my god man! were you TRYING TO GET YOURSELF KILLED? ANKLE WEIGHTS?! that's a good idea for cardio and strength building too... it was an age where nerds were starting to have to develop proper ligament extensors to succeed in nerdism..... I was a pretty big athlete but my best friend was a HUGE nerd and so we paired up for better or worse... DDR and Tribes were our life.... I fucking miss the way it used to be.... I'm so happy I stayed nerd and never went full jock though. DDR was amazing... and yeah Butterfly was pretty damn tough if I remember correctly... but we, like you and Mychal, were always pushing it.... :D
my god man! were you TRYING TO GET YOURSELF KILLED? ANKLE WEIGHTS?!
Gahaha! I'm a great hero, so I won't die so easily. I'm also building a heroic harem. Send women.
The hardest song I ever passed was Max 300. Me and Mychal were trying it in the arcade, and I just barely managed a "C" rank on it. Link to the heavy step chart - not my gameplay, I wasn't recording it, but that's the song. I was convinced I would die by the end, even saying during the one break in the song "I'm not gonna make it". Somehow, I pushed through.
Those days were actually fantastic. I can tell you remember them fondly too.
My and my friend Mychal were determined to go all-out and be the best around. Enter Pokemon theme song here.
We went out and bought an Ion Dance Pad, which is very similar to the arcade version, but with a different color scheme. But it has the metal bottom piece for durability and the handle bar in the back. We used that to practice on at home, using the Stepmania PC program which has a billion different songs (including animes, games, and all kinds of other stuff people would upload with their own step charts for the songs). This let us do it to all kinds of stuff.
We even went to Wal-Mart and got ankle weights - 2 lb and 5 lb ones - so that we could go intense practice. The idea was to eventually get those pants that snap on, so that you can just tear them off, and do that at the mall and reveal the ankle weights that way, causing everyone to flip their shit. Writing about it now, it sounds so fucking dumb, but that was the plan. When we practiced at home, when you did ~30 minutes on ankle weights and then took them off for a break, it felt like I was floating. Songs were so much easier without the weights.
Butterfly really was a tough song. Using the rafters to balance yourself is smart. I wish I had it and could still play, but alas.