Hmm, do I really need another addiction?
So Mike and I went out and got ourselves a copy of DDR. This promises to occupy a large chunk of my time, although on the bright side at least I can pretend it's for a good cause (namely, getting myself in better shape -- and that even has a kernel of truth to it).

While buying the pads, I was thinking -- I owned one of the old Nintendo PowerPads, and I enjoyed it immensely, but of course there weren't any games available for it. There was World Class Track Meet, which I played quite a bit of, until I became really good at it, but there was nothing else. I think there might have been one dance game, but I don't remember anything about it -- plus, the design of the PowerPad (just 12 buttons in a grid; nothing in the way of directions, really) didn't really lend itself to dancing in the first place. Now, of course, the concept of DDR is quite popular, and the pads are much more plentiful (not to mention cheaper -- the PowerPad was $99, while the pads for DDR were $25 -- though that's not as large as it might seem, since the PowerPad did accomodate two players), so perhaps the technology was just ahead of its time (it's true that the PowerPad wasn't all that great, or perhaps just not all that well-synchronized with the game, since there would be countless times that you would try to jump and your character just wouldn't jump; it really encouraged cheating by using your hands instead of really jumping).

Actually, between the DDR pads and the fact that I've recently noticed a Power Glove-esque item being sold (its original incarnation was absolutely terrible, at least in my experience playing it at my friend's house, but I'll bet the technology has improved), I wonder if there's a revival of old-school Nintendo hardware going on (the robot notwithstanding). Ironically, the light gun, which was by far the most popular of the alternative input devices that Nintendo pioneered (didn't everyone have Duck Hunt, after all?) seems to be the most left behind in this -- I know the Playstation has a light gun, but I don't think I've ever seen a game which uses it, or anyone who owned it. I wonder why?