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 The Precursor: November 21st, 1998. Konami, a well-respected and intrepid videogame developer, responsible for such memorable series’ as Contra, Castlevania, Mystical Ninja, and Metal Gear Solid, introduced their second entry into their rhythm-based music-heavy game division called Bemani. The first and most popular was called Beatmania; their second was called Dance Dance Revolution. It was a deceptively simple arcade game: music played through the cabinet’s speakers and subwoofers while arrows scrolled from the bottom of the screen to the top. When they reached the top, the player had to press on the corresponding arrow on the metal pad they were standing on. They were rewarded for their timing and accuracy, and at the end of the song, the player was given a letter grade: anywhere from an F (if they failed) to an AAA (if they stepped on every arrow with absolutely perfect accuracy). Dance Dance Revolution quickly became too popular for the island nation that berthed it, and it quickly spread to all corners of the globe. Critiques praised it for its intuitive, simplistic controls and its amazing stamina as a videogame – even today, while arcades lay dying and gasping before the dominant home console market, Dance Dance Revolution remains one of the few games to withstand the test of time. West Virginia used the game as part of their gym classes. It was that popular. Dance Dance Revolution received sequel and add-on after sequel – three times it got a same-year sequel: in 1999; in 2001; and in 2002. In 2002, they released the penultimate (at the time) version of their game, called Dance Dance Revolution: Extreme, which included every song from every previous version into one single, massive videogame. Extreme is the version most everyone is familiar with. Then, Dance Dance Revolution essentially vanished from the arcade scene. Extreme was released in a massively dumbed-down PS2 version, which itself received a sort of gimmicky sequel, but otherwise, the series was gone: perhaps because Extreme was doing so well, or because Konami knew the arcade scene was fading away. Either way, Dance Dance Revolution didn’t get any more sequels for years after that. The Challenger: That same year, a company called RoXoR Games popped out of someone’s garage in Austin, Texas. Staffed by 25 people and claiming to have experience in developing such games as Ultima Online 2 and South Park Max, the first game they developed was called Tux Racer, which took the Linux penguin mascot on an adventure sliding down mountains and collecting fish to boost their high score. The second game they developed was called In The Groove, in 2004. In The Groove was an American knock-off from Dance Dance Revolution, plain and simple. It was developed using the free open-source software program called StepMania, which was itself a sort of emulator for Dance Dance Revolution. By acquiring licensing deals with largely underground and/or European techno artists as well as a small cadre of in-house musicians, RoXoR released In The Groove to arcades. The biggest thing that separated In The Groove from DDR was the content: DDR mostly used J-Pop and mainstream artists and its level of difficulty, even on the hardest mode, was somewhat lacking after a little mastery. In The Groove catered to more American tastes by using more rave and dance music and absolutely nothing mainstream, and it pandered to every audience by including difficulties for both beginners and intense, competitive experts. It was a knock-off, but it was crafted with care by enthusiasts of Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution, and it really showed. On June 18th, 2005, RoXoR released a sequel, simply titled In The Groove 2. So, wait… you’re playing StepMania? Not at all. Well, yes, if you want to be pedantic about it. But no, I’m playing the real deal: an actual, legitimate In The Groove 2 arcade machine. With a real cabinet, and real metal pads. The computer part of the arcade machine is just a literal computer, using standard, generic parts. The monitor connects to the computer via VGA, so it’s possible to split that signal to a computer or laptop and record directly off the game that way. But, to further satisfy the ‘pics or it didn’t happen’ clause, I’ll have a camera pointed at my feet to show that I’m really moving my feet as quickly as the game implies. I’ll be playing every song in both In The Groove and In The Groove 2 (although I intend to focus more on ITG1 at the beginning) on the hardest difficulty, in both Singles and Doubles. I’ll generally just play on whichever order I feel like, but I’m open to requests. What is the goal of this LP? There are three:
I like StepMania too! Can I participate? Can you put the “let’s” in “let us play”? You absolutely can! In The Groove comes with a feature that lets any player play a custom-made stepfile for any of the songs included in their playlists. If you’d like me to play a chart you made for any ITG1 (or, later, any ITG2) song, you can download the song of your choosing here (scroll to the bottom and choose In The Groove or In The Groove 2 under the Pack Singles category) and edit the stepfile as you like (you cannot adjust the BPM or add/remove stops, just so you know, or else the edited chart will desync from the game). You don’t need anything special other than a free-to-download copy of StepMania and the song you’re editing. In The Groove runs on StepMania 3.95, which was never an “official” release. It’s considered far buggier than the two releases around it, 3.9 and 4.0, but it uses some features that 3.9 doesn’t have and it retains some compatibility that was lost with 4.0. I know StepMania is all the way up to 5.0 now, but if possible, please write your charts in StepMania 3.9 or in 3.95. Once you’ve made your chart, upload it to any file-sharing web service and I’ll handle it from there. What custom content a player can play goes far, far deeper than just some edited charts to pre-existing songs, however… but we’ll burn that bridge when we cross it. