DDR Till Ya Puke
Well, my trip down to the Coral Ridge Mall went splendidly. I arrived around 12:30, others showed up between 1:30 and 2:30, many of which were great crowd pleasers, especially the girl who managed to AA and FC So Deep. I should also mention that she did this while wearing heavy Hot Topic black pants, and a black shirt, all while not breaking a sweat. Scary. The guy I came to play with started off with doubles and almost pulled off a 10-footer as his final doubles song. These people are freaking pros, man. So now I have to practice more to avoid making an idiot out of myself in their presence.
As a side note, arcade pads have harsh adjustment periods. Unlike soft pads where any contact on any part of the arrow will register a hit, metal pads can not be activated at the corners due to the brackets holding the pad together. I can also confirm that stepping on said brackets and rivets hurts like hell when not wearing shoes. Unfortunately my shoes were very rigid, meaning if I stepped on the metal, my shoe didn’t bend to contact the arrow itself. That’s what I get for playing with molded hiking shoes.
The girl I mentioned before played completely barefoot. I watched, and she hit each arrow dead center, every time. Apparently the really good players don’t have problems stepping on uncomfortable parts of the metal pads. I’ve been told I should play occasionally on metal pads to get used to this… which just means I either have to buy or build some, since there are no machines in this area.
I did get some good advice I’ll share here:
- Once you get comfortable with the harder songs, go back to light/standard and try to Perfect Attack (PA) all of them. This may take months. Doing this doesn’t necessarily increase ability to read arrows or stamina, but it improves timing. Some of the harder songs will lead to instant failure if the basic beat is lost for too long. Better scores also allow the health bar to fill faster, making for easier recovery from missteps.
- Play on an arcade machine, or equivalent metal pads on a semi-regular basis to get the feel of arcade machines. This is a must if there is a desire to take part in tournaments. Arcade machine timing is also slightly more strict, making scores doubly worse if your only experience is from a home version.
- Always have a better player play with or near you. If they’re playing verses with you, their skill should carry you even if you fail at harder levels. This gives you experience you wouldn’t otherwise have. If they’re just watching, they can save you from failing by jumping on the machine in your stead, should you encounter a tough spot.
I’ve added a new section to my website under the Profile section that tracks my DDR Scores for posterity. I wanted some global location where I could track all of my scores so I wouldn’t have to look them up all the time in the game itself. Now, anyone can see just how much I suck at DDR. ^_^
The pager went absolutely bonkers yesterday, and in most cases, publishing the website fixed it. Apparently we’ve never told our customers this, as almost everyone I talked to, publishing to fix problems was news to them. One call even came in at 6 in the morning. Great! To top it all off, I’m sick now… Yay!
Geh… I’m going to bed…