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than 55,000 members. These fans have also celebrated their obsession by organizing tournaments worldwide.
Carolyn Coyle, Baldwin, Mo., admits to suffering from a self-diagnosed disease called CRD (Caucasian Rhythm Disorder). DDR is the only dancing she can do, so
she uses it as a stress reliever. As she prepares to go head to head (or foot to foot) with another player, she is frustrated because one of the machine's sensors is sticking. She decides to play anyway. I watch as she and Mallory Smith compete, their feet moving in perfect unison. Coyle's face is screwed up in intense concentration as she tries to do her best, but that damned pad is sticking, messing up her score. The lights mixed with Coyle's and Smith's in-sync feet make the girls look like dancers in a flashy '80s music video. Up, Right, Right, Down, the song gets faster and their feet try
to catch up. Their stomping sets the lights aflame and the song comes to an abrupt Coyle shakes her head at her score, silently cursing that blasted stuck pad.
sic so much that he downloaded some of the songs before he even started playing DDR. The songs sound like poppy, techno that could appear in an anime feature. There are also recognizable covers, remixed into a techno version. Voisey enjoys the game so much that he sometimes plays three to six hours a day. Recently, after one particularly long round of
The music is another aspect of the game that generates fandom. Jon Voisey, St. Louis junior, says he enjoyed the mu-
Jason Gibson, DDRs on his dance pad in front of his house's plasma TV screen. Photo by Lindsey Ramsey
DDR, he injured both his feet.
"It's worth mentioning that playing three to six hours a day is not the brightest of ideas," says Voisey of hurting his feet. If the rhythm actually does get you, players can buy CDs of the music if they want.
"I have friends who play DDR so much that they can actually do the steps to the music without having the arrows in front of them. It's ridiculous," Matzke says.
Some recog-
Some recognizable titles include remixes of Justin Timberlake's "Senorita" and Queen's "We Will Rock You." Other song titles, perhaps unrecognizable but still worth mentioning include, "Burning the Floor" and "Hyper Eurobeat." And if you think these song titles sound enticing . . .
...wait until you try these tunes on the machine and start feeling the burn. Hundreds of DDR fanatics have reported that their love for DDR has contributed to weight loss.
The next fad diet
(DDR) is just like any other hobby, just something to look forward to doing after work or class. I pulled an anti-freshman 15 because of it too, which was nice," Mindy Edgar, Leavenworth junior, says.
The newest version of DDR, DDR Extreme, even has a workout mode and researchers are developing new DDR-like games to combat child obesity. Richard Adler, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee in Memphis is one of these researchers, and he says that children today are much less active than they used to be, in part because parents are afraid to let them out of the house to run around and be kids. According to Adler, 70 percent of homes in this country have some type of gaming system and he wants to capitalize on the fact that children now play a lot more video games than going outside and running around. A post on www.yourselfitness.com, a personal trainer Web site, compared the calories burned during DDR to the 200 calories burned during 20 minutes on a stationary bike. So Adler knows games like DDR are the answer to motivating overweight kids to get up and get moving.
"What better way to get kids active than for parents to say to their kids, 'go for it, you can play DDR all day if you
want?' And, if the kids are overweight they will burn off the excess fat in time," Adler says. "Aside from running, cycling, swimming or other physically demanding activities performed for at least one hour daily, I have found nothing better (than DDR) for kids."
It's my turn now. A DDR virgin, my fellow gamers promise to take it slow. I pick an old favorite. "We Are the Champions," only now instead of Queen's soothing tones, it's a techno remix and I position my feet. I am nervous, especially after watching all these people who belong on a DDR version of "American Idol." I look at the arrows in front of me when I remember that I am not the quickest person to distinguish left and right. Oh, well, I think, it's too late now. Up, Left, Down, Down, Right, Up. My feet are a flurry of misdirection. Meanwhile my arms have no clue what to do. They hang awkwardly at my sides, wondering what is going on down at my feet. The game is wondering, too, as all I can see is the word Miss, Miss, Miss over and over. As the song winds down I try to give the old Chaos Theory a try and just start jumping haphazardly on the sensors, hoping that my score will miraculously improve. But no such luck. As the song ends, I am left with a dismal score and little dignity among these seasoned DDR players. Then a song called "Witch Doctor" starts and I just can't contain myself.