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves! Are you willing to freestyle? No. The purpose of this LP is to show off my skill at playing the game, and the game gets way too demanding at the higher tiers to risk throwing in some unnecessary moves. The game even says that “extreme motions can be dangerous” at the start of every session. Some of the songs are nonetheless boringly easy even on their hardest difficulty. I still don’t want to freestyle, so what I’ll do instead is cram those songs full of modifiers to give myself an extra bit of challenge. Update list: Video: Attract Screen, in-game beginner tutorial Video: Advanced Tutorial 1: Colours, Motions, and Reading Video: Gameplay 1: (Singles) DJ Party, Flying High, Remember December, Hardcore of the North Post: Artist spotlight: BB Hayes, Filo Bedo, Mind Reflection, Digital Explosion Video: Gameplay 2: (Doubles) Land of the Rising Sun, Torn, Euphoria, Kagami Post: Artist spotlight: Spacekats, Natalie Browne Video: Gameplay 3: (Singles) Boogie Down, I Think I Like That Sound, Da Roots (Folk Mix), My Favourite Game Post: Artist spotlight: Inurvise, Kid Whatever Video: Gameplay 4: (Doubles) The Game, No 1 Nation, ROM-eo & Juli8, Hip Hop Jam Video: Advanced Tutorial 2: Crossovers/Candlesteps, Hands/Bracketing, and Why Hip Hop Jam DX is So Difficult Post: Artist spotlight: Crispy, Anet, Nina, Indiggo Video: Gameplay 5: (Singles) While Tha Rekkid Spinz, Kiss Me Red, Driving Force Classical, Charlene Post: Artist spotlight: DJ Zombie, Missing Heart Video: Gameplay 6: (Doubles) Tough Enough, On a Day Like Today, Mouth, Hand of Time Post: Artist spotlight: Vanilla Ninja, Obsession, Rochelle, Reflection Theory Video: Gameplay 7: (Singles) Anubis, Disconnected, Oasis, Euphoria Post: Artist spotlight: Kyle Ward Video: Gameplay 8: (Doubles) Let My Love Go Blind, Hybrid, Lemmings on the Run, Bend Your Mind Video: Gameplay 9: (Singles) Fly Away, Solina, Turn It On, The Beginning Post: Artist spotlight: Machinae Supremacy, E-Rotic, Evolution, GeorgetowN, DJ Doo Video: Gameplay 10: (Doubles) Disconnected -Mobius-, Don't Promise Me, Mellow, Perfect Post: Artist spotlight: Sammi Morelli Video: Gameplay 11: (Singles) Why Me, Zodiac, PA Theme, Infection Post: Artist Spotlight: Desire, MC Frontalot Thanks to my friend Olive Branch for ripping (most of) the artist logos for the artist spotlights. Songlist: (click the left half of a song’s banner for Singles, and the right half for Doubles) (ITG1)             -banner.png) -banner2.png)                                                                                                    
Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Sep 24, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 06:09
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Artist spotlight: William Hayes originally began mixing his own music way back in 1985. His first regular gig was working at a male strip club in San Jose on Wednesdays and Fridays; they paid him in "exposure" enough for him to get noticed by a local radio station, and from there his career in mixing music absolutely took off. If you live in the San Francisco area, I'm told you can still catch some of his music today, on stations Alice Content 97.3, House Nation 94.9, and Thump Radio. But his career didn't truly reach its pinnacle until one day he happened to be filling in a gig for another DJ. While at this other gig, he ran into none other than Rob Schneider (the one and the same) - who, you may not have known, owns (or, at least, owned) a club in San Fran called the DNA Lounge. He liked Hayes' music so much that he offered him a permanent job there. He's since done private gigs for other big names, such as Prince and Robin Williams. It looks as though Hayes has calmed down a bit since then. I can't find many recent tracks by him, but he has a Facebook account that he keeps moderately up-to-date (he even posted a picture of him playing his own song on In The Groove recently), so it looks as though he's still keeping busy. Fun Fact: DJ Party was his first full original vocal track, released in 2001. Sources/Links: http://thedjlist.com/djs/BB_HAYES/bio/ - Biography. I'm not certain how up-to-date it is, though. http://www.reverbnation.com/bbhayes - You can find a small handful of his original mixes for free here, including DJ Party. https://myspace.com/bbhayes - His Myspace. It's pretty barren but it has a song there Reverbnation doesn't. https://www.facebook.com/pages/BB-Hayes/218844151463366 - His 'BB Hayes' Facebook account.  