Like A Virgin

August 28th, 2006 at 07:14pm Grey

Touched for the very first time… The cold metal pads against my feet, the hard metal bar behind me, and in front of me the large circular speakers and a dancing model on the screen. Yes, this was it. This was the moment I’d been waiting for. Finally the soles of my feet were touching a real dancing arcade machine. I knew no fear. I knew no wonder. I was a point of order and calm, fully prepared for the task I was to face. I was ready… Ready to dance!

Finding an arcade in the first place proved to be a challenge. The two that I had known previously both turned out to have been shut down. Alas for the fall of the arcade… Thankfully a trip to a game store got me directions to one on the other side of town, so all was not in vain. The arcade was at the side of a bowling alley, and mostly filled with children and teenagers. It contained two dance machines: Dancing Stage Euromix 2 and Dancing Stage Fusion. Before we go further, I’d best explain for those who don’t know – “Dance Dance Revolution” does not seem to exist in Europe. Instead we have “Dancing Stage” games made by Konami, using the same engines as the DDR games but with different songs. Dancing Stage Fusion apparently uses the same engine as DDR Extreme. I only found all this out after I got home…

The dance games seemed to be the main attraction in the arcade, so I had to wait my turn a few times before I could play. It was £1 per play on both machines (about $1.80 at current exchange rates), which gives you 3 songs to dance to unless you fail one of them. This obviously makes arcades expensive, which is the biggest reason why I’ve been using Stepmania all this time. Considering how much I’ve played I’d be out of pocket by at least £150 ($270) from the last few weeks of gaming.

Euromix 2 first got my attention, and I tried 3 songs on it. Overall I got annoyed with this machine. There were very few songs in the playlist, with pretty much nothing I wanted to dance to, and the menu system was quite poor. For instance it didn’t display the difficulty levels a song had available until you chose it, so for the first song I chose I could only do 4-foot since that’s as high as it went. All my future playing was made on the Fusion machine, which had a mix of old and new popular songs, as well as some DDR “classics” – PARANOIA survivor and the like (no, I did not attempt that). Thankfully on its song selection menu it shows which different difficulty ratings are available underneath the name of the song before you pick it. Some of the songs I enjoyed playing on it were Like A Virgin, Ladies’ Night, and best of all It’s Raining Men. Those reading these articles may have picked up that I have a certain preference for old cheesy classics…

As it turns out I did very poorly on that first 4-step anyway. Getting used to the new interface was difficult. I was like a virgin – fumbling, disorientated, with poor rhythm and often just not hard enough to do the job right. I’m used to playing in just my socks on a thin, soft mat that’s responsive to even the lightest of touches. This large, hard dance machine was cold and unresponsive, requiring firmer and heavier steps to be registered properly, and wearing shoes didn’t help my usual sense of where my feet were. Freeze steps were the worst – often halfway through it wouldn’t sense my foot on the pad any more and I’d get a NG (whatever that means – obviously not as good as the usual OK). This may be due to damage to the machines through abusive players, or possibly I just need lead weights in my shoes to help me dance… To add to my frustration there was a glare on the screens that made me miss arrows now and then. I failed on 2 songs, which I’m not particularly proud of, and more importantly annoyed at since that means I lost my money.

Overall I played around 15 songs, ranging from 4 to 6 foot (mostly did 5s). Interestingly, although I felt like I did terribly, my ratings weren’t too bad overall – mostly Bs and Cs. It seems that the rankings are far more generous in the arcade games, because I definitely wouldn’t have gotten that high a mark for such a performance at home. Also, the difficulty ratings are most definitely toned down from what I’m used to. 6-foots were like 5-foots, 5-foots were like 4-foots, etc. The 6-foots I played had nothing in comparison to the intensity of what I’ve been trying at home lately. None of the songs remotely tired or exhausted me, in spite of a fair amount of perspiration. It’s a pity I didn’t try any 7-foots actually, but with the troubles I was having on the machines I might have just been throwing my money away.

One interesting thing about the machines themselves is the announcers, who come out with all sort of supportive comments as you play. “That was beautiful!” “Hear the crowd go wild!” “You’re fantastic!” I now see why some DDR players get really offended if you insult their genre – they have these damned commentators telling them how amazing they are no matter how badly they screw up! Playing this game on the machines too much would quickly give you an ego the size of Greenland. I don’t have any announcers on Stepmania, but if I’m ever having a bad day I’ll be sure to load one up and hear them praise my footwork.

A new experience for me was getting to see other people play. I was very impressed watching two teenage girls doing a double together (no, not in a sick way, you pervert). Their style of play was quite different to mine – turning their bodies 90º for up and down arrows, and shifting their whole bodies over for single left or right arrows. They were very active and bouncy (I said stop the dirty thoughts!) and moved in time with the rhythm very well. On a couple of the songs I saw them do they got AAs. Watching them I thought they were very impressive, but when I looked at the arrows on the screen I realised they were only doing what looked like 4-foot difficulty. I also saw a couple try out the game for what looked like their first time – trying to use the tutorial mode to learn. Didn’t seem to do them any good though… I’m definitely glad I used Stepmania to learn rather than throwing money away on these useless machines.

Positives: Step-wise this is actually much easier. If the settings were right I could achieve way higher difficulty ratings.
Negatives: Difficult to get to, other music in the background, small selection of songs, annoying menu timers, unresponsive buttons, light glare, other people queuing for a go, not being able to shower straight afterwards, and worst of all having to pay a lot of money to play. I’m beginning to see why one would prefer to play at home…
Overall: An interesting experience, but certainly not something I’d want to repeat. However, this site has never been particularly about what I want, has it…?

Entry Filed under: StepMania