By William English
In high school, I was always the skinny nerd. Although I considered myself 'athletic', the truth was the only sports I participated in were Bowling and Golf. I was also diagnosed as a severe asthmatic, and carried an inhaler with me. There were several attempts by friends and teachers to get me into more sports, such as Track, Cross Country. My excuse for not joining the team was always the asthma. Not to mention that I would feel winded after even minor exercise, and my self-esteem for myself didn't help either.
Later on, I got to college and the inevitable happened. I gained weight. People warned me about the 'freshman 15' and sure enough I fell prey to it. I had ballooned to a hefty 180 pounds, the heaviest I had ever been in my life, my morale was very low.
After returning home, I got a job working in Schaumburg as a DJ for Complete Music, right down the street was a build out of what is now called the Streets of Woodfield, which had Segas answer to the Dave and Buster's franchise. Gameworks.
I admit, I'm a huge gamer. I had heard about Gameworks in a magazine that I was reading, and was ecstatic that I had a job right down the street from it. What I didn't know is that it would change my life, in so many different ways. The first visit I made, I played most, if not all of the games in the building, except for one game, the game that changed my life, Dance Dance Revolution.
I had never seen anything like it before, and that's what made it appealing to me. The first person I saw play was an expert at the game, playing on both pads and doing spin moves. What I remember even more is that he had crowds behind him almost to the doorway. I decided from that point on, like other video game challenges before, that I wanted to master the game. The initial drive was to beat the person that was playing at his own game. I felt I was a better dancer than the person on the stage
.
The experience is much different when you're playing however. Starting with the 'Basic' mode, you start off with very easy 'steps'. I had no idea about the timing of the arrows on the screen, but I inevitably learned after failing multiple times. Thankfully, Gameworks has what they call a 'time card' that lets you play as much as you can during that hour. I figured out how to take advantage of the card by swiping a credit every 45 seconds (or roughly once per song, which was 3 at the time).
I made excuses to stay after work and stop by to play. I made friends with most of the staff, who after a certain point started to comp me to credits and cards to play, since they knew I was keeping customers in the building. I developed a small following who watched and competed with me.
I learned that there were harder levels in the game that weren't obvious to players to access (you had to press the down arrow twice to access the harder levels). So where I had mastered the original basic songs (and at the time, there were only 11 songs total, affectionately called DDR 1.5 mix) there was a newer 'step charts' with more arrows and seeming a faster pace, although it was the same song as before.
The first song I remember was so difficult that I practiced on it and failed until I passed it was a song called 'Paranoia' The song was at 180bpm and had a very interesting step chart, with many of the 'notes' in rapid succession. I played the game, and 'warmed up' to play that song last, hoping to beat it (and at the same time preserving the credit that I had in for the game). It took me 2 weeks to get enough stamina up to pass the song, and that was from playing every day for 2-3 hours, and on the weekends even more so. Besides getting better at the game, I noticed my stamina was getting stronger and my clothes fitting looser, I was losing weight and getting more fit.
I had a specific regimen to play the game that I also learned from
trial and error. Part one was having plenty of water on hand,
eventually switching to Gatorade and other electrolyte-infused
things. Next was eating, I made sure that I ate at least an hour
before, so that my body wasn't digesting before I played. Smoking was
out of the picture, as most of my friends either quit or their use was
significantly reduced. Alcohol never helped either, it destroyed our
relative performances. I learned later that carbs really helped as
well. Slowly, the weight started dropping off, which was amazing.
My
asthma symptoms slowly but surely disappeared as well, and I had
stopped taking my inhaler. I usually played until my quads started
screaming and my abs started burning. In fact, the abs burning
sensation was the only way I knew that I was getting more stamina and
endurance to play, and that only came about on the harder songs. But
the pain was non-issue. I still played the game to my limits on most
evenings, leaving the arcade sweating. Sometimes even in the middle of
winter.
The next big leap was that Konami, the company responsible for
developing the game in Japan was paying attention. Konami responded to
the growing interest by releasing a new game called 'Dance Dance
Revolution USA' This was a re-hash of a game already released and that
we had played most of the songs. But what was more profound was that
there were even HARDER, FASTER and LONGER songs in the game. Most of
us had not attempted the harder songs because we all assumed they would
be impossible for humans to play. And then the 'new guy' showed up.
Immediately, he destroyed our records that we had set, and showed us
that passing the harder songs was possible. This was also in
correspondence to a nationwide tournament that Konami had hosted,
awarding the player with the top score a prize. This meant playing
these harder songs, 3 times in a row, and not missing a beat to get a
'perfect score.'
The three songs I remember were almost impossible to us were "Dead
End", "Paranoia Rebirth", and "Afronova". The worse part about these
songs is that I could read the 'notes' and move my feet fast enough to
catch them, but either I'd lose focus or my legs would give out. The
height of my obsession for the game was traveling maybe an hour each
way from my house to an arcade in Northbrook to practice these songs
until I could pass them. I took them down in order, Dead End was first
after I memorized the step patterns and practiced them with an mp3
player before trying them on the machine. By the time I was in range
for the competition, it was already over. I placed pretty decently in
other tournaments I decided to participate in.
Later on, I had left for school again, at Northern Illinois
University. At Northern, I started the late night video games club by
hooking up my modified Playstation to a big screen TV in the dorms and
playing all night, challenging and beating all newcomers. Soon we had
endurance matches. I remember at the height, I had played close to 100
songs in a row, on random (so some were easy and some were hard). I
was a lean mean ancing machine, back down to 150 pounds and feeling
great doing it.
Not soon after that time, Dance Dance Revolution became a household
name. Media reports were coming in about people losing weight playing
the game. In fact, there is a Diet / Workout mode in some of the
versions of the game available.
The payoff was huge! I still play the game occasionally, except I don't
have the stamina to play for hours at a time like I did. I've
transferred my obsession to occasional strength and core training, to
which my trainer is always surprised by my level of endurance and pain
tolerance. It's definitely something I don't like to hear, but I know
it's the only way I'll get stronger and become healthier.
Filed under: coaching, Events, News, Nutrition, Tips
Tags: Dance Dance Revolution, david wallach, Gameworks, Konami, New Workout, Video Games, William English
I used to play lots of DDR at GW back in the day (2000-2002). I know exactly what you're talking about - I'd show up at 6pm on Thursday night and leave at 1am for about 2 years straight (sometimes Monday or Fridays too). I wonder if we knew each other back then - I knew most of the GW DDR regulars back then.