After listening to Paul Oakenfold's "Password" and The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" for the umpteenth time, I told my friend that it'd be cool if we could get a handful of friends together to dance to the songs. Basically, each person would dance to a specific instrument in the song as it came into
play.
These two songs start off with just one or two instruments in the beginning, then every 20 or so seconds, another instrument jumps in. At the end of 2 minutes, there's like 6 main instruments going on. Being electronica songs, the instruments really don't change their routine very often, so it's easy to dance to.
"Smack..." for example, has one instrument loop for the first 20 seconds. That's one person moving around. At 21 sec, another instrument comes in, so that's another person jammin. At 49 sec, a big drum sound... that could be the third person, smashing away with his hands. :)
How's this relate to a game? Dance Dance Revolution is a popular coin-op arcade game today. Two dancers compete against each other. The one who can coordinate their feet onto the dance pads the best wins.
My idea is that DDR should expand into 4 to 8 players, allowing team versus dance battles. Teams of 4 could all coordinate into one dance song against another team of 4, using this person-to-instrument thing I mentioned above. It'd be really fun to watch, I think :)
Of course, the idea of putting more players onto DDR machines in arcades has been said many times, as it's just fun to watch many people do the same stuff together (See Moulin Rouge). But I think the idea of having each individual of a team jam to a specific instrument routine is heard a lot less often, and this could be a great option (not a required play style) of future DDR games.
(The addition of high-up hand pads, and maybe some pads you kick in front of you, would also help out.. especially for people who need to bash things to the really strong drum instruments)