My first official, organized contribution to the DDR simulation community came about a year or so after I started dabbling in the different creative possibilities found in designing steps for custom songs. Over that year, the community went through a few key evolutions; the most noteworthy change was the release of Dance With Intensity, an amazing new DDR simulator that was actually coded outside of Japan!

Up until then, I had been experimenting with various step concepts, learning what seemed to work and what didn't. It wasn't until later that terms like "Beatmania Syndrome" and "IVKAS" were coined, but I learned very early on what the difference was between danceable and keyboard-only stepcharts. It was because of a significant lack of danceable originals, combined with the recent release of DWI, that I decided to concentrate my previous efforts and make a real contribution to the community.

While the original date of release has long since past and I've not kept track, it's safe to say that the collection was released sometime in 2002. I wasn't really sure what to call my little package of five songs, originally, and the collection went nameless until Casey Yates, a longtime friend and DDR sim fan, christened it for me. The collection was released, Plaguemix One, after approximately one year of unorganized experimentation and three months of concentrated design. Back then, the only place I knew to announce this new release was The Melting Pot, a now-defunct community forum where people gathered to discuss DDR simulation and share their original work.

As I do today, I prided my collection on the concept of foot-worthy steps; while the majority of originals readily available at the time were of very high quality, most of them catered to the crowd of PC gamers who preferred a much harder song more suited for keyboard play. The Plaguemix One collection, in contrast, was not very difficult, and was created with the idea of playing on dancepads in mind.