Any DDR stories?

This infuriating scenario:

Me and my friend played DDR Supernova. During the final stage, I was so exhausted and chose Break Down. However, my friend pressed the start button while they were still 60 seconds left in the song wheel... and didn't press it down firmly. Instead of going to the options menu, the song started. I failed since I was tired.

Unfortunately for me, a month later it happened again, this time with Dynamite Rave. He pressed the start button again but didn't press it down firmly again with 60 seconds on the song wheel. I shouted in the process. I stopped halfway through the song due to exhaustion. I was so frustrated that he did it again so I kicked his right leg due to his inconsideration.

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Last week I decided to head to the only arcade cabinet I can find in my whole city. It's a stock Extreme cabinet with all of the songs unlocked, so pretty basic stuff. It's located in a bowling alley's arcade, so from time to time I drive over there and play a few rounds. Nobody else is ever there. Last week, however, a child's birthday party was being held, and the cabinet is right next to the party room. There is virtually no distance separating the two. So, while a room full of people was singing Happy Birthday to one of the kids, I was in the middle of Healing Vision ~Angelic Mix~, and nobody in the other room had any thought to close the door. They started in the middle of the song and I was on my last quarters so I didn't want to fail out the round so the song wouldn't drown out their singing. Unfortunately, it did, and one of the parents came out after, asking me very politely to "turn it down." I shamefully left instead.

*facepalms hard*

Someone in my group chat posted a video of a teenage girl getting dragged off the pad by her mom mid-song. Quality vid.

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It was about almost 3 years ago, it was my first time ever playing DDR on the arcade. My left leg was in the middle of a recovery but I said YOLO and went for it. That's how it all started, ahhh good times.

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This story is quite old now. It goes back to the golden years of DDR Extreme...I'd say it happened in 2004 or 2005.

I was playing at the mall in a DDR tournament hosted by the local arcade. It was a DDR Extreme tournament and I was in the final round after an entire day of playing this game against multiple participants. The song selected was Waka Laka, and for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, the song is known for a series of jump-step patterns that go on for multiple measures. It's tame by modern standards, but at the time (as a no bar player), it could be tricky and drain your stamina.

It was me up against another guy (who's tag was TIAS) in the final round. My competition (by his own admission) was nowhere near my skill level. I was the only one in the area who could AAA regularly while most of the other players struggled hard just to AA a song. It's also important to note that I am 6'-7" tall (200cm). It is possible that I'm the tallest DDR player in the world to ever (seriously) play this game. This info isn't meant to be a brag, but it's important to appreciate the story as it unfolds.

So there we are, we are playing Waka Laka and my score was on course for a AAA. We got to about the half-way point in the song and just finished the first section of jump-steps. I could feel the muscles above my knees start to ache and cramp, but I knew this was the last song, so I pressed on hoping to finish with a AAA (or close to it). When the next section of step-jumps came up, I began to push through it, despite the spasming I could feel coming from my muscles. Then it happened. About 4 measures into the series of step-jumps, the muscles in BOTH my legs seized on me at the same moment. This caused my legs to get locked in a completely straight position. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't bend my leg(s) at all! I was completely immobilized like a pirate with two wooden peg legs.

So there I am, motionless on the machine because my legs can't move anymore. Needless to say, my combo was broken, my AAA was gone, and my life bar quickly depleted. I knew that I had just ceded 1st place in the tournament to TIAS. But then something I didn't expect happened... my opponent took off running from the DDR pads! I was already confused due to the pirate peg leg cramping situation, but seeing my opponent take off running just made this even more strange.

About 10 ft away, he turns around and looks at me cautiously and says "....You're not going to kill me!?". I try my hardest to turn towards him with my legs locked. I speak through gritted teeth as I inform him that my legs locked up and I literally can't move them anymore. And why does he think I would be mad at him? He replies with "Oh.....Man am I relieved! I thought you were pissed off because I messed up your AAA with my bad timing and I thought you were about to go berserk!". Despite the pain in my legs, hearing this made me laugh out loud. I explained to him what had happened to me and once he understood how ridiculous the whole situation is, we both thought it was funny as hell.

After about a minute I could move my legs again, but I knew I was done. The tournament organizer had no idea what to do. Technically I had won that round because my score was higher, but we both "failed" the stage. He asked if we wanted to do a rematch and I declined. With how my legs were, I knew I couldn't do anything more than walk like a grandpa. We both split the prize money and now have a story to share for years to come.

The lesson here is listen to your body. If you ever feel leg cramps coming on, you should stop before you have something ridiculous like this happen to you!

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The year DDR SuperNOVA came out in the arcade, I was working at a computer camp. At the end of the summer, the staff went to an amusement park - and, as I found out, one that got a new SuperNOVA cab to boot, so I was like "I'm in."

We get there, I go to the arcade with the DDR machine, and start playing. The arcade was set up in an L shape - with part of it open to the outside walkways. The DDR machine was placed in that part of the arcade, which makes sense given the visibility of it. Before long, I had gained my footing - seeing the pads were quite slippery - and was adjusted to the pads. Soon after, one of my co-workers, who was at the crane machine next to the dedicab, turned to me and said "Dude, people are paying you to play more." I look down, there was $3.00 on the corner of the pad, next to the bar. Not too long later, I was taking a sip of water, and noticed that this one room had become absolutely PACKED. As I quickly realized, while some of the traffic was for playing the other games in the arcade, the majority of the crowd was from my DDR playing, as my co-workers quickly realized this too.

