I recall passing Paranoia Survivor for the first time. It was a huge moment for me since the hardest thing I could pass at the time was Sakura on Heavy.

So who won the match???

He did. It was the first song of the last set and I was in no condition to continue the next song after that. Also, it was getting late and the arcade dude wanted to close shop and get home. =D

I will never forget the day I gave 5 little fan girls autographs... I had just finished beasting HDV Oni at Acme...The next thing you know, I was shown a pencil and a piece of paper, requesting for my autograph. It was the darnest thing, and so I proceeded in fulfilling the little girls wishes.

That is the first time ever, anyone has asked me for an autograph... And so that's my Bemani story. =)

Sometime circa 2004 in Pullman, the local mall's arcade had a series of DDR Extreme tournaments. For the 'final tournament' they moved the entire DDR machine out into the mall's main walk. For us players, it was awesome. We gathered huge crowds of 30 - 40 people and got to show off our moves. Unfortunately, the other mall tenants didn't appreciate the noise pollution. Apparently the music echoed all the way down the entire mall. The arcade operator said he probably couldn't do something like that again, so I'm glad I got in on it while I could.

P.S. I have an old picture of the event. If I can find it, I'll post it.

These two aren't personal, but the employees at the arcade I used to hang out at told me these stories that I thought were interesting.

The first one was one of the employees playing Dance Maniax and getting really into it.  He ended up hitting his hand on one of the sensors HARD and when he came around with it again, ended up flinging blood over ten feet away onto the walls.  IIRC, he needed stitches to close the gash in his hard.

The second was a sketchy guy running into the arcade and then laying low in the back.  A few minutes later some cops showed up looking for someone who'd robbed a liquor store or something.  An employee motioned to the guy in the back who ended up getting arrested and led out in handcuffs.  :/


Two personal ones are when I was total fatass, I played Energizer on easy (lol) and ended up so winded I had to go sit outside by the bushes because I almost threw up from over exertion.  I'm happy to say that I've literally halved my weight by changing my diet since then.

Second was later on when I was still playing 7 and 8 foot songs on hard.  I played Romeo & Juli8 on expert (which is a 9 foot song) as my last song of the set without even expecting to pass it.  I passed it and it totally blew me away.  I started playing expert 9s and passing them after that.  Before then, every expert 9 I played I failed miserably but would play them anyway as my last song for the practice.

It was almost like passing Romeo & Juli8 that night unlocked something in my brain.  All of a sudden I could pass songs that I couldn't even come close to passing not even a day before.  I'm still not really sure what happened.  Weird, I know.

Mental blocks are just as hard to overcome as physical ones. It took me YEARS to pass Max 300. Mostly 'cause I had built up this belief in my head that I couldn't pass the boss songs, no matter what.

Somehow, once I finally did pass it, The other maxes followed close behind it. Sometimes we psyche ourselves out too much.

Btw, here's a picture I promised of me playing in the tournament with the machine in the center of the mall. It's sad to think that the arcade which hosted this tournament doesn't even exist now. =\

Winning one of the very first DDR tournaments at Seattle GameWorks, back in the "DDR 1.5" days, when the hardest song on the machine was Paranoia on Maniac, at a mere 8 feet.  "J Dogg" (he ran the DDR Freak BBS) came up for that tournament and he won the Style division.  Then we got together later and drove north for some Canada bemani action.  That GameWorks tournament was the only time I ever won a DDR contest.  Would be lucky to even qualify for one these days, considering how much more difficult the songs have gotten.  And how much older and fatter I am. 

Running the DDR Magic tournaments at Illusionz is a good memory too.  As was the arcade itself.  I miss the days when you could just drop in on a random night and there'd be a couple of people waiting to play, so there was someone to socialize with while you caught your breath for the next game.

There are probably a lot of other memories buried in my head somewhere, but those are the first ones that come to mind.

Also sad that virtually every arcade I frequented back in the day (2002-2005) is closed

I was in Disneyland during Spring Break of 2006, and what was I doing? I was playing DDR Extreme in the Starcade. Not even Disneyland could distract from my game at the time, lol.

