty funny.

So speaking with Konami for the first time was cool and very interesting. I hope I won't be getting in trouble for posting this but Konami is planning to host a HUGE national DDR tournament on the Arcade platform, but they will need some help! I will send some emails and get the in contact with experienced tournament organizers, but from what I understand, the person in charge of organizing this event has no experience in hosting a tournament on this platform. I believe they will be out at the SoCal tournament to speak with the reps of that event and to get a feel for what they are getting them selfs into. DDRFreak and Bemanistyle are in the watchful eyes of Konami. They do read these sites frequently (even though it doesn't seem so with the recently releases;p)