Around the same time of 9-11 incident, there are gossips among DDR players in the home front concerning the next DDR mix. Konami had decided to put forth another DDR o the music game community. It was known that the new DDR mix will not follow the nth mix pattern, and will be known as DDR MAX with exclusively new songs and artists with several remixes from older DDR versions.
To be honest, I did not expect much from DDR MAX, since the only place in Toronto (and probably in Ontario) to get this DDR MAX thingy is Lovegetty Station ¡V of which getting there by public transit is next to impossible and people in Team Gwai Lo do not like the place ¡V and Orbit in Pacific Mall. However, people agreed that the probability of getting DDR MAX is much lower since they have failed to persuade the management to upgrade when the 5th mix came out. Pity me for studying in Waterloo and what we got was a pathetic DDR USA!
Apart from
DDR music, I had been listening to music from other Bemani games, especially
from Beatmania IIDX. Some songs are very good, like
DJ TAKA¡¦s Abyss and Absolute. (Both songs appeared in
DDR 5th mix) I also started listening to music outside Bemani. One day, out of curiously, I downloaded the
legendary anti-war protest song Imagine by John Lennon while I chatted with Emi
over the internet.
¡¨So Kenny, what music have you been listening recently?¡¨
¡¨I am still listening to Bemani stuff and some also other songs. I am currently
downloading Imagine by John Lennon.¡¨
¡¨This song seems to be disappeared from air since September 11.¡¨ Emi said.
¡¨Is it? I read something about censorship on music in post-911 era several days
ago. Maybe Imagine is a victim of
this.¡¨
¡¨You know what? People are crying for revenge for World Trade Centre attacks. What will people think when they hear this:
Imagine there's no countries,
It isn¡¦t hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...¡¨
¡¨This is nothing new at all. The so called patriotism
and what the president said about either you are with us or with the terrorists
are going to haunt us for a long time.¡¨ I wrote.
¡¨Even in Bemani, do we hear the word ¡¥bitch¡¦ a lot? And will we see more
E-Rotic songs in later mixes? I highly doubt it because as this game grows
popularity someone is going to complain. Also, DDR and drugs does not mix.
¡¨And this is actually Rage typing this, sitting beside Emi.¡¨
¡¨Forget about sex, drugs, and whatnot. I hope the music industry today does not
just talk about what so-called ¡¥love¡¦. We need more songs promoting peace and
just peace.¡¨ I typed. ¡§But we need more than loud protests to do that. Also, I
do not think that anything controversial related to such process, like drugs or
gay/lesbian, should be involved. Another Woodstock is not
quite the answer we need. Well, this is not the 60s after all.¡¨
¡§Woodstock? I think I heard it somewhere.¡¨
¡¨Sometime in 1969 there was a concert in
the United States ¡V Woodstock. (Note: I later found out that the actual date was in August 15-17,
1969, in a town called Bethel in New York, for those interested to know) It was
believed that four hundred thousand rock fan attended the concert, although
this figure was being doubted by many.
¡¨You know, a lot happened in the 60s. It was the decade when the younger
generation revolted against their parents, or precisely, the traditional
values. This rage was fuelled by the Vietnam War, which ended up as complete
failure in terms of military operation and public relation. The image of napalm
bombs stunned people across the globe and America
was blamed for using this. Furthermore, conscription was still in effect in the
60s, and tens of thousands of young men were sent to Vietnam
to ¡¥fight the communists¡¦. America
lost 68,000 soldiers during the Vietnam War approximately. The teens got the
true feeling of defeat.
On the home front, the space race, especially the Apollo Program, gave the
younger generation a vision of courage and challenge. Also, the civil right
movement was slowly changing the way people think. You probably know Martin
Luther King and his ¡¥I Have a Dream¡¦ speech already and so I am not going into
detail it here. The effect of civil right movement was that the younger
generation challenged the view on coloured races.
¡¨The Woodstock concert was held under such social atmosphere. It was a rock
concert and well, chaos. Condoms, marijuana, mushrooms, hallucinations (but no
ecstasy ¡V it was not invented yet).¡¨ I typed.
¡¨You know so many things, Kenny.¡¨ Emi typed.
¡¨People call me a walking encyclopaedia.¡¨
¡¨It is a rather sad thing that those politicians were not learning from the
history. I do not hear the subject of peace often, even in video games. Do you
count DDR as an exception?¡¨
¡¨Even though IGN¡¦s review describe DDR as a perfect solution
since it feature no violence, I do not think DDR can believe enough blow to the
industry at this moment. Let¡¦s see what DDR MAX will offer us first.¡¨ I typed.