Anyways, I was there for around 3 days and every night I would play in the Starcade until I was exhausted and then return back to the hotel for the night. On the last day I walked on the machine and somebody behind me tried to get my attention. He asked me if I was the guy that he saw playing yesterday.

Frankly, hundreds of people played yesterday, so I considered it impossible to know if I was the guy he was referring to and I told him that. He then clarified and asked if I was the one who got an A on Max300 Heavy Doubles. This definitely narrowed it down, mostly because of doubles, and I said that there was a good chance that I was the same guy.

The then challenged me to do Legend of Max Heavy Doubles. I don't know how many people play doubles here, but the difference between Max300 and LoM in singles isn't ridiculous, but in doubles it was a whole different story. Max300 is a fairly tame 10 on doubles, but LoM is definitely pushing the 11 range on doubles, even though it's really not too bad at single.

I told him I'd pick it as my last song since I'd probably fail. However, during my first 2 songs of that set, I attracted quite the crowd (roughly 40-50 people) because tourists love gathering around...well...other crowds of tourists to see what was going on and it WAS Disneyland during Spring Break after all.

With this big of a crowd, I didn't want to fail a song, but I didn't want to let the guy down by not doing LoM when I said I would. I sucked it up and tried for it, though at this time I had NEVER passed it before. Out of absolute sheer dedication and willpower, I forged a pass on it (C, but hey, first pass and it's honestly tricky on doubles), but it a great cost.

Amidst the adrenaline and pressure from 40+ sets of eyes, I stepped wrong and BROKE MY TOE and completely SHATTERED MY TOENAIL. I didn't notice until right when the song was over, to which I proceeded to hobble back to the hotel and address the bloody broken miss of my big toe.

However, I don't regret it. That's probably my most badass DDR story. Ever. I guarantee my first LoM Doubles pass was more appreciated than yours just because of the ridiculous circumstances.

WTF? Damn that sounds brutal...BUT AWESOME.

Soon after I started attending WSU (circa 2004) I was in the old Bookie when someone came up to me and said "Oh hey! You play DDR?". He noticed the "Revolutionary" DDR T-shirt I was wearing and correctly assumed I was a diddler. He asked what I could play up to, which at the time was 10's, but only Sakura and Bag. He nodded and I asked him the same question. He told me he could usually pass Max Unlimited. I've seen this done before, but I was still impressed.

Anyways, we chatted a little bit more, and at the end he suggested we should meet up at the arcade sometime. We exchanged names and numbers and went about our business. Sure enough, within a few months we had encountered each other repeatedly at the local DDR hotspots. At the time, he and I were arguably the 1st and 2nd best players in the area. I continually tried to improve my game to catch up with him...though I never did quite get there.

He also seemed like such a DDR Freak to me. He knew so many details and so much trivia about DDR that I thought he was nutz. Ironically, when he left Pullman about a year and a half after we met, I took on the role of the crazy-obsessed DDR freak. He must've gotten me started down that obsessive path.

Through our time at WSU, we become pretty good buds. Fortunately we both live in Seattle now and still play once in a while. It's too bad though, because both of us are so busy with our lives that we just don't have the time for those 5 hour DDR marathons like we used to in college.

To all of you young peeps out there who're reading this, heed my advice; Make the most of it while you can. No matter what you think it'll be like, once you have a 8-5 job, a serious relationship, and other responsibilities, you'll be lucky to play 5 hours of DDR/ITG a week. Even if you have a machine in your garage. >_>

Ya yo are absolutely right.I agree with your words.

I miss those days when passing 10s made you feel like you accomplished something.

Now I feel like AAAs and Quad* is the standard. Well I guess I've felt like that for a few years now.

Those were awesome days. Except for me it was still passing 9's while others were busy passing 10's, but same thing.

This always comes to mind. (It's also a memory of how out of shape and poorly dressed I was then, but still)

Oh my god, it's adorable 18 year old Tony!

Nice Star Fox poster.

Btw, that guy in the bottom left wearing the UW shirt. Is that Tada?

That guy on the bottom left wearing the UW shirt is Tada, LOL.

Damn, you were too quick. I just edited my post to make more sense. Well, herp derp for me.

Ah man, that was a great bemani get-together.