Gaming memories: Dance Dance Universe!
Several years ago, Thoreau finally got a dance dance revolution game for our X-Box 360, complete with the dance pad. I had never really played with one before, but I was a master at Guitar Hero, so I thought I could master this too.
Thoreau quickly became bored of the game, preferring to go off into his room and think, but Wake and I got really into it. We were both awful though, and we quickly realized it would take some time to get better. That's when we decided to go through the story mode.
I only have vague memories, but let's see... You had to go around developing a fan base or something. You had to duel other dancers and score more points. We were doing alright at first, but it got to the point where we were losing every other round, and it was really discouraging. But then, we had a brilliant plan.
Dance Dance Universe has one of those level editors, always my favorite addition to a game. You can choose any song and put in your own dance moves. I was already making devious tracks, for example stepping off of the beat, one where it goes really fast in circles, I guess with the intention to make you dizzy. Another one put two feet down on every beat, so that in essence you were hopping for the full two and a half minutes. My favorite, one where you had to hold one foot down and press the other buttons in quick succession with the other, almost like playing twister. But this time, we made the perfect song to complete the challenges. First, we sat down on our knees. Then, we took both of our hands and pounded straight sixteenth notes tremolo for the entire song. It was marvelous.
That's because in the quest mode, the challenge we had the most trouble with was the point mode. You had to get a certain number of points in the time slot, and since we were playing on beginner modes, getting enough notes means you have to be almost flawless. But, if you play in expert mode with more notes, you can finish in less than a minute. Using our sixteenth notes, even if we couldn't get the timing right and missed every other note, we would still easily advance to the next round.
Suddenly, the world became our kingdom and no dancer could stand up to our new dance craze. But as we advanced, we began to have problems again. For starters, there were the other game modes. That was easy enough to solve. I made a really simple dance and got the accuracy round.
The biggest problem, however, was our hands. The very dance that made us great was also causing us pain. Pounding sixteenth notes gets very tiring, so we kept experimenting to find the perfect hand position. Nothing worked well enough except making a fist and punching the pad with alternating hands. Gradually, the plastic matting skinned off bits of our knuckles, and after enough rounds, our hands were in too much pain to continue. We tried having both of us at the same time alternating all of our hands, but we couldn't get past this fundamental issue. I think that's why we stopped playing eventually, but I will always fondly remember one of the many times we successfully abused a level editor.
The music was not as great or at least memorable as Guitar Hero. There were only a couple of titles in there I really remember... So I guess the song of the day goes to "Take Me Out." And just for fun, here is someone really good at DDR. Apparently masters actually rely on that railing to lean against.