Pump it up!

Do you know the arcade machine in the picture? It's an Exceed or 'Pump it up' machine. According to the official website, they can only be found in Spain, Taiwan, Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and the USA.
Before a few weeks, I had never seen one in my life. Until it suddenly showed up in the arcade hall in the local mall. It was standing alone in a corner, flashing its lights and playing jingles to attract potential gamers.
Two weeks ago, when we entered the mall, we suddenly saw a huge crowd at the entrance of the arcade hall. As curiosity is my middle name, I persuaded Mónica to go with me and check out what was going on. We found out that they were all looking, staring in disbelief was more like it, at 2 youngsters on the machine.


Exceed is a dance simulation game, which consists of a projection screen and a dancefloor with 5 pressure sensitive panels. As the music starts, the symbols that are also on the panels of the dancefloor begin to move up the screen with the music. The player has to step on the corresponding panel on the dance floor as each symbol reaches the top of the screen. That way, the player is sort of dancing to the music.
Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, it looks impossible, I can tell you. Especially when you see those kids, dancing and jumping to the music at a speed so fast that I couldn't even follow the symbols on the screen. People were looking with open mouths at the spectacle.

So I started wondering where these professionals suddenly came from, as I never had seen anybody dancing on the machine before. That's when I started investigating, and found out there is going to be an exceed tournament at the same mall on the first of may. So apparently, they were practicing for the tournament.
Further investigation led me to the official site of the Spanish 'pump it up' community. Apparently there has been already a tournament at our mall in february, and when I looked at the pictures of the event, there they were, the same youngsters.
If we don't forget about the event, we sure will go check it out. And I'm going to take my video camera, because you are not going to believe your eyes when you see what these kids are capable of.