Filo Bedo is a UK techno group comprised of Daz Sampson, Ricardo Autobahn, and Jenny McLaren. If I understand my Internet correctly, Daz Sampson actually wanted to be a professional football player before he wanted to be a DJ, but a crippling injury at 17 years old stopped that dream before it began. Daz Sampson, or DJ Daz, is a member of various other formations when he's not working by himself, including Bus Stop, Rikki & Daz, Barndance Boys, and Uniting Nations. If the name "Bus Stop" sounds familiar, it's probably because they did Kung Fu Fighting. Daz has written, or been a part of, several other songs that made it into past iterations of Dance Dance Revolution. Ricardo Autobahn (real name John Matthews) was Rikki in the Rikki & Daz group, and he co-founded Barndance Boys. He was members of the bands Spray and the Cuban Boys - the Cuban Boys finding wild success in their song "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia", which you would probably better recognize as "The Hamster Dance Song." Matthew's still producing and remixing music today - just last year he came out with his second Ricardo Autobahn record Rasterscan. In 2009, he made a Youtube-only single called "The Golden Age of Video", which was some western audience's first exposure to him, or at least, he was for me. Jenny McLaren is the other member of Matthew's band Spray. Far as I can tell, she doesn't produce any music herself, but she's done lots of vocals for Sampson and Matthew. Spray, according to its website, "predicted the current electropop boom, but unfortunately much too early to cash in." For reference, the song Flying High by Filo Bedo was released in 2003. Fun Facts: The vinyl release of Filo Bedo's Flying High was misspelled as "Fliying High" on the record's sleeve. Sources/Links: http://www.dazsampson.co.uk/ - Daz Sampson's personal website. I got a 'this website is not safe' warning when I tried to visit it, so exercise caution. http://www.ricardoautobahn.co.uk/ - Ricardo Autobahn's personal website. https://myspace.com/jennymclaren - Jenny McLaren's personal Myspace. https://myspace.com/filobedouk - Filo Bedo's Myspace. Contains two other songs for free listening. http://spray.get-ctrl.com/ - Spray's website. http://www.thecubanboys.co.uk/ - Cuban Boy's website. http://www.discogs.com/Filo-Bedo-Fliying-High/release/1278336 - The sleeve for Flying High.  Mind Reflection is a Swiss electronica music group that formed in 1994. Unfortunately, there isn't a ton of information on them on the internet... the only information I could find was on Wikipedia, telling me they released one album in 1998 called This World, which contains the song featured in the video, "Remember December." They started their own company, called "Audio Trade Laudan & Co.", so they could distribute their album how they wanted to. A search on iTunes, however, reveals that they've released several other albums as well, titled Your Way and A Few Dollars More, with a single titled In The Night. Their music is still available on the internet for purchase, and in some places for free, but if you're looking for a history lesson, I'm afraid I'm not of much use. Sources/Links: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=104346 - Aside from iTunes, this is the only known available source of Mind Reflection's music. https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/mind-reflection/id338211325 - The music available in iTunes.  Digital Explosion was a Finnish techno band that was highly popular on MP3.com, back when that meant something, I'm sure. The "group" was founded by two brothers, inspired by the works of Kraftwerk, Human League and Depeche Mode. Their first tracks were recorded one synth and with a double deck tape recorder. They were pretty basic, but they had since expanded their gear and their reportoire until they were one of MP3.com's most valued artists. As of this writing, their main website is out of commission, but it was working when I had visited it maybe half a year ago. They had never truly vanished from the scene, they had simply "taken a break", according to them. They celebrated their supposed return by re-releasing their tracks onto iTunes in 2012. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find them there anymore, even if I change my country to Finland. Which is a drat shame; I liked their music enough to snag a handful while I could. EDIT: sulovilen posted:I found some of their tracks (for free!) in http://www.mikseri.net/artists/digitalexplosion.51764.php. Mikseri.net is like the Finnish electronic music equivalent of Soundcloud (actually it was founded in 2001, so maybe vice versa). I think that the website is not country restricted. This is a great find! Thanks, sulovilen! Sources/Links: http://www.digitalexplosion.fi/ - Their homepage, which was alive and well as late as 2012, but is apparently completely gone now. http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=129084 - They have a Soundclick account that looks like it hasn't been updated in a decade. It contains two songs and a short interview done by the brothers. http://www.mikseri.net/artists/digitalexplosion.51764.php - Forums user silovilen did my job better than me and found a Finnish Soundcloud-like website that has a handful of Digital Explosion songs for free. Thanks, sulovilen! Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Jun 7, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 06:10
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Let's hope this LP of the game lasts longer than one or two updates! So how often are you planning on updating?
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Jun 4, 2014 20:46
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Olive Branch posted:Let's hope this LP of the game lasts longer than one or two updates! Usually I kept to something of a schedule with my other LPs, but this time I'm going to try and be a little more casual about it. Once a week is the goal, maybe more, maybe less. That said, I already have a pretty substantial backlog of videos to work with, so if I disappear, it'll probably be for some other reason.
