Let's do something that doesn't even approximate dancing

[davidn]

On the weekend we first met, Whitney and I were out at the now-dead (and rapidly expiring even at the time) Megabowl in Dundee. I had made an impression on her by climbing over two rows of seats in the cinema to sit beside her the night before, in the belief that you shouldn't let a guest to your group of friends be left on the end of a row, but since that moment I had failed to receive any and all signals that she had been giving in return. And that night at the bowling, I couldn't have helped the situation, because when she found out that I played Dance Dance Revolution she nearly went off me entirely.

Which makes the gift that she arranged for me with her parents even more of a surprise. This year, I received a Cobalt Flux pad a few days after we arrived back from California, after someone had sent it to Michigan by mistake, and it is completely enormous. After leaving university accommodation, where regularly playing it at the Union was probably the only thing that stopped me from becoming a nondescript heap of shambling chip fat, I hadn't played the game in years, but there's only one thing to do when you get an expensive metal dance pad - you start getting back into DDR again!

On starting up Stepmania, which I still had lying around, I was sort of horrified as to the sheer horrendousness of the music that I'd been responsible for putting into it - in stark contrast to my very metal-themed iTunes list, the soundtrack is mostly made up of manic J-pop songs which were named (and apparently recorded) by putting a stick of dynamite in a bag of fun-pack marshmallows. But somehow, like karaoke, they rapidly become acceptable to listen to again in the right (private) setting, and once you reach the stage where you're bouncing around to It's Raining Men (Almighty Mix), you don't give it a second thought.

As you might expect after five years, the days when I was at the top of the Union leaderboard are well behind me, and it's sort of unthinkable to me that I used to be able to do stages like this without ending up dead halfway through. Indeed, I attempted Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori on Expert and only just managed to flail my way past it despite it only having a difficulty of 7 feet instead of the 9 that I was apparently able to do five years ago. But maybe, with practice, restarting this war between man and machine may be able to get me past MAX 300 yet. As long as it doesn't involve any minor conflicts between my head and the ceiling.

I'm going to have to start making DWIs again, now, too...

Comments

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Look at how many people remember this game XD

I, too, was also a DDR fanatic back in the day. I think the primary reason that I modded my Playstation1 was so that I could buy the, like, hundreds of DDR games that came out for that system.

I eventually caved and bought a really nice (before they started doing Guitar Hero) RedOctane Dance Mat that had this firm cushion underneath it, kinda like a gymnasium mat, and I believe I still have it -- oh wait, I "lent it" to my cousins. Well, it's still around, in any capacity - but since I never got a PS2 or an adapter for it, I never used it once the system became obsolete.

One of my Pinball friends has a DDR machine at their home. Like, the full arcade machine. (They also have a dozen pinball machines in their basement.) I helped them learn some moves, and in return, they post video of me (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLgbTP7om0Q) failing against one of the other Pinball members at the playoffs :P

[davidn]

It helps to be friends with a complete bunch of furries :) I hadn't realized that there had been such a correlation when I first started out, but if there's anything that shows a near-exclusive relationship, this comment thread is it. Indeed, I remember meeting a couple of other anthropomorphically inclined people through the game room - it otherwise wasn't exactly a subject that came up in real life.

I remember Red Octane being the other primary pad that could be used for advanced play, when I was first researching this stuff in 2003 or so - I'd never tried any of the home ones apart from getting a plastic mat out at a family friend's house and being mortified at failing an easy song because it was impossible to place my feet correctly, so I was pleased that this one was quite so effective.

And that's a most impressive video, though it makes me glad that my own efforts were before the opportunity to spread them on Youtube :) My reputation was only realized when someone new came into the university chatroom and suggested we all meet up at the union, saying something along the lines of "you don't have to drink to have fun":

<campbell> you can just go watch that mental case who does the dancing machine
<David> Er... that would be me, campbell.

I can't quite read the game title - did Canada get the genuine DDR series? Europe was given an alternative series called Dancing Stage Euromix, which had different (and - by some strange definition of the word - arguably "better" songs for beginners, more along the lines of what you'd find on a karaoke machine).

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

I remember that at some point Konami was releasing "official English" versions of DDR, but the song selection was totally inferior to the Japanese versions which had already been imported (and the Japanese ones used a lot of English songs anyhow). Like, now there's "official" DDR on the Wii and 360, from what I've seen, but I don't know how good the song selection is.

(Which reminds me that I saw a Toys R Us near me that had DDR2 with a pad for the 360 for $10. Damn, I wonder if they still have any copies about...)

If memory serves me correctly, I believe this was a "DDR Extreme" machine, Japanese I think - though I was told that the game itself consists of a ROM Chip and DVD, so they could swap it out for another unit with a little time - and I have a feeling many arcades did, too, those machines are heavy!