It happens every Friday night, usually around 7. Techno beats bounce off the walls outside the Terrace Room in Friley Hall. Inside, 10 to 15 people gather, each watching their friends move to the beats of a dance simulator.

Once again, technology and entertainment have intertwined — the newest form of cyber-entertainment is Dance Dance Revolution, better known as DDR.

DDR is a video game for PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and video arcades that combines dance techniques with computer animation. And as of Sept. 3, DDR became an official ISU club.

The video game was first launched in 1998 and became popular on the West Coast. About a year ago, the game debuted in Iowa.

But DDR isn’t like a regular video game, says club president Jesse Fisher. For one thing, there is no hand-held controller. All of the action is controlled with the players’ feet on a pad placed in front of the television screen. Arrows light on the screen and the player must move their feet on the pad to match the arrows. The end result creates on-screen dance moves.

“It’s a cross between ‘Simon Says’ and ‘Twister,’ ” says Fisher, senior in computer engineering.

Once the music is selected and the arrows begin pouring down the screen, the only job is for the player to step in time, mimicking the arrows, to the tune of the mix. Players start at level one and try to dance their way up to the highest level — level nine.

“When you get up to the higher levels, the screen is a constant blanket of arrows,” says Isaac Gitchel, senior in psychology and vice president of the DDR club. “It’s pretty overwhelming. People get moving so fast you can’t even see their feet — It’s pretty insane.”

A player can either be categorized as a free-style dancer or a scorer, depending on how good they are, Fisher says. The experienced people are free-stylers and all others are just those trying to copycat the screen, making it appear they are dancing.

“I personally never tried dancing before this,” Gitchel says. “But this game definitely teaches you to be more coordinated and more confident.”

Gitchel says he is able to head out on the dance floors now, because DDR gives players the basics necessary to dance, making the first step onto the floor easier.

Fisher says he came up with the idea for the DDR club during a trip he took to Daytona Beach, Fla. There, he spotted a group of people called the “DDR Gators,” a DDR club from the University of Florida, at a local DDR tournament. The idea interested him, so he pursued it and succeeded in creating an ISU club.

Gitchel was the one who did the paperwork to set things in motion.

“About a year and a half ago, [Gitchel] started a mailing list to see if anyone would be interested in such a club here at Iowa State,” Fisher says. “[Gitchel] filled out the forms, we turned them in, we got a faculty adviser and that was that.”

There is no official count of the number of members in the DDR club, but Gitchel estimates about a dozen people show up for each meeting.

Fisher says he has many ideas for the club, but hopes one in particular becomes a reality in the near future.

“We are just beginning,” Fisher says. “I want to create club T-shirts and head to tournaments to compete, looking like a team.”