Ah jeez I'm HOW many behind?
I met my spouse in 2003 because of Dance Dance Revolution. There weren't too many people in our little North Texas suburb who knew much of DDR outside of "oh, that thing at the mall?", so when you found someone who actually cared about the game as much as you it was extra special. We played so much DDR together. He has always been better than me, but that's never bothered me. It's nice to have someone on the dancepad beside you, no matter what the skill level.
Our preferred DDR haunt, the local Gameworks inside the mall, started with a 3rd Mix machine. Then they got a DDR USA (that absolutely no one liked) to sit alongside the 3rd Mix machine. Then they swapped the 3rd Mix for a DDR Max. Then they upgraded to DDR Max 2. Finally they got a DDR Extreme, put the Max 2 cabinet in the DDR USA spot, and got rid of DDR USA.
We played so much DDR. We played SO MUCH DDR. And yeah, we had the home versions and the little mushy soft pads, but it's not even remotely the same thing. I'm not the first person to get all boo-hooey about how the age of arcades and local communal gaming spots are over, and I won't be the last.
We don't play much anymore. Nineteen years later and we have grown older, pudgier, and much more tired. I've seemingly lost a lot of foot-eye coordination, and I'm not sure if that's due to lack of practice or age. He's still better at me, but songs that would have left him lightly sweaty as a teen leave him pretty winded now.
The mall that we frequented eventually lost its Gameworks in 2010, but it now has a Round 1. The Round 1 has more DDR cabs than the Gameworks ever did, and they now have gigantic industrial fans set up to blow on the DDR players at all time. Bless them for that. It's a superior arcade in almost every way, but it's not our dingy Gameworks with it's late 90s fakey industrial aesthetic, and I miss it.