It was, honestly, an awesome feeling. Holy shit.

I remember when I was younger, I was playing, and this girl comes up and asks to play with me. Younger me thought "There is no way she can beat me!" Mfw when she got a AA and I got a B

Another one, where I was older, I was playing, and I finished a hard song, and some people clapped. and this dance mom comes up to me with her daughter and says "You think you can act like your the best dancer? My daughter is gonna whoop your ass!" Apparently, Ballet skills = ddr skills to her. (Her daughter looked like she really didn't want to be there) So, I beat her daughter in a set, and the mom goes up to me, and slaps me. Fucking slaps me because her daughter didn't beat me in a game she hadn't played before. Thankfully, she got kicked out, and I got a free set from the owners so woot.

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That's one crazy mom... I hope I never run into someone like her.

Speaking of moms, this happened on 4/26/2018 at Dave and Buster's:
I finished playing Windy Fairy EDP when this little boy came up and said "Can I play?" Before I could turn and talk to the kid, his mother told him "No, let that beautiful lady finish." The boy said "Oh, okay." I literally FROZE in shock and was both flattered and flushed. I gave the kid the game 3 minutes later with a smile. Another parent later called me amazing, although I am far from that. Haha, what a good day. Two compliments I don't deserve lol

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I pissed myself while playing Afronova Primeval once.

That reminds me of the X2 days when I came into D&B and these two girls were playing 12-13s on 1x. I played a couple matches with them (I was also on 1x) and they actually beat me. I remember them snickering before picking Orion.78 civilization Mix on me, they knew what was up.

Crazy assed bitch is more like it.

>be me
>2nd grade
>Teacher thinks it's a great idea to bring in his PS2
>with DDR X
>mfw.png
>teacher instructs us to play yellow songs only (licensed)
>people getting okay grades, Cs, Bs, a few As, one AA
>then again, it's licensed songs
>my turn comes around
>hohohohohohohohohoho.wav
>pluto relinquish
>teacher asks me to go back
>begin playing
>actually pass the song, even though I was only about 7-9 years old
>A it
>class flips shit
>mfw

we played some supernova after, it was cool, but unfortunately there's the song grouping thing that categorizes songs by three difficulties

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Some home version-related stories that I remember:

1.) There was one time when I was 6 or 7 when I played DDR on my PS1 for a whole day (literally only on Basic) that I literally couldn't get up for school the day after.

2.) On fifth grade, my classmates and my teachers knew about my DDR interests so during my Christmas party, I brought my soft mat and my small TV in my classroom so we could play... and we never did.

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So my stories are from the olden days, playing on home versions:
I was introduced to the game by a friend who had DDRMAX and some no-brand hard pad, I think we were both around 15 or 16. He would usually invite me over but it was usually me watching him. The few times I tried, I failed horribly. He'd talk about how he could clear MAX 300 and I was in awe of how he could do these songs I couldn't even comprehend.
Years later, I'm in grad school in Buffalo and have become pretty serious about DDR. I had joined a DDR Club, owned a Cobalt Flux, and was practicing daily. He happened to be in town and he came over and we got to playing DDR... after warming up, I picked Tsugaru and he told me he was never able to clear it. It turns out when he was clearing MAX 300, he was playing on . It was like all of a sudden my perspective on the world changed and the guy who I saw with the skills I aspired to was far beneath my level.

And about that DDR Club... well being a part of that is what cemented in my mind that I was way too old to hang out with folks aged 18-21. I was only 23 and in grad school at the same university, but I felt absolutely ancient compared to them. And there was a lot of weird stuff like "shirtless o'clock" in which shirts were removed and some Captain Jack song would be played. My thoughts were mostly "I'm not at DDR club to get shirtless with teenagers, I'm at DDR club to play DDR!" It wasn't my scene.
But the club was also a confidence booster because I was in the (completely informal) upper-tier skill level. I remember being warned not to play Break Down because it was *crazy hard* and after clearing it with an A feeling like I had successfully shown off my chops.

Now that I have access to DDR A, I see songs like Tsugaru and Break Down are considered NOTHING. That most regulars warm up with much harder songs. But to me, those songs will always be measuring sticks of my own level.

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I remember playing DDR pretty casually until I met this guy who really wanted to pass Triple Counter on Expert 17 and Possession on Expert 17. We didn't pass at all but we kept on playing harder songs. We even got to 19s, and it was the most fun I ever had playing DDR. Unfortunately, he doesn't show up as much and is not interested in doing those sort of challenging runs. Makes me a lil sad.

Also I had passed more songs than him and even impressed him. Now he is at my level or above. It was nice being seen as a good player, someone that would look up at me. (Now I meet all these really good players triple A-ing 18s like no ones business.)

So there's this one game store that I go to sometimes (because it's a 30 minute drive. ) and they have a DDR Extreme machine, so I'm their just to sell a few controllers that I don't need no more and a PS2 (I have a 2nd one) that I didn't know was broken, one problem I only knew before bringing it was that it wouldn't play PS2 games and would only play old PS2 games that were in the CD format or PS1, (I apologized to the employee there(I should've tested it out first.)) and while I was playing DDR their this family wanted to try it out, I showed them how to get the game started and how to move the interface (Select songs, difficulty, and style.) and showed them what to do during gameplay. The song they played was We Will Rock You (obviously because it is known for it's original version by Queen.) and that family played on beginner. (Because that's one of the easiest modes.) One fun thing about that day was I managed to get a AA FC on a song and I managed to pass TLoM with the grade C.

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