DDR etiquette

I was playing on an arcade machine the other day and someone comes up and asks if they can vs. with me. So I figured, no harm, I'll even let him pick 2nd song...

So I pick first, set my difficulty to maniac (it was a 5th mix machine), ask him if he's ready and go. He's playing trick. We finish and before I know it, he picks Paranoia and I'm stuck on Maniac, which I had no intention of doing. I did pretty well (I he failed real fast on trick) but not well enough to pass. Bam...Game over.

Am I missing something? Is this considered acceptable? I've only recently begun playing in the arcade, so I don't really know the unwritten rules. Heck, I'm just getting a hang of the token queue thing.

Any other unwritten rules that I should know about for DDR arcade play?

This is not acceptable. When someone is playing with me, I always make sure to specifically ask if the song and the difficulty setting are OK before I hit the button. If it's a DDRMAX or beyond, I also ask if they want the options screen.

As far as picking songs, if someone asks to play with me, I let them pick the middle song. If I ask to play with someone, I let them pick all the songs. If we go up at the same time, we just talk it out, or agree on songs.

This is generally the accepted way to do things in the arcade, so the guy you were playing with just might have been a jerk, or just careless.

Last time I played in the arcade, the guy I was with hit the button too soon and I was stuck playing "The Cube" on light (boring). But he apologized profusely and offered to pay for my next game.

Other unwritten rules? I dunno, most of them are self-explanatory... like don't talk to someone who's playing, don't touch the pad or bar if you're not playing, don't put your coins up or in the slot during a song... and most importantly, don't be an assclown and brag about yourself, even if you *can* back it up.

Hitting start too quick isn't cool. Rob does that to me a lot. ;)

And I do it to Kristin a lot.

I'm still stunned by the people who have never seen a coin row on the machine and act surprised when you tell them to get the hell off the stage. Happened to me twice at Cedar Point this year.

I can see problems with coin rows, especially for people that are used to playing in places that don't have coins (IE Gameworks, D&B, Jillians, etc.). That I don't have problems with, unless they blatantly ignore the coin line after they're told what it is.

I do have a problem with talkers and shadowers (unless I know that shadower and don't mind them doing it). I also have a problem with time card whores (people who think having an 'all you can play for an hour' card gives you the right to hog a machine for unlimited play during that time [namely at Gameworks]). It's a bad idea abused to hell and back.

-Chris

I get a kick out of it when people look at the coin row and go "Wow! Free tokens!!!" Sometimes I just want to smack some people.

What I hate are the people who put a coin up, then go play other games for a while, and expect it to be their turn when they get back. Sorry, if you weren't here when your coin was up, you lose it.

A while back, my local GameWorks was offering unlimited play for a *MONTH* for only $35. That is the most packed I've ever seen a DDR machine. I went on a Thursday night for 3 hours and got in three games.

Anyway, the cool thing was, everybody with timed cards would swipe their cards after every song, so the machine had about 50 credits on it. They were letting those who didn't have timed cards play for free.

More things I hate:
-people who want to play by themselves when there's a crowd.
-people who refuse to try new songs (how many times have I heard Cowgirl, End of the Century and Afronova, over and over).

I'm sure there are more. ;) But it's mostly the n00bs who annoy me... most of the DDR community knows the "rules."

One thing that actually pisses me off to no end are the people who think that the 60 secs for each menu are there for them to use. I understand that you want to take a breath between songs, but there's no need to go have a conversation, buy a drink, flip back and forth between three songs and paint your nails between each and every song. My God.

You get in shape faster if you play the songs in rapid succession anyway. :-P

Oh yeah, I hate that, too. It's 99 looong seconds on my local machines, and whenever someone wants to play a 10-foot song, they always "rest" during that time. Nevermind there's a line of 8 people waiting.

I wish Extreme was like DDRUSA, where you get like 10 seconds to choose. :)

I had the worst experience with idiots at six flags once. When my friend and i got to the machine there were a bunch of newbies just standing there watching someone play on light. We had to wait for this guy to get off the machine or fail, which he didn't despite his badness. Then we took the machine and played our first game. Afterward we both needed more tokens so we went to the token machine. While we were over there some little kid who thought he was awesome took the machine. He barely finished the first song on beginner and then proceeded to take 97 of the 99 seconds in between songs to find what he wanted. After all that time he failed the song. When my friend and i got back up on the pad, the little kid decdided to step on it and lean on the bars directly behind me. I was like what is this kid doing and told him to stop breathing down my neck but then he went to the other side and stood on the other pad. As if this wasn't annoying enough, there were like 40 people stanging there asking us questions inbetween songs and one lady asked us if we wanted to join a dance class. After that we started a coin line because we wanted to play again but the people on the machine took the coins and put them in the machine because they thought we were paying for their game. This was after explaining the coin line concept to everyone several times. There were people cutting all over the place and there was mass caos. We eventually ended up leaving the arcade to avoid the stupidity and riding the villain for the rest of the night. I still can't believe people can be that mindless.

What I REALLY don't like is when people put their coins in while you're playing. The sound is really annoying and it's distracting to have someone crouching down there. Just wait till I'm done or use a token line.

Other than that I can't think of anything anyone has done to really bug me. Most of the people that play at my arcade are pretty good and know all the rules.

This has nothing to do with people, but it really frustrates me when you can't hear the music.

At GameWorks, the DDR Extreme is right next to an old DDRUSA, yet the older game is much louder... it's quite distracting when someone plays it. The DDREx is so quiet that you can't hear it unless you're up on the pad. And if it's a Friday or Saturday night, forget it, they have house music playing and you can't hear the DDR music *at all.* I guess that's why there's never anyone playing DDR on those nights.

Funny that in my city, the Magic Mountain locations (kiddy arcades) are the only places that actually turn up their DDR machines to acceptable volume levels.