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I played a *lot* of DDR in my 20s, starting in late 2002. My usual routine was to play one song after another on heavy (hard), with no breaks except long enough to select a song, for 30-60 minutes straight 3-4 times a week. This was at home, mind you, where I had a soft pad mounted onto a piece of plywood with some of those clear vinyl floor coverings on top and some non-slip stuff on the back. So yeah, I played a *lot* of DDR, and though I was never one of those insanely good players, I was far from a bad player. I could easily pass the 9-foot songs, and could occasionally pass a small number of 10-foot songs (桜 (Sakura) specifically). And on those rare occasions I went to an arcade, I would do all of this without ever touching the bar, and while also kinda halfway sorta _dancing_, which I guess is why I sometimes would draw a small crowd around me. So yeah, not insanely good, but good enough that I was entertaining. Of course, I didn't do it for the attention. 90% of my DDR was done at home as my way of exercising - well, along with bike riding and aikido. It was also a way for me to connect to music, which has always been a hugely important part of my life. DDR was something I did because I absolutely LOVED it.
Unfortunately, these days I have to deal with both arthritis in my knees, and fibromyalgia more generally, so I don't really play DDR anymore, at least not on a pad. I still open up and play Stepmania on my computer keyboard from time to time, though it isn't quite the same. I also used to play Rock Band quite a bit back when I had a PS3, which was at least still somewhat physical, especially since I played the drums with it. But, no PS3 anymore, and I don't have my controllers anymore anyway.
I am starting to get back into rhythm games though, including ones outside of DDR/Stepmania. A friend on Mastodon introduced me to osu! recently and it didn't take long for me to get hooked. It's still not DDR (I don't think anything will ever replace that game in my heart), but it's still fun as hell, and I'm even finding that I enjoy mapping for it. I also tried a game on Android recently called Noisz Starlight, which is an interesting combination of vertical "hit the notes" and danmaku dodging (and lots of yuri, always a plus in my book). It's not as deep as osu! is, but I am impressed that a game managed to fit those two genres together so well.
So I miss DDR because it was so huge to me, but I think osu! might just be the replacement I needed in order to get back into rhythm games. We'll see what happens. I just had some random thoughts on them that I wanted to get down on digital paper tonight.
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