December 13, 2003 - 10:46 a.m.
I was, like, the biggest dork ever this week.
It all started last Saturday, when Laurie and I went to play DDR. That in itself is pretty dorky-- less than usual, I suppose, since I had a female with me-- but it's also something I do all the time. We had so much fun, we went back and played again on Sunday.
I've mentioned before that I also somehow got my mom addicted to DDR; about once a week she'll call and arrange it. She didn't call on Sunday, which surprised me. But on Monday I got the call. So on Monday, I played DDR with my mom.
A few weeks ago I'd decided I wasn't in very good shape, compared to me one year ago, and Ely happened to be in the room when I had that realization. So I told him that whenever we were waiting for somebody to call us or had nothing better to do, we should play DDR. Ely doesn't really play the game, but I'd given him an open-source DDR clone called StepMania loaded with a bunch of songs and he'd been playing it at home on his computer keyboard. (It's actually pretty fun, I swear.) And he liked watching me play; he'd sometimes give me a specific challenge, like getting a full combo on Witch Doctor (heavy). It turns out that he didn't play because he thinks he has terrible rhythm and he always messes up the off-beats. When I told him about the "Little" mode in the options menu, which removes all the off-beats, he got excited and he played a couple rounds with me. That was Tuesday.
Wednesday Laurie happened to be in the area, so we met up with her... at the DDR machine. She donated a lot of quarters to me and I played quite a bit. Note that it was the fifth day in a row that I'd ended up playing. Ely and I were waiting from a phone call from Scott, but he didn't call (until very late) so we ended up going BACK to play MORE DDR. Laurie helped out by keeping my water cup continuously full and so I didn't really get tired. I made it to the end of MaXX Unlimited (heavy), but I didn't finish it. The next morning, my legs ached a bit, but weren't completely dead, so I must be in better shape than I thought!
But the real dorky thing actually happened on Tuesday. Ely had stopped playing and I noticed that the machine's pad seemed more responsive than usual, as though it had recently been cleaned. So I tried an Oni mode. Oni mode is scary, because when you go to select it, before you even pick it the announcer guy says "THIS MODE is DIFFICULT!" and when you select it, he says "CHALLENGING MODE!" It's also scary because I believe ONI is Japanese for DEMON. It's also scary because the courses are a series of songs that you play without interruption. And your life bar is a battery with only four marks in it, and when you miss an arrow or even just step on it with less-than-Great timing, it takes a mark away from the meter. When you have no marks left, the game is over. Mercifully, the game gives you one or very rarely two marks back between each song. Still that averages out to allow for only ONE MISTAKE per song.
I thought I might be able to do it because I've come close in the past, and the thing that was messing me up most often was the freeze arrows. Freeze arrows are steps that you must hold down for a period of time. Trouble is that American arcade owners don't care to clean their DDR machine pads very often, and since I'm not the heaviest guy in the world, it just plain wouldn't pick up that I was still standing on it, and I would lose for no reason. But as I said, the pads I was playing on Tuesday were very responsive, and I wasn't missing the freeze arrows. I was kind of in a trance as I played, and it was a surprise when, after five songs, it said CLEARED and showed my score. Woo! I stepped off the machine to get some water when I heard something even more surprising.
"ENTER YOUR NAME!"
Yes, I had managed to get a high score. That's something I never expected to do, ever. Because there are people who play in tournaments and things... people with their own $700 metal pads at home... people who can flawlessly complete every song. I see those kids (they are, of course, all younger than me by a number of years) on the machine all the time.
So WHY did I get a high score? Well, I have a couple guesses. One is that I was playing ONI mode, which I don't see people doing too often. I was also playing the first (and easiest) ONI course; my guess is that people who are crazy good at the game would be choosing the harder courses for a real challenge.
Still, I came in third place overall. And I got to put in my name. Hooray for me, King Dork! If you live here in my town, next time you're seeing a flick at the Camino Real Cinema, see if I'm still up there. When the machine starts flashing the high scores, check the second list. #3 KEV. Aww yeah.