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Jun 4, 2014 20:51
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Ah, ITG. I had the singular experience of being spoken to in one of the most accusatory and hostile tones I think I've ever experienced at E3 2005 when I went to demo ITG. For context, RoXoR and Konami were involved in a fairly standard, but acrimonious lawsuit in May 2005. Essentially Konami claimed that ITG, although it wasn't based on any kind of code Konami had written, was infringing on their intellectual property by copying exactly their format for a dance game, I.E. four arrows, scrolling up to a step zone, etc. In July, the scope of the lawsuit was expanded to the home version of In The Groove, which had been released two weeks prior. Konami ended up winning the IP rights to ITG in the lawsuit a year later, and the rest of the ITG code was made freely available. Anyway, I showed up to demo the PS2 version of the game in the Kentia Hall. Kentia was the sort of tertiary hall that E3 used to have (I have no idea if it still does) to demo games and technology from companies who couldn't afford to pay the rates for the main hall, which were pretty exorbitant in 2005. RedOctane, the producer of the very first Guitar Hero for the PS2, and still, at that time, a manufacturer of fairly sturdy dance pads, was demoing Guitar Hero for the first time a couple of booths away, and RoXoR was using their mats for the demonstration. I played a couple of songs, and was, after my second song, accosted by one of the gentlemen demoing the game that day. He had been eying me and whispering for most of the duration of my second song. "How do you like the game?" He sneered. "It's great. I'm a fan, I've been following your guys' development eagerly. Konami hasn't been putting enough challenging songs in their games of late, and you guys could be the push and competition they need to actually innovate." I replied. "Really? I guess the reason you're here to see it is that you're scared." "Uh, what?" "Why else would you be suing us if you didn't feel we posed any kind of a threat to you?" "Huh?" I was a little bit flabbergasted at this point. "But no, instead you can spend your time down here looking at the competition and stealing from us instead. Don't think we won't bring this up in court" At that point I was looking extremely confused, and didn't know what to say to respond, so he took a look at my badge, which stated that I was there representing Artech as a programmer. "Wait, you don't work for Konami? You're not Jason Enos?" "No, man, he's been upstairs working the Konami stage show for like two days." "Oh... Well..." He then turned and walked away without saying another word, and continued to stare at me until I left, feeling slightly insulted, and slightly amused. But that remains the only time I've been mistaken for a Konami senior brand manager, and the only time I've seen someone go from full-on furious snark to embarassed rage in four sentences. In The Groove, though, fun game. I was never good enough to actually pass the harder songs on ITG, I was only barely able to pass MAX300 in DDR, and it's since progressed so far beyond the game I recognize that it's almost difficult to follow. A couple of questions, based on your first video: 1) I can't see your upper body in the video, but I'm assuming based on the body position that you bar hump (I don't like this term, but I can't think of a suitable alternative that isn't worse). Horrible lexical connotations aside, what do you think of the practice? 2) What's your feeling on the recent Konami releases? Assuming you've kept up-to-date, have they done enough to actually innovate in terms of stepcharts or is it still the same stuff it used to be? I haven't kept up with DDR, so I have no real knowledge of this on my own, just curious to ask someone who's obviously very good, as it used to be a real issue. 3) What do you think of the copyright/IP issue between the two companies, and, more broadly, about open-source or alternative versions of popular games using identical formats, e.g. Lunatic Rave, Stepmania, OSU!, etc.? Good luck on the LP otherwise, and good luck on Vertex and Vertex^2 Those are stupid charts.
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Jun 4, 2014 22:23
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Fusbolito McGiggola posted:1) I can't see your upper body in the video, but I'm assuming based on the body position that you bar hump (I don't like this term, but I can't think of a suitable alternative that isn't worse). Horrible lexical connotations aside, what do you think of the practice? I use the bar, yeah. I honestly don't see what the big deal is about using the bar or not. I mean, it's there, why not just play the game how you like? That said, some charts in ITG are so intensely difficult that I'd have a huge amount of trouble trying to beat them without it. I like to go barless for some easier charts but there's no way I'm beating Hardcore of the North without it. quote:2) What's your feeling on the recent Konami releases? Assuming you've kept up-to-date, have they done enough to actually innovate in terms of stepcharts or is it still the same stuff it used to be? I haven't kept up with DDR, so I have no real knowledge of this on my own, just curious to ask someone who's obviously very good, as it used to be a real issue. I played a bit of the X series, and it felt like Konami just... forgot, or, like, didn't know how to make a decent chart that was also hard. Arrows would go to nothing and have patterns that didn't make sense; they were hard for the sake of being hard. I played DDR 2013, though, and that felt really well polished, especially coming from X. They don't really try to push the envelope with new ideas, but they take old ideas and refine them, I think. quote:3) What do you think of the copyright/IP issue between the two companies, and, more broadly, about open-source or alternative versions of popular games using identical formats, e.g. Lunatic Rave, Stepmania, OSU!, etc.? God, that was almost a decade ago. I've practically forgotten how I feel about it. I guess, at this point, my opinion is that it's over with and the dust has long since settled; no use dwelling on it. We're not going to get any more In The Grooves, but ITG2 was an absolutely amazing game and I'm really glad we got to see it at all. As for open-source emulation, I never really thought about it. They keep happening and nobody's shutting them down, so I guess there's nothing to worry about. If you want to play some custom songs in DDR or Osu, you can have your cake and eat it, too. quote:Good luck on the LP otherwise, and good luck on Vertex and Vertex^2 Those are stupid charts. Vertex is just a big ole' softy when you take the time to learn it. Vertex2 is going to be a bitch, though.
