Both have Feels Just Like That Night, so it's a draw for me!

In all seriousness, even though I'm better at DDR/ITG, I prefer Pump. Part of it is the enjoyment of moving around the panel layout, but there's also the excitement of having a lot of room to improve. In DDR/ITG I feel like I'm hitting the upper limits of my timing and foot speed; in Pump I still have trouble parsing some of the patterns, let alone actually doing them. XD

I could go into more detail about the song selection and user interfaces of both, but the above will serve!

Pump.

It has WAY better doubles charts.

I can't disagree with that. haha

I prefer 4 panel dance mainly because I've been playing them for longer, and also because in opinion, I believe earlier DDR games have much better songs to freestyle too
Though I've been wanting to get better at Pump for a long time now. I used to condem it as a DDR rip off years back, but my ignorance has long faded away, and I actually really like it now.

I prefer 4 Panel, but I really appreciate what Andimiro is doing with the PiU series. I believe it's superior to the DDR franchise in nearly every way, and I wish Konami would look at the PiU series for some fresh ideas. The only reason I still prefer 4 panel is the same as Keby, I've been playing it for years and I just don't have any cheap and accessible machines to learn PiU on.

I think it's interesting that when most of us talk about 4 panel, we're more or less just talking about ITG and the custom edits people make for it. I actually still love the older DDR games, but it's so hard to enjoy playing Supernova/anything after Supernova. Additionally, I don't know about you guys, but I feel like Andamiro cabinets - the ITG dedicab AND Pump - are better quality than ANY DDR cabinets.

Quality of the cabinet is pretty much why I stopped playing Supernova at Acme unless someone is on the ITG machine. The panels just feel so much better, and the screen is better too. I do still enjoy most DDR songs (even newer ones), just not playing them on actual DDR machines.

 PIUP and ITG 2 probably have some of the best charts in a dance game to date.  The problem lies in the variance of charts / potential of seeing something new for me. ITG simply doesn't have enough variation unless you're playing half or full doubles. That doesn't stop the single charts from being GOOD, but is does stifle innovation significantly by only having four arrows. If I ever wanted to get into dance games seriously again I'd play PIUP.

It's amazing how ITG/DDR have something like 16 possible turn combination's in a chart and PIU has a number way way higher than DDR. All because of that 5th panel. I don't know the exact numbers, I'm just guessing.

I like Pump It Up more for yearly releases, mission modes, unlocks, international competition, secret joke songs, still innovating after 10 years, musical variety, easy freestyle charts, hard nightmare charts, charts with inside jokes, BGA OFF, and other things.

But none of those are in piu pro. :\

I dunno what to say about PIU that hasn't already been said. I guess to add, 4 arrows has always felt a bit cramped to me, like you're running in place on a postage stamp.  5 arrows makes me feel like I have room to move and get into the music more.  That and I'll never forget Join the Party, best played while sitting on your ass.

If PiU is so much more popular that 4 panel games, why are they so rare in the Seattle area? Also, PiU pro didn't seem to get nearly as much attention as ITG 2 or DDR did at Acme, why is that? Personally, I don't see a noob caring much either way whether they play DDR or PiU, except that PiU might look more challenging with that extra panel.

 Inside jokes + stuff like Space Fantasy is not a way to attract a new, non Pump audience (which is what PIUP set out to do). That kind of stuff smacked of  being unprofessional or too "weird" (moreso this) and it's one of the reasons why rhythm games like Pop'n haven't hit mainstream stateside.

 PIUP does have a fair bit of musical variety but that's also a problem. It has old Banya / other Pump songs that sound incredibly dated when placed next to the PIUP originals.

 Your post highlights PIUP's biggest problem: it tried to appeal to the traditional Pump crowd. Either way fanboys will hate something new that isn't exactly what they are used to so I don't understand why the dev team bothered. I think if there were harder timing windows and they eliminated some of the old Pump songs the game would have done better with the potentially interested (at the time) ITG crowd. Instead we have a game that is excellent stepwise but is torn between what it wants to be.
Posting /=/ playing, that's why I can appreciate the PIUP steps a lot but that doesn't mean I actually play the game. Next point. Newer players don't really understand anything about the game, so of course they wouldn't care. That's not necessarily the audience PIUP was aiming for. They were trying to capture both serious Pump and ITG audiences. I don't think a new player would get the nuances of the game enough to appreciate it.

That's the main thing to the (casual) majority of the people who know about dancing games; the little games have nuances that they don't know nor care about.

You could say it is the problem with both ITG and PIU:P, the only "advantages" above DDR/PUMP were designed for the few hardcore players. The average person says "oh look it's just like DDR, but it's not DDR." And in fact, because it's *not* DDR, it doesn't have the brand/name recognition that DDR does to the casual crew.

PUMP has always been the odd machine in the USA, but that doesn't make it any less fun.

I actually played Pump more when it was at ACME; the machine mostly didn't make money because people were scamming credits off of it.

What I will say about Pro VS other Pump games is that Pro has ONE distinct advantage - what is, in my opinion, a much better/easier to navigate interface. I really feel like that alone turned a lot of people on to Pump.

I'm kind of torn on the Pump Pro user interface myself. While I do agree it's an improvement in terms of usability over the regular Pump interface, both in terms of selecting a song (being able to easily find a song if you don't know where to look exactly) and enabling mods (having a menu as opposed to having to enter foot codes), parts of the UI still feel clumsy in their own right (once again, choosing mods).

Yeah, it's not perfect - but the previous interface was kind of like playing hide-and-go-seek with a bunch of very small children who are all wearing camo print full body suits and you don't actually know how many children there were to begin with.

Pump It Up has always catered to the experienced player, and the UI is part of that. Basically, if it ain't broke (to the people that spend the most money on it), then don't fix it.

NXA has a beginner mode with ~15 or so songs and a very clear interface, and the steps increase or decrease in difficulty depending on the skill of the player. It's pretty effective.

I've played pro on an FX machine like the one at that new place, and having to go so close to the screen and speakers to use the buttons was really irritating for me.

I guess what I wonder is how many more experienced players there would be if the UI was a little bit more intuitive. It's not a valid logical argument, because it'd be impossible to prove, definitively, that people are turned off by Pump's UI, but I've certainly watched people struggle to figure it out before.

I also haven't played anything later than NX, so I don't know how the new beginner modes look.

I feel like Pump It Up is better for freestyle, but I have a lot more fun with ITG2, as I'm a more technical player.

Pump does feel more like dancing, but I feel like the turning is really awkward if you're using the bar.  I almost snapped my poor wrist trying to one-arm bar something because the turning forced me in a weird way.  I also don't like when I have to put my arm underneath my ass to hit the center panel when I have 3+ panels to hit.

I also just like the music more on ITG.  I like techno better than HOT DIGGLE DIGGLE HOT DIGGLE DIGGLE HOOOOOOT!  And I feel like I could never get competitive with Pump, mostly because I'm too small to feel any sort of mastery over the machine.

But Pump doubles freestyling is sexy.  Definitely a panty peeler.

I just wanna point out that triples in Pump are not meant to be done with your hands.

Some are...

But the pads are so dirty...

Are you saying the rest of the arcade and the machines are clean?    Because the germs on almost all that stuff, are going to be as bad, if not worse than what you touch quickly on the pads.