So tonight, after running in a loop killing mobs for the umpteenth time, I’ve decided to yank myself off and say “fuck it”. I’ve decided to finally look up the new DDR Supernova, and lo and behold, there’s a machine that popped up in the nickel arcade next to my house. Since it’s being added recently that must mean the machine was spankin new (and it is), so off I went~ the night went better than if I had stayed home and grind my brains out.
After playing In The Groove since DDR’s demise, there’s a certain feeling of elation to playing all the new songs in a new DDR machine… although, I feel like I’ve cheated myself a little out of the excitement since I’ve played most of the good ones when the beta test machine was in Boomers! in Irvine. There is no doubt that this is a DDR game: the music are actual music and not a midi sound test; the steps are mostly intuitive and fun to play, instead of being a stomping test. The timing issue is a little annoying but tolerable, some of the unskippable sequences can also rub you the wrong way when other people are trying to get in the game right after you, but really…
The biggest thing that I miss about the game are the people who used to play it with me.
The fun factor of playing a DDR game is just gone without the people who used to play it with me. There’s no more Cindy or Sid to race on the hardcore Onis; there’s no more Justin stomping out the beats to triple A a song; there no more George who’d put himself and me through the double torture tests… playing the game alone, the game feels like a shadow of the past, and I’m not even sure if I’d bother to go back and try out the mediocre 6 and 7 footers anymore. There’s no point.
At least with ITG, there’s a definite sense of progress and there’s still challenges that I can put myself up for. Elitism be damned, there’s at least a feeling of putting yourself above another when you can pass a song as opposed to not passing it, even if you keep that fact to yourself only.
And in the end, unless the zot crew mysteriously come back together again, I’m probably going to go back to playing ITG2 and make Supernova the practice machine inbetween rounds of waiting for others who play ITG.