As threatened earlier, I’ve started to work Dance Dance Revolution (the specific version I have is DDRMAX, just for the record) into my exercise routine. I do it on days when either the weather is such that I’d rather not jog, or when I’m recovering from a cold and don’t feel like jogging but don’t mind exercising without leaving the house.
Interesting results. I sweat at least as much while playing DDR as I do when jogging. I almost never breathe as heavily, though. It does seem to get the heart rate up pretty well. My legs don’t feel as tired as they do when I’m jogging. All in all, I’m pretty sure that jogging does me more good than DDR does (especially since I suspect that I need aerobic exercise more than other forms of exercise), but DDR is probably better than nothing, and it’s possible that they’re helpful in complementary ways.
Certainly playing DDR is a lot more fun than jogging, even with iPod. The music is great, and there are enough songs there that it will take a while for me to get bored from the repetition. DDR and Katamari Damacy are convincing me that Namco has the best music of any video game company. (Though Space Channel 5 was pretty awesome, too…) Pleasantly challenging, with a nice learning curve.
The room layout isn’t that great: the couch is kind of close to the TV, which is fine for watching TV and playing video games normally, but not so great if you’re standing in front of the couch. For whatever reason, the pad shifts a little bit while I’m playing; that’s not too surprising, but what is interesting (to me, at least) is that it rotates clockwise. What asymmetry in my play style causes that? (It could be an asymmetry in the pad itself, but I can’t think of one.) I haven’t counted, but I think I use both feet about the same amount. (A little strange, actually: I would have expected I’d favor my right foot.) It may be the case that I hit the front arrow more with my right foot and the back arrow more with my left foot, but why would that cause rotation? Maybe I move more emphatically when going from front/back to side than in the other direction? Hard to say.
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I’ve had the same two problems. :) We ended up buying an anti-slip mat for under the DDR pad; one of these:1
http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=-1&SKU=105122
I found it interesting how my fiance’s style of play differs from mine — I’d pick a track (Break Down, IIRC) and keep practising it until I could turn the speed up (this was in Medium mode) and pass it, whereas she went steadily through all the Light mode songs and then started on the Medium ones. Different degrees of obsessiveness, I suppose. :)
– C.
6/13/2005 @ 8:28 am
I’m going through the all the songs on light mode, myself. (Where success means an A grade; I did get a AA on one song just to prove that I could do it, but I doubt I’ll try for that more generally.) Though some of the ones at the end are really tough; I’m experimenting now with going through some of the songs I’ve unlocked instead of the ones that are available from the start, and I may also experiment more with the earlier songs on medium difficulty.
I doubt I’ll adopt your strategy of a single song on multiple levels, though: hearing the same song several times in a row is already not my favorite thing to do. I should try it once or twice, though, just to see how the same song feels on different levels.
6/15/2005 @ 9:18 pm
That makes sense. I wondered if my strategy was being inspired by the way I learnt to play Go (hanging around much stronger players and reducing handicap stones), or the way programmers are expected to become competent when given new projects (immerse yourself in the code until it starts to make sense); but if you’re following the steady route then I’m sure I’m over-simplifying. ;-)
– C.
6/16/2005 @ 6:14 am