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Jun 4, 2014 22:51
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Maple Leaf posted:I use the bar, yeah. I honestly don't see what the big deal is about using the bar or not. I mean, it's there, why not just play the game how you like? That said, some charts in ITG are so intensely difficult that I'd have a huge amount of trouble trying to beat them without it. I like to go barless for some easier charts but there's no way I'm beating Hardcore of the North without it. Yeah, I agree. I kind of feel like it's required for anything over a 10, which, I suppose, is why I've never used it myself, I've just never been good enough to need it. HotN is one of those charts which I love, because it's got a ludicrous amount of notes, but there's no tomfoolery, it just follows the beat of the song. My equivalent song for that back in the day was So Deep, loved that song. Vertex^2, though, has stoppages for absolutely no reason, and with no warning, and the only way you could possibly prepare for them is to know exactly when they're coming. Maple Leaf posted:I played a bit of the X series, and it felt like Konami just... forgot, or, like, didn't know how to make a decent chart that was also hard. Arrows would go to nothing and have patterns that didn't make sense; they were hard for the sake of being hard. I played DDR 2013, though, and that felt really well polished, especially coming from X. They don't really try to push the envelope with new ideas, but they take old ideas and refine them, I think. I found it funny that the only real innovation in terms of gameplay that they've been able to introduce over the past ten years is... mines, which ITG sort of pioneered. Maple Leaf posted:Vertex is just a big ole' softy when you take the time to learn it. Vertex2 is going to be a bitch, though. Yeah, that's why I could never do this. I'm a sightreader by nature, in most music games I play, so songs like Vertex would kill me with that speedup at the end. Also the mines. The stupid amount of mines on that song made it almost impossible for me to read, when I was playing. I was one of those people who could do Bag on 1x but not PSM because it just came at you too quickly for my eyes.
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Jun 5, 2014 02:55
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Barless superiority. Humping the bar is for the weak!
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Jun 5, 2014 03:10
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Playing barefoot, you madman. If i ever tried to do that on a metal pad, I'd lose a toe. Also, any possibility if throwing songs (and stepfiles) at you, to showcase them? I've got a couple in mind that are quite a lot of fun. Aishlinn fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Jun 5, 2014 |
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Jun 5, 2014 03:39
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Aishlinn posted:Playing barefoot, you madman. If i ever tried to do that on a metal pad, I'd lose a toe. I wanted to put off custom songs until I got started on ITG2's songlist, which wouldn't be for a while. But yeah, I'd love to play some custom junk when I'm ready for them! Like I said in the OP, if you want to make edits to any ITG1 songs, I can do those sooner.
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Jun 5, 2014 04:12
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Fusbolito McGiggola posted:I found it funny that the only real innovation in terms of gameplay that they've been able to introduce over the past ten years is... mines, which ITG sort of pioneered. Bemani is not known for their willingness to make changes to franchises that are doing just fine (in their eyes). For comparison, the number of years it took IIDX to have charge (held) notes/backspins added in is probably just about equal. From the original IIDX to SIRIUS was just over 10 years, and with regards to actual play, is the only gameplay change the series has had since '99. Each series in the whole group of games has had minimal changes outside of UI and ease of use improvements, which is where the bulk of the development that isn't on new music/charts tends to go. From my understanding, at least nowadays, Konami's arcade division really only cares about profits from Japan, and the rest of the world is just an afterthought. Also, seconding playing barefoot being crazy. I've done it once or twice on arcade pads and poo poo hurts if you miss a pad and catch a screw sticking out one of the corner plates. There's a cabinet at a local gaming store I frequent, and I just have zero urge to play it since the only people I ever see on it are the sort of people who come in and play the same 3-15 songs at one set difficulty level every week. I don't get how that's fun. To opine on the death of dance games in arcades: I feel, at least in western lands, that the communities involved in playing DDR/ITG just got too elitist for their own good. The number of times I'd play on a machine and get looks from people who exclusively play 10+ difficulty songs was enough to turn me off from the genre as a whole, and the same thing has done in rhythm games on consoles in the international market. With Guitar Hero, if you weren't playing on expert and doing just the hardest songs, you didn't count, and the same goes to Rock Band. The communities as a whole tended to stop making it about fun, and more about dick-wagging over scores and poo poo, and why would anyone spend a bunch of money to get into that?
