Dance Dance Revolution prompts heart attack

A fifteen-year-old American girl has survived a brush with the almighty after her heart stopped during a presumably hectic bout of Dance Dance Revolution at the arcade. DDR, better known on this side of the planet as Dancing Stage, sees players tapping their feet on symbols on the floor that correspond to directions indicated on the screen - the idea, for those with no idea, is to 'dance' along as accurately and punctually as possible.

It was while attempting to keep up with the beat that young Kimber Wilson collapsed in an arcade in Bellevue. Fortunately for her, arcade owners and police were on hand to apply CPR, and paramedics were able to get her heart up and running again with help from a defibrillator. She is currently recovering in hospital.

However the fact that she was playing Dance Dance Revolution, it turns out, was just a coincidence - and not some bizarre proof of the old "games are bad for you" line. According to her doctor, Kimber suffers from a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy - in layman's terms, the walls around her heart are so thick that it wasn't receiving signals to beat. "You could be asleep, walking, running, sitting down to eat. It can hit ya," her father Eddie told The Omaha Channel.

Fortunately for Kimber, a pacemaker and a lifetime of medication ought to stave off any future heart attacks, although we have a feeling she won't be venturing near a Dance Dance unit any time in the near future. Or, as she so succinctly put it from her bed when asked what she'd be doing when she returned to the arcade: "I might try Dance Dance Revolution, but I'm thinking no."