The best part about college is finally finding those who find similar interests of yours. For me, this is having a DDR machine with so much Pendulum that you're constantly finding the need to "Hold Your Colour" (lol, get because... Pendulum?... nevermind..)


DO YOU GET IT NAO!?

Hidden in the back of the dining hall/academic building, aptly named Festival, lies a modified Dance Dance Revolution: Supernova machine running on a lonely tower. Last year, a group Math and Computer Science majors, dissatisfied with the limits of the Supernova machine, decided to put their skills to work. With JMU's approval, this group removed the current system running the machine and added an old Dell desktop running StepMania on an In The Groove UI. Although it had a rough start with constant patches, hardware upgrades and rewrites to the .bat files, the team considered it a success.

Today, this Supernova machine holds over 2500 songs, (including artists like Freezepop, Infected Mushroom, Justice, DMX... I mean, shit, even songs from Lazytown), and runs at a smooth 60 frames per second. The machine is slowly but surely becoming a landmark for the eastern end of campus, leaving freshman and prospective students curious and asking themselves, "is it really free?"

The machine has also brought a small but sure sense of community for all types of gamers. The machine has led to other gaming events to Festival, such as Smash Bros. tournaments and DJ Hero premieres. The players/programmers are all in a tight-knit group, constantly finding ways to improve the cabinet. Hell, thanks to the machine, friendships have grown stronger, romantic relationships have blossomed and the a new culture of gamers has become a dominant force in the east side of JMU.

Despite being a freshman (these days they call us "freshman bait"), I'm pretty damn proud of being part of the crowd that supports this fine piece of arcade goodness. For me, it brought new life into the rhythm game genre and, as much as I hate to admit it, made me want to go to this school.


Hot pole raping action.


Freshman enjoying the joy of a ridiculous Expert step chart.