OK, need some help. I have hardwood floors and need a pad that won't cause me injury by slipping, is accurate, and durable. Suggestions please?

Cobalt Flux has always been an extremely reliable dance pad, but you will have to find a chair or stationary object to hold onto if you plan on barring songs. I've always heard that they slip around quite a bit so you might also want to try out the website http://www.ddrgame.com for dance pads that are meant for hardwood floors. I had purchased one there and it never moved on me; those dance pads also weigh around 50 lbs though too haha.

The one i purchased back in the DDR days was at this link: http://www.ddrgame.com/newarmepadv3.html

A tad expensive but it worked perfectly, very sensitive sensors. The only problem with pads from that website is that they can be unreliable so as always use discretion when purchasing pads from the internet!

Have fun with your dancing no matter what dance pad you end up purchasing! ^_^

ddrgame.com, is nothing more than a reseller along with a bunch of other companies ddrstation.com ddrdancing.com, DDRUniverse.com, ddrstation.com, gameasylum.com and many more!
The pads are NON serviceable and they ship from a factory and they NEVER see it. They don't care about you as a customer they just want their commission. They spend tons of $$$ on ads which are lies.

They all sell the same JUNK pads with the cheapest metal and worst wiring Ive ever seen. They are all resellers (they don't make the pads) and all have the same poor(IDENTICAL) return policy with no warranty.

Avoid these sites at all costs.

Go to
mymybox.com or cobaltflux.com they make the pads and offer warranties to back up their product.
Blueshark by mymybox.com is the best home arcade pad out there right now

Thanks so much for all the advice.
DDR - Mom

DDR Mom, you dodn't say how often you play or how many people are playing. You don't necessarily need a metal pad. They're expensive, Blueshark is very hard to come by - mymybox only seems to get them in a few times a year and they're gone in a day - and they're $350 + s/h, CF isn't much cheaper. I don't have one, I'm actually using a dense foam "hard" soft mat ignition knockoff I got on ebay that's working pretty darn good - especially for around $30.

I do agree to NOT buy from DDRGame - their stuff is awful. BNS used to be great, but they've lately been completely unresponsive when you contact them and people have been getting different pads than what they ordered. Mymybox does has a dense foam pad for I think $70 - it's a blueshark, just not the huge heavy metal one - I'm thinking about ordering one of those. MMB is another company that is very hard to get hold of though. Just FYI!

On a hardwood floor, if you're using either a soft pad (like the official Konami that comes bundled) or a "hard" soft pad with the dense foam core, you might think about buying one of those rug gripper pads - one of the heavier weight ones. It can help - it won't stop the pad from moving at all, almost nothing will, including the soft pad mod, but it should help.

I really wish Konami/Bemani would come out with official "hard" dense foam mats with the larger sensors/raised arrows and an official metal dance pad with real arcade sensors (like the metal Blueshark has - it wouldn't and COULDN'T be like the one they briefly sold in Japan - that thing was HUGEEEEEEE, but a home-sized metal pad) - I'd much rather deal with Konami and trust their quality control and being able to contact them.

I'd have to say the best DDR controller would have to be that limited-run metal stage that Konami put out in Japan back sometime in 2000. It was a very short, very expensive run of DDR arcade style controllers, and they haven't produced any more since.

The second best DDR controller would have to be the official Konami DX pads, which have foam padding and would probably be great for hardwood floors, though you'd be lucky to find one on eBay.

I can't say there are any decent controllers that I would love to play with, aside from a rewired/reworked arcade stage, but alas, I am one of the jaded players.