Cool demo. Turns out it kind of ruins the game because it makes the task of timing turns so much harder, but there was no way of knowing that until you tried it :) Great experiment, though!
I actually really enjoyed the weird spin on gameplay and didn't have the timings issue you raised. However I did have problems forgetting which lightcycle I was after I died (that one lap around the board seemed to throw me every time!)
I do like this game a lot though - if just for the novelty factor