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Jun 5, 2014 05:24
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This is nuts, my brain can't even keep along with all the arrows on the screen let alone watching you do it as well. I thought playing Rock Band drums on expert was an accomplishment.
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Jun 5, 2014 06:18
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Oh man, I miss playing dancing games. I worked at a movie theater that had a DDR: Extreme machine and I would play it every single day after work. I got pretty good too. Sadly, there weren't any ITG machines around here (not while I was still into the genre) so I only rarely got to play that game. My best accomplishment was passing Destiny on Expert and getting a pretty solid score. I could play everything on Extreme with relative ease, on any difficulty, save for Paranoia Survivor Max Oni (or PSMO, as the "cool" kids called it). I didn't get to play much of SuperNOVA, but I did get to try some of the harder songs from that on an ITG 2 machine once.  The one arcade here does have an ITG 2 machine now. I've been meaning to try to get back into it, but...eh. I'm jealous that you have your own, that's pretty rad. How much does an entire arcade machine cost you?
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Jun 5, 2014 07:03
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BlackFrost posted:I'm jealous that you have your own, that's pretty rad. How much does an entire arcade machine cost you? Mine ran me $1380 CAD. Plus I had to rent a U-Haul, make a two hour drive both ways, pay for its gas... it rounded out to roughly $2k. And even then it's costing me a small chunk of change for the upkeep - it's a very picky game when it comes to parts. I've gotten a lot of flak for spending that much money on an arcade machine, but I love this game so much that it was honestly a dream of mine to own it, and I don't regret the purchase at all. For comparison, when the game came out in 2005, dedicated cabinets (or "dedicabs") cost $10k USD before shipping. Dedicabs are also very rare today and on the off chance you find one on eBay, they sell for ~$2k. Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Jun 5, 2014 |
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Jun 5, 2014 07:30
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Can we all just come over and play at your place? I miss the DDR community that we used to have in Denver, but eventually everyone moved apart or just plain moved, and the machines fell into disrepair. Now we live in this post-dancepocalyptic world where the only machines left operational are those in the hands of private collectors (and fifty-foot tall bandits). Arcade tokens are the only real currency as gamers stumble across the wastes with an unquenchable thirst for AAA runs and unbroken pad sensors. On the bright side, at least every Dave and Buster's has a Pump It Up machine. So yes, I suppose that's a roundabout way of saying that I'm looking forward to seeing you tear through the songlist, Maple Leaf, and to all the horrific repressed memories your efforts are sure to bring up. And I suppose I'll just re-fit whatever the gently caress I said two minutes ago into a question for both you and the remainder of the thread: did you have a proper dance game community in your neck of the woods? If so, what was it like? (I refuse to say 'is' because I refuse to believe such communities still exist)
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Jun 5, 2014 08:47
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Mazo Panku posted:And I suppose I'll just re-fit whatever the gently caress I said two minutes ago into a question for both you and the remainder of the thread: did you have a proper dance game community in your neck of the woods? If so, what was it like? (I refuse to say 'is' because I refuse to believe such communities still exist) I think we might have, actually. I remember attending a tournament long, long ago, where there was maybe a dozen of us. I came in first place by a hair; the grand prize was an apple pie. I shared it with the guy that lost to me. I wasn't a part of Facebook or anything at the time, so I didn't keep in touch with any of them. Then, my arcade distributor moved all the machines to other provinces, so that was the end of that... until I bought one of them off the company.
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Jun 5, 2014 09:05
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Mazo Panku posted:And I suppose I'll just re-fit whatever the gently caress I said two minutes ago into a question for both you and the remainder of the thread: did you have a proper dance game community in your neck of the woods? If so, what was it like? (I refuse to say 'is' because I refuse to believe such communities still exist) We definitely had a proper community, though I only hung out with a small circle of friends within said community. It was kinda easy to make friends in the community since most of them came to the theater I worked at to play. The first time I talked to any of them, I was still on Light Mode. They gave me tips on how to practice for Standard before actually trying the difficulty out, and then told me what songs I should try to pass before tackling Heavy. Super cool people, all in all. The rest of the folks I met were just weird acquaintances. I remember one guy I actually hung out with once (he drove me to the mall that had an ITG machine) and he flipped the gently caress out one some random couple that was watching him play at some point--it was kinda embarrassing! At that point I decided to just stick to the small group I already knew. Also, a lot of the people in the community that played seemed to be furries. They wore tails and ears and stuff. I saw them before I knew what furries even were and remember wondering if it was some anime thing. Ah, to be young and innocent again~
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Jun 6, 2014 00:22
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BlackFrost posted:Also, a lot of the people in the community that played seemed to be furries. They wore tails and ears and stuff. I saw them before I knew what furries even were and remember wondering if it was some anime thing. Ah, to be young and innocent again~ See: Plaguemix and the endless Renard poo poo. Except Plaguemix was a well-done set of songs.
