It's been a while since I've updated this, so here is all the latest DDR news in my life:

A friend of mine is moving and sold a lot of his Bemani goods.  I ended up purchasing DDR (Japanese 1st mix) and DDR 4th Mix (Japanese) and pop'n music 9 & 10 from him.  I haven't played any of them, but I hope to soon.  Solo will be fun.  He also gave me a pop'n music 2 soundtrack, which I've been listening to today at work.  It's pretty good.

Since my friend is moving far away, he won't be able to go out TGA any more.  Because of this a bunch of us decided to go out for one last outing to TGA before the move.  We went on Mother's Day and there was hardly anyone else there.  We got to play a lot and hardly had to wait for anything.  TGA's 5th mix was fixed and they had the two new unlocked songs and courses on their SN2 machine.  I played a lot of DDR, Troopers, and pop'n (passed a 36!). 

On Saturday night I went out to Crossgates and met some other DDR players there, namely Tofu and PureBlue.  It's cool to go out and meet other people.  It really adds a lot to the game, plus it makes you take breaks so you don't pass out.  Tofu mentioned that he's trying to make this a regular Saturday thing which would be pretty cool. 

I went out to TGA on Saturday and met up with a bunch of friends of mine (djgets, SoFreshSoDarryl, brian, and tofu).

DDR-

I passed two new 10s on Doubles: Trim and Legend of Max.  LoM nearly killed me and I scraped by with a C.  At one point some other players and I did a couple rounds of swapping during Doubles (two people play a doubles chart and when the arrows are all on one side, the other player hops off and new person hops on).  We only got B's but it was really fun.  We played with the random Dance Mania Nonstop course.

IIDX-

I finally got to play DJ Troopers.  The new interface is tight, but I think I like GOLD's better.  They added a feature where you can now play on different difficulty levels with a friend, which is nice.  There is also a counter on by default that shows how far ahead or behind you are compared to your opponent.

There is a ton of great new music.  The new HHH song (Dazzlin' Darlin) is so fabulous to say the least.  StripE has two new songs (one might be new to GOLD), and there is a nice Buchiage Pop song.  There are some good new trance (and schranz?) songs too.  RAM is back with a song that sounds just like High, which is fine by me.  All in all it seems to be a great mix.

pop'n music-

I played a bunch of pop'n.  That's pretty much it.  I passed a bunch of 31's.

Last night I finally got a mat for Universe 2.  I got my copy of the game a while ago through Agora Games and it didn't come with the pad, so I went out last night and bought a new copy of Universe 2 with the mat included.  Now I can finally dance instead of use the Xbox 360 controller!

I put it to good use by participating in JUJEE's Dancing Wednesdays.  She puts a lot of work in to setting up times to play with other Xbox 360 DDR players.  Check out this post where she outlines her process.  It was really fun playing playing with her and Silvercube!  If anyone else wants to play Universe or Universe 2 online then I suggest you check it out.

I went back to that arcade that has a Max 2 last night and played for a good 2 hours.  It's a great mix - I just wish I had more options for an extra stage.  The arrows are pretty far recessed so it makes playing MaxX Unlimited pretty tough. 

I was out driving a friend around tonight and we decided to stop by a new arcade we had never been to.  I had seen through the window that had an Extreme cabinet so I figured why not stop in and play a couple rounds?  To my surprise it was actually a Max 2 (through the banner was for Extreme).  The pads were pretty bad but I had never played Max 2 in an arcade before.  I could only play two rounds because I had just eaten and I got pretty sore pretty fast, but I'll definitely be back soon for some more Max 2 action.  It's only about 10 minutes away!

The new DDR Community site goes live in 2 days!  I'm pretty excited.  I'm also excited about starting up this blog.  I would like to use it for showcasing new videos I intend to take not only for DDR, but for IIDX and pop'n music too.  Right now my camera situation leaves something to be desired though.  We'll see how this develops...