I went to the Brass Mill Center today to play on the DDR machine of the Regal Cinemas within the mall. It was…an interesting day, to say the least. Because of my mad DDR skillz*, I received:
- Half a pack of gum
- A dollar
- The assurance that I could continue to use the machine
I’ll discuss the last one first. You may be asking “Why would you think that you couldn’t use the machine? Did you perform some criminal act while at the mall or something?”, and the answer is “No.” But here’s the thing. You’ll note that I wrote “…to play on the DDR machine of the Regal Cinemas…” Apparently (This was being explained to someone behind me–while I was playing a song..I think it was Keep On Movin’, and I got 5/1/1 on it if you fellow dance gamers reading this are curious–so I just picked up bits and pieces of it), though the Brass Mill Center houses the cinemas who currently own the machine, Regal Cinemas are a separate entity from the mall. Further, cinemas in general don’t like being treated like arcades–the machines, including this particular DDR, are supposed to be there as something you do for a game or two while you wait for your movie to start–not, as I was doing, for one person to play continually without ever going near the theater proper. I didn’t know the second part of this at the time, although in the end it wouldn’t matter. I finished my song, and as the theater guy, I think his name was Mike, finishes his explanation about how he doesn’t like people treating the cinema area like an arcade, he tells me “Well, I’ll let you do it, because I like watching people do really well on this game” or something to that effect. So yeah.
I got the dollar from some kid after doing (Relatively speaking) really well on some songs on my last set of the day. He just gave it to me and actually said something like “Here you go, thank you.” and I just said “Wow, thanks.” I don’t actually know if getting the gum was directly related to my skill or not, but it makes the whole story somehow better if it was, so…
By the way, pictures of my three best scores of the day are behind the cut below. They’re my first three arcade SDGs, or “Single-Digit Greats”–in other words, getting under 10 Greats on a song and nothing below that.
*I’m still not that good compared to top-tier players, and would get destroyed at almost any tournament on the game (Fourth-place finish in a tournament in Trumbull notwithstanding).
Loading tweets...
5 comments
1 ping
Skip to comment form
Author
Also, mwahaha, take that, absolute column sizes! My pictures trample you!
I DONT LIKE THE ARCADE MACHINCES BEING TREATED LIKE A ARCADE.
W
T
F
Author
I don’t get it either. I mean, in the case of cinemas housed in their own buildings I do–their big profit items are the movies and (Even moreso) concessions, so the odds of someone going in and actually playing enough of the arcade games (exclusively, as opposed to a game or two while waiting for a movie to start) to equal the profit they garner from a movie/concessions is rather small. But in this specific instance of the cinema being in a mall, I would have to think that there are a decent number of people playing a game or two (Or in my case, I think it was eleven throughout the course of the day) who would not otherwise set foot in the cinema area and are thus giving this specific location extra money that they apparently don’t want.
In short, I get the idea for the overall model, but think this specific location is only screwing itself by not making an exception to it.
Ahh I was so excited about this machine but my friend said the machine’s pads actually suck. I guess you have photographic proof they don’t. (Or that you just know how to work it out on crappy pads?)
Author
@ Anonymous!: In all honesty, given the overall state of arrowsmashing games in CT, plus the frequent maintenance I have to do on my Cobalt Flux, I wouldn’t be surprised if some element of the second had subconsciously worked its way into my play style by now. But I don’t think that’s all of it, it’s not as though I can just say “This pad sucks here, I’d better compensate by doing this”–which, if you know the anatomy of an arcade dance pad, it apparently is possible to do.
But the machine is pretty good. The 2P side seems to be better than the 1P side right now. I got the occasional “WTF?” miss, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say the 2P side especially “sucks”. As you noted, I pulled 3 legit SDGs and have proof of such, so..
[…] leaving out the stuff as regards my DDR adventure yesterday, this was a pretty eventful week for me […]