With the recent and long-awaited release of Dancing Stage Euromix 2 in the UK, I decided to have a look around the UK discussion forums for Dance Dance Revolution. A lot of people criticised Euromix 1 for having a dated interface and small song selection, but at the time of release it used the most recent Japanese game engine. Of course, a couple of years later it was dated – but now we have Euromix 2, which once again uses the latest Japanese engine and has an impressive selection of songs that will no doubt propel it to the top of the arcade charts, fuelled by the pocket money of scallies across the country.
It’s always amusing, reading the accounts of DDR players in the UK. Arcades over here are different from those in the US, and now that many arcades have DDR, they’ve attracted gaggles of young teenage, usually female ‘scallies’ who play the same (easy) songs every time and generally get in the way of the more serious players. A few quotes from UK DDR players:
“While half way through Max 300 [a difficult song] some slappers got on the other side taking the piss and swearing at me, then they tried to hit the arrows while I was stepping on them, man, playing any of these dancegames above standard level creates tension with scallies.”
“Damn, I need to find me somewhere I can play properly and not get abused and tormented by a buncha townies.”
“I call them DDR hookers, they’re scavengers, if you start failing you hear,”Can I do it for you?” and then you get “Can I have your last stage?”. Like I paid £1 for some other cheap slapper to play it for me.”
I don’t play DDR that much in the arcades, simply because the nearest one is about 20 minutes drive away. When I do get a chance to play I don’t usually encounter any problems from scallies who are thankfully thin on the ground at the places I go to. Contrast this with my experience in America, where arcades are uniformly three times cheaper than in the UK and the DDR players have skills years in advance of us…
mssv 