Show Me Your Moves

Imagine a video game. Now, imagine a video game that involves physical activity. Finally, imagine that all this physical activity is limited strictly to your lower body, and is supposed to vaguely mimic dancing. You, my dear friend, have just imagined an accurate picture of one of my favorite games in the world: Dance Dance Revolution.

Dance Dance Revolution was really popular during the 90s, but with the dawn of new technology, it seems to have fallen out of the times. It makes sense. After all, who would want to restrict their dancing to the four cardinal directions when other games let you look even more ridiculous by using your whole body? (Perhaps I am just biased because I have trouble dancing.) Nonetheless, I remain faithful to DDR. It has enough game play for me to forget that I'm getting close to exercising, as well as enough weird electronica songs for me to realize I have a really broad taste in music. Most of all, DDR is challenge. The truth is, ever since I was a small child, one my lifelong dreams has been to become a DDR master. 

 Now I know it doesn't sound too impressive. What, with its friendly colors and encouraging announcer who repeatedly tells you to "show [him] your moves", DDR can seem relatively harmless to the unassuming player. But hear me out: the game is downright brutal. 

You see, on every DDR game, a player unlocks songs one by one. The songs get progressively harder, but not to an extent that one would consider them impossible. Thus, when I unlocked one of the last songs of the game, nothing seemed amiss. The only thing that seemed somewhat unusual was the fact that this song's title is appeared in a menacing red text, compared to the usual white. But no matter. I was feeling pretty confident unlocking the song as it was, so I casually hit "confirm" with the setting still set on the max difficulty. 

However, something else soon struck me as odd: the way the song began. Usually, a song begins immediately, with one's avatar liberally dancing around the screen. But in this song, the avatar was in a desolate, industrial expanse. It looked dramatically towards the sky. And instead of music, there was total silence. 

Now at this point, I was beginning to get nervous-- something was about to go horribly wrong, and yet, I couldn't place my finger on exactly what. Then, suddenly, it happened: the sky exploded and the avatar literally jumped off the metal platform and began flying in something that could only be described as a technicolor black hole (seriously, I'm not making any of this up). And after that, the music started blasting, the arrows flooded the screen, and before I could even register my sheer terror, I was bleeding profusely and collapsed on the floor. 

It was, quite frankly, a terrifying experience for the unprepared. 

Nonetheless, despite the imminent danger in doing so, I have always wished to complete such a song. One song in particular comes to mind-- it was in fact this song that inflicted on me the pain I mentioned above, when I was 12 years old. I was naive-- I had no knowledge of "boss songs" on DDR. I thought there was no way a catchy tune with a name like "Kimono Princess" could inflict such damage on my self-esteem. But my failure was inevitable. It also didn't help that, while the announcer is very encouraging when you're doing well, he is notoriously cruel when you do poorly. 
 

Since then, I have tried for years to master this song. I played it back to analyze the arrow patterns, I tried it on easier difficulties to start with, I even got water breaks in between. But it was no use. No matter what I did, I would always fail. What was I doing wrong? 

Eventually, in my endeavor to learn from the true masters of Youtube, I realized my error. It wasn't that I was using the wrong speed settings. It wasn't the type of dance mat I used (although, to be fair, a lot of the people in the videos bought these expensive looking arcade stands, and I wasn't sure if I was ready to get that intense about it). It wasn't even because I couldn't read the screen fast enough. 

It was because I was unathletic. 

The more I tried to complete the song, the more I realized that I was simply physically incapable of moving my legs as fast as the true DDR masters could. At the same time, considering my current level of athletic ability and the level I needed to attain, the gap between the two was too great for me to overcome. Thus, my dreams were crushed. It has taken many years, but I have finally accepted my fate. And that, in length, is the reason why I will never be able to become a true DDR master. 

But should any of you happen to love DDR, or would like to aspire to become a master of the craft, let me know. Complete "Kimono Princess" for me. Achieve greatness in my stead, and perhaps then, my pain will be slightly assuaged.

THE END 

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