"LET'S MAX!"

You know, the first thing I thought about when I got up this morning was Konami's 2nd Bemani series Dance Dance Revolution. I used to play this game religiously in high school. Those were some of the best years of my life so far. Without the success of DDR and other Bemani games such as GuitarFreaks, DrumFreaks or BeatMania you wouldn't be playing games like the Rock Band or the Guitar Hero series today. Back in 2001, I was 14 and arcades were still in the process of slowly dying. However, they could still be found if searched for in the right place. The right place for me at the time happened to be the "Shockwaves" arcade at a mall my family and I visited on the city outskirts. Every time we'd take the trip I'd always run into the back of the arcade just to see people play this game. There'd literally be people just camped out around this machine. Cute girls, rappers, rockers, break dancers would all gather to play this game. It seemed like such an underground thing to do and that's what made my attraction to it so strong. The first time I finally got up to try the machine, I wasn't even nervous like I thought I'd be. I just got up placed my tokens down on the screen, waited in line and when it was time to "get down"... Well, I got down... badly. But, I still had a blast and you had to expect to look stupid playing a game like this. That's what I thought until I saw Michael play. Michael was about a year younger than me, Asian and with a stocky build, but boy could this kid work that machine. I never saw him miss a single step and he always pulled off some kind of dance move. He even made me aware of the game having secret step codes to unlock other songs and special modes. I was in heaven and had to get this guy to teach me how to fly with the other angels. So, we started to play together and every time I came back to this mall, Mike would just so happen to be there and we'd play a few songs. After 2 months of playing together, Mike had found his rival in me. It felt like going from Padawan to Jedi to me. It was awesome to be playing on equal playing ground with somebody I used to really admire for his own skills. Unfortunately, about a year later, the arcades were pretty much dead in my area and I never saw "Shockwaves" or Michael again since we never exchanged numbers and liked to just into each other when we ran into each other. But, I'll never forget even to this day how much I learned from him about DDR. I got the chance to finally use my new skills when I discovered a DDR machine at the "Tilt" arcade in my local mall. Though it was the very first version of the game, the rules and play mechanics were the same and I was the first around town that people were seeing actually play good... or so I thought. I met so many new people that were surprisingly just as good at and enamored with the game as I was. By the time I was driving on my own, myself and a few others had formed a DDR group that would meet up occasionally. We never went to any tournaments in the area though, since there were hardly any other machines or players around. So, we just had fun hanging out and playing DDR, while talking about nothing but other games in between food and drink breaks. But, now everyone who I played with has moved off or stopped playing. I'm supposing that they just grew out of it. Well, I'm fully ready to get back into the fray. There's a few nice hidden arcades in the city that I plan on visiting, even if I get completely stomped the first time. I tried to play again a while back and while I still hit most of the steps, whilst not as good as I used to, I was nearly out of breath after 1 song on Heavy Mode. Dude, I remember playing 13 Heavy Mode song sets of 3 with friends on this thing in under an hour. We were monsters and it was so much fun! Below is the actual show segment from good ol' TechTV's Extended Play that made me aware of DDR back in early 2001.