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Jun 6, 2014 04:37
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Olive Branch posted:For some reason, furries really, really, really love DDR and ITG. I do remember playing some stepchart for Puttin' on the Ritz that had a background just full of furries, now that you mention it. It was a fun stepchart though.
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Jun 6, 2014 22:53
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I'm excited to see the future doubles video, there are a lot of excellent charts, and watching people use both pads is always fun to watch. I'm guessing the chart you never passed was Disconnected Disco?
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Jun 7, 2014 04:23
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Can Of Worms posted:I'm excited to see the future doubles video, there are a lot of excellent charts, and watching people use both pads is always fun to watch. I'm guessing the chart you never passed was Disconnected Disco? Vertex˛ doubles. Disconnected Disco is peanuts in comparison.
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Jun 7, 2014 04:33
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My first Black Friday purchase was actually a copy of ITG that came with two PS2 dance pads! Unfortunately, I never really got into it due to not being a fan of the music, and ended up using the pads for Stepmania instead. Not too long ago, an arcade opened up near me with a Pump It Up machine, which was pretty fun. Glad to see you doing all the songs in this game on both modes. I never really graduated being doing 5 and 6 footers, so it's worth it to check out the stepcharts alone.
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Jun 7, 2014 09:55
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Maple Leaf posted:Digital Explosion I found some of their tracks (for free!) in http://www.mikseri.net/artists/digitalexplosion.51764.php. Mikseri.net is like the Finnish electronic music equivalent of Soundcloud (actually it was founded in 2001, so maybe vice versa). I think that the website is not country restricted.
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Jun 7, 2014 10:15
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sulovilen posted:I found some of their tracks (for free!) in http://www.mikseri.net/artists/digitalexplosion.51764.php. Mikseri.net is like the Finnish electronic music equivalent of Soundcloud (actually it was founded in 2001, so maybe vice versa). I think that the website is not country restricted. This is a great find and I'm putting it into the links for DE. Thanks, sulovilen!
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Jun 7, 2014 16:23
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Maple Leaf posted:Vertex˛ doubles. Disconnected Disco is peanuts in comparison. I had a feeling it was going to be that one, in some fashion. I tried that song only once on singles and got absolutely wrecked. I did pass the first one though! It's a fun gimmick for a hard song in this series. Certainly better than SuperNOVA's "hey let's just throw like 50 stops in this song" gimmicks...
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Jun 7, 2014 17:13
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Are you going to play WinDEU Hates You? This is important /edit: Just the first one would be enough, because it's a hell of a sight. HenryEx fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Jun 7, 2014 |
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Jun 7, 2014 17:26
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HenryEx posted:Are you going to play WinDEU Hates You? Not for a while, but yes. I was going to do insomnia instead but DJ Alligator trips Youtube's copyright thing.
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Jun 7, 2014 17:37
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 Doubles: Land of the Rising Sun, Torn, Euphoria, KagamiArtist Spotlight:  See: Daz Sampson  Natalie Browne is actually a project name, not a person, owned by Almighty Records, which is a dance label based in London. The most popular person to record as Browne is a woman named Julitette Jaimes, who already had experience with lots of Hi-NRG covers of non-dance songs and 1980s classics. 'Natalie' has done lots of gigs within the UK, mainly within the gay scene. Her first single was in 1996 and was a cover of Celine Dion's It's All Coming Back To Me Now. Browne's first appearance in the west caused some confusion because people thought the single of her version of the song Torn was by Natalie Imbruglia, who was popular at the time. Imbruglia's version was never released as a single. Natalie Browne only ever released singles, except for a single album, containing all her singles and some remixes, called Justified: The Best of Natalie Browne. It was released in 2005. Her most recent tracks are Once and That Sounds Good To Me, both released in 2010. Sources/Links: http://www.almightyrecords.com/ - Almighty Record's homepage. http://www.discogs.com/artist/80796-Natalie-Browne - Natalie Browne's discography.   I'm actually going to talk about this guy some other time. He's really integral to almost everything involved in ITG, and I intend to talk about him in deeper detail later. Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 12, 2014 14:34
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So two things about that last video; 1) Holy poo poo Natalie Imbruglia got a cover/remix of her song in a video game, it's kinda crazy to hear her song like that since it was super popular down here in Australia when I was a kid. 2) I think it's ten levels of bullshit that they just suddenly shift the speed of the chart like that 
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Jun 12, 2014 16:08
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So how does competitive ITG work? Everybody does the same song, or is it more diving-style where it's a combination of difficulty and performance? Or is that a topic for a future video?
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Jun 16, 2014 23:18
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Maple Leaf posted:Not for a while, but yes. I was going to do insomnia instead but DJ Alligator trips Youtube's copyright thing. Shame, that one spot in Mosquito is pretty entertaining.
