The reason I get up and down mixed up is because too often I interchange which feet I use for them. Sometimes it\’s necessary for the song, but often it\’s just laziness, and I might do better if I\’m stricter with my footwork.

As for the apparent contradiction over concentration and mental exhaustion, I\’ll try to explain more clearly… Early on difficult maneuvres required a lot of preparation and concentration - now it all comes easily, and I sometimes notice how I\’m doing in the middle of a song and think \”Holy shit, how did I just do that?!\” But it\’s still requires a lot of interaction, and though I\’m not consciously following the steps as much I\’m obviously still having to concentrate on some level and it still requires a strong mental awareness of what\’s going on (as any fast-paced interactive game does). This is very tiring after a while, I find. Still, if I could go back in time 3 weeks ago and dance in front of my earlier copy, he\’d be pretty damned amazed I think.

With regards to it getting in my head but not gripping me, that\’s rather simple. I can\’t help but have the game get stuck in my head, like when you hear a song you don\’t particularly like and it gets stuck in there. But it\’s not gripping me for entertainment. I\’m not looking forward to playing - it\’s something I have to force myself to do, usually after a lot of procrastination.

I can understand people wanting to hone their DDR skills with Stepmania, but all they need really is the songs. Everything else is cosmetic - and stupid cosmetic, cause it just gets in the way of actually playing. The majority of Stepmania users are those using it like I do at home, so why is the system so set up opposite to that style of play?

A few points of commiseration:

Sometimes I hit up when I mean down… I don’t think I’ve ever hit down instead, but sometimes it is hard to think about the back arrow mentally.

The leniency of the timing is dependent on the song. For example, I have one song where the arrows whizz by so quickly that the author intentionally made it pretty flexible timing, since a human wouldn’t be able to touch the pad at the proper “nanosecond” the arrows were there. In that particular song the timing is that if you start your foot moving to an arrow right about when the arrow gets halfway up the screen you’ll hit it at the right time. That horrendous example beside, though, you’ll notice the easier-intended songs tend to be more flexible about how soon after or before you do stuff… except for a few songs that are just so slow as to be actually hard (more on that in a moment). As you go up they start wanting a little closer to accurate timing from you. Just saying that you’re probably doing well and just getting into the precision of the four and five foot now.

“I’m also really terrible at songs where the arrow speed is frustratingly slow, or where the speed changes dramatically at several stages in the song.”

I believe I remember first mentioning to you that SOME one or two foot songs would be so agonizngly slow that you would find them difficult since you try to get on with making the step far too early. Seems you’ve experienced these now. I try to avoid these songs, though there was one where I enjoyed the song and thought about trying to modify the step file to be more realistic about my patience.

“Sometimes I find myself not needing to concentrate as much on the game, and just let my feet glide over the buttons themselves. The game’s coming a lot more naturally to me now. Lyrics have been getting stuck in my head a lot, and some mornings I wake up seeing arrows and imagining steps in my mind, which is perhaps a sign I’ve been playing too much. But it’s getting me one step closer to heaven (baby), which is one step closer to you. However, Billie Jean is not my lover (she’s just a girl), and as I try to make my way to the ordinary world, I will survive, in the gay bar, gay bar. Mah-na mah-na (do do-do do).”

You sound like you’re getting into the game and at the same time insisting you’re not. I mean, you talk about not needing to concentrate, and then mental exhaustion; you talk about lyrics getting in your head and dreaming about it, then say it isn’t gripping you.

Re: coin options:

Someone mentioned this, but the truth is Stepmania is used for a LOT of situations, not just at-home play. As far as the location of options, I think the staggering number makes it hard to find any options much less coin options. But anyway, for a sense of this, keep in mind that this is literally trying to reproduce the arcade thing at home… being able to perform at the three-song pattern is something important to people who DO play in the arcades and hone at home. Also, there are at least sometimes setups that “claim” to be DDR but are really Stepmania on a PC… kind of like how some home or special event arcade setups may just be a PC running MAME in a cabinet. I remember that the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC at least one year had “DDR” available at a booth table, but my friend and I could tell from inspecting it that it was actually Stepmania running on a concealed PC with cables snaking over to the TV it was being projected on. I think they were using the coin options for actual coins there.

Re: songs that rate at different speeds for some reason… it’s been my experience that it depends on some in-song factors. First, as you know, some 3 foots are just as intense as four foots practically speaking, due to speed or so on. (The song I mentioned at the beginning of this was a 3 foot song even though it’s insane) Sometimes songs rate lower or higher because they’re either less or more demanding on speed even if they require more or less feet. I know one 5 foot song that’s technically light, for example, so it got rated as such.

Lastly, a point where even I’m stumped: uh, they don’t show you all songs? I’m shown all songs regardless of what difficulty level I play. I choose “beginner” and every song defaults to its EASIEST mode its available in (which is sometimes standard or heavy) and I move up or down from there by tapping up or down twice on any given song. I choose beginner partly from habit (I was a beginner, maybe I’m not anymore) but also it gives you a sense of a song, I think, to know what the easiest skill level it’s available at is, even if you don’t end up playing it on that level.