> "What are You Thinking?"

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Dancing Games
Konami/ Jaleco/ Sega/ etc


Dance Dance Trance

What Are You Thinking? "What are you thinking?" is one of those handy, all-purpose rhetorical questions I find myself asking, especially around E3. It has both good and bad connotations, as genius and nut-flipping insanity are often two sides of the same coin.

One of the few great bits in the otherwise kinda-crappy movie incarnation of William Gibson's brilliant short story Johnny Mnemonic was the notion of "NAS," or Neural Attenuation Syndrome. It served as the movie's version of AIDS, a widespread and stigmatized affliction that basically wreaked havoc on the nervous system. And where did it come from? Put simply, it came from all the electromagnetic futz in the air---radio waves, microwaves, T-waves, cellphone chatter, radiomail, flashing lights...and it made people kinda weird, sometimes. The point of this rolling missive is that I've come to believe in NAS, or something like it; too much electroballyhoo crud in the air really does begin to affect the brain, and you won't find a more concentrated, blipvert dose of the stuff than on the E3 showfloor. It's the only explanation for some of this stuff, be it good, bad or ugly.

Witness the dance game phenomenon: Stepping Selection, Dance Dance Revolution, Drummania, Maraca-What-the-Hell---where, one might well ask, did all this stuff come from? And the answer, of course, is Japan. They may be conceptually ahead of us at some points and behind us at others but, Godzilla bless 'em, they're weirder than us. The hell of it is, these dance/rythm/music titles actually work, and they can lull gamers into a kind of pulsating, toe-tappin' Zen-zone. Not only that, but pasty gamers worldwide can actually get some exercise and develop some steppin' style: I can say without hyperbole that the single most impressive man/machine fusion I witnessed during the entire E3 debacle was watching two teenagers at a Dance Dance Revolution arcade machine in Disneyland, and they were, in the vernacular, workin' it---pumping those feet and hitting every cue, whap, whap, stomp-stomp-stomp. Granted, it's a lot more impressive with full-on floor pads, drum pads or what have you, but even the finger-flexing controller route finds the geeky gamer stumbling into something like grace.

And then somebody asks you if Jill Valentine could take Lara Croft in a fight, and reality reasserts itself.

-Chris Hudak

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