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Jun 17, 2014 08:16
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Spudd posted:2) I think it's ten levels of bullshit that they just suddenly shift the speed of the chart like that Things can get very fun if ITG allows negative BPM. Spudd posted:This is nuts, my brain can't even keep along with all the arrows on the screen let alone watching you do it as well. I thought playing Rock Band drums on expert was an accomplishment. I feel the same way but only because it's at so much a lower BPM than I'm used to. Hard to tell if some things are doubles or not sometimes. c800 Stepmania supremacy! Vapor Moon fucked around with this message at 11:00 on Jun 17, 2014 |
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Jun 17, 2014 10:55
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Glazius posted:So how does competitive ITG work? Everybody does the same song, or is it more diving-style where it's a combination of difficulty and performance? You just choose 2 Player mode. You both agree on a song; you both choose the same difficulty (generally it's whatever the hardest difficulty available is, but there are some exceptions); you both choose your modifiers; and then whoever has the higher score at the end is the winner. Best two out of three per match. Aside from that one local tournament, which was best of 1 and the song choice was essentially a coin flip, I've never actually gone to a tournament, so I'm not especially well versed in how they go. Doubles tournaments are a thing too, but since two players can't play at the same time, they just take turns. Obviously that's going to take a little longer than singles.
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Jun 17, 2014 17:03
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There's tournaments that involve playing sets of songs and getting your scores compared to everyone else instead of just 1v1 matches, as well.
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Jun 17, 2014 18:37
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Spudd posted:2) I think it's ten levels of bullshit that they just suddenly shift the speed of the chart like that One of the final songs in the more recent DDR games has a gimmick where the stage just constantly shifts speed, faster and slower, solely to throw you off. There's another one with a gimmick where the BPM just hits a flat zero something like 46 times, and there's no real way to know when to expect the stops unless you've heard the song before. ...DDR's comeback had a lot of poo poo like this, but there were a lot of fun songs in the mix, too. ITG 1 and 2 both also have a song that shifts speed a lot, though it's at least always in the same direction. 
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Jun 18, 2014 05:07
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Props to someone doing a lets play of a dance game. I used to be really into these games back in the DDR extreme days and even won a few local tournaments. After a while the whole competitive aspect kinda stopped interesting me by the time ITG2 came out and I pretty much only played for fun after that point. Working in an arcade for 8 years gave me lots of amazing stories and experiences when it came to these games. My two favorite events were seeing the looks on everyone's faces when I installed the R21 usb songs patch and again when I figured out how to modify the machine for custom everything. It's really fascinating to look at how far the songs have changed over the years despite never actually changing the game engine. It was crazy enough when the arrows would slow down, speed up or stop in the middle of a song. These days you have full blown 'Anime' boss fights happening onscreen as you play. I'm still glad I was able to upload a few videos of our machine to youtube before my store inevitably shut down last year.
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Jun 21, 2014 02:08
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Singles: Boogie Down, I Think I Like That Sound, Da Roots (Folk Mix), My Favourite Game Artist spotlight:  I can't find a single thing about Inurvise. No websites; no discographies; no additional music. Whenever I do a search for Inurvise, I'm always led back to In The Groove, or some ITG-related article (when Google doesn't ask me if I mean the word "universe"). The only discography of Inurvise I found listed Boogie Down as part of In The Groove's songlist. Which leads me to believe that either Inurvise is an in-house musician for RoXoR (which is highly unlikely), or he/she was so underground that they only released one or two tracks on some obscure website, which later failed. Or maybe they're a friend of one of the developers for ITG? This happened once before, when I did another search for a different ITG musician, so expect my bewilderment at least a second time in the near future.  On the other end of the spectrum, there is no shortage of info on this guy. Real name Pete Ellison, based in Portland. He has a very carefree attitude when it comes to music and applies anything to anything, experimenting a lot with different genres and methods to create unique, identifiable tunes. He notably doesn't use big, specialized, expensive equipment, and prefers to use his standardized home PC for his music. Other than that, he refuses to talk about his production methods. Despite his experimental nature, he does nonetheless have a number of pseudonyms for his more preferred styles, each of them having full albums and numerous singles, but only one is more prolific than Kid Whatever. One of them, called Diskowarp, had a very strong showing recently, lasting all the way from 2005 before retiring in 2013. Diskowarp was mostly all about remixes of popular songs, many of them involved in later rhythm games like Andamiro's Pump It Up, but Diskowarp was more than just one name: it was more of an umbrella, using more names like Kick+Punch and Fright Ranger. I haven't found why Ellison retired Diskowarp recently, however. Kid Whatever's most recent activity was an EP called Earn While You Learn, released in 2011. Links/Sources http://www.discogs.com/artist/19890-Kid-Whatever - Kid Whatever's Discography http://www.last.fm/music/kid+whatever - