Challenged!
I haven’t made regular trips to my local arcade since junior high, a period during which I counted my allowance in terms of ‘number of games of Virtua Fighter’. There were a couple phases (mostly pre-Dreamcast) where I was playing regular games of Virtua Tennis and spending disgusting amounts of money on House of the Dead II, but for the most part, our arcade sucks. “New” games normally come out years after everybody is sick of them (they finally got Soul Calibur about a year after its release on Dreamcast), and they refuse to cycle out several older, shittier games (I think they just recently got rid of Area 51…I dunno, might still be there). I go to the arcade about once a month now to see if they’ve cycled in new titles. It’s rare, and when they do, they’re either awful, 4 years old, or both.
You can imagine my surprise (actually, you can’t, because you’re not as big of a dork as me) when I went up last week to discover they had cycled in not one but TWO dance games. Neither of which are Dance Dance Revolution, but one of the titles, In The Groove 2, is the biggest DDR ripoff I’ve ever seen. In fact, the system is hooked up with DDR pads (legal?). I decided to give it a go, and while the mechanics are exactly the same, they added a bunch of stupid features to make it less fun. The addition of mines is my biggest complaint with the game, and if you are standing on an arrow when a mine passes, you lose a good chunk of your dance meter (which they call ‘life bar’). I believe that in the arcade version of Dance Dance, even if you fail out of a song, you get to continue until you’ve done your set of three. In ItG2, if your meter is depleted, you basically lose your 50 cents, since you got one song out of it. It took me a while to figure out what the hell the mines did, and I burned up 2 or 3 dollars pretty quickly. I left, disappointed that they couldn’t spring for an actual DDR machine, so that I actually knew the songs.
Well, I was back up by the arcade yesterday with a friend (picking up DDR Extreme 2, as well as 4 or 5 other titles) and there was a ‘crew’ hogging the dance machine. Excited that my crappy little arcade might actually develop a dancing gang, I decided to check them out. They were good, but they were playing some stupid “Battle” mode, an ItG exclusive, in which the arrows do all sorts of stupid things, ie; rotating, waving, vanishing, etc, to try to trick you. Despite the arrows not making any sense at all, they were both doing very well. It was obvious they were going to be there for a while, so I left to go purchase some games. When I returned, the machine was free, and I decided to give it a go. After about 2 dollars worth of songs, the ‘crew’ returned to watch.
Eventually the kid that was running the arcade at the time came over to talk to the dance crew, and there was some murmur while they decided what to do with the new kid moving in on their dance turf. When I finished, the murmur grew a little louder, as they decided what they were going to do before I put more tokens in. I heard the word “challenge” several times, and finally one of them stepped up on the player 2 pad and said “Okay, okay…I guess I….challenge you.” As the challenger, he picked the rules, and chose the ridiculous Battle mode. Needless to say, since I was new to the songs, and had never played this Battle mode, he beat me on 2 out of 3 of the songs. He slaughtered me fair and square, but I didn’t leave the pad.
The other member of the crew decided he needed to test his skills against me as well, and the kid running the arcade even fronted me the tokens I needed, as I was out. This round however, I talked him into playing the regular dance mode. By this time, a small audience had been cycling in and out to watch the dance-off, but I was ready to win this time, since there were no annoying arrow modifiers. I even let the challenger pick his favorite songs. This time around, though I had never played the songs before and I was playing against a kid who was obviously familiar with them, I wasted him 3 out of 3, scoring a B+, an A-, and an A. They were impressed and congratulated me, but I was out of tokens, and I left with my merciless victory.
I have only played a DDR game in the arcade once before this, but it was right before the arcade was closing, and there wasn’t anybody around. Yesterday’s battle reminded that arcades used to make gaming a very social experience, and very few games still replicate that aside from DDR (or its spinoffs…). During the second round of the battle, a girl that was watching even requested a song, and watching us play had made a couple people excited to try the game for themselves. Online gaming can bring gamers together, but can also bring out the worst in people. In person, face to face, gamers are a lot more respectful and humble, and when other people can just watch, it’s much more of an ‘experience’ than just sitting in your basement playing your favorite games by yourself (or even online).
I’m anxious to get back up to the arcade today to learn more of the (possibly hundreds of) songs on the game to hone my skills. Though I have four console versions of DDR at my house, I can see the arcade dancing experience becoming a very expensive habit.
December 18th, 2005 at 2:28 pm
Dance-Offs! That term kinda threw me back to some corny 80s movies.
FYI, every DDR machine fails you when your meter goes down, even when you haven’t used all your 3 tries (or 5, depending on which DDR machine you’re playing and how its configured). Also, there’s an In The Groove game for PS2.
December 18th, 2005 at 2:30 pm
Yeah, I noticed In the Groove was available for PS2, and have even considered picking it up so I can fill the high score tables at the arcade.
Perhaps on the DDR machine I was playing, failing out was turned off, because I kinda remember messing up on a couple songs before I got used to the pad and being able to continue. I may be wrong…
And yes, the dance-off was ultra lame, but also extremely fun.
December 18th, 2005 at 10:30 pm
A few of my friends do the arcade DDR thing. I’ve stopped by a few times, and it is interesting to see the crowds. You put it in the right words. The social experience is a very good thing, and one that is rare these days.
December 23rd, 2005 at 12:19 pm
Working in a mall, at the only place that gives away water completely free in as big of a cup as you want, I see the DDR dudes fairly often. If I get off work early enough (like this week I’ve been getting off by
I head over to see if anyone’s there. If it’s anyone it’s usually the same 3 or 4 guys (one of which works in Best Buy across the… hall(?) from us so I see him daily). They’re all really, really good so I’ve never bothered to step up and play myself. It’s fun just to watch them play and have fun though. I love DDR but suck ass at it, so until I get a better pad so I can improve (my current pad’s left arrow only registers like… 60% of the time), I won’t be playing in public. Not at our mall at least.
The only time I’ve played in public was at a theme park against Elijah, and there was a good sized crowd watching. Luckily the only other people that played that were there couldn’t go beyond beginner mode, so they were impressed with our Light mode “skills”. I need to buy a new pad so I can actually get better.
December 23rd, 2005 at 12:21 pm
December 23rd, 2005 at 12:22 pm
WTF? Why didn’t it turn into a smiley that time? … Or why didn’t it NOT do it the first time? That would’ve been convenient.
December 24th, 2005 at 3:21 pm
Fixed your smiley problem by turning smilies OFF. Christ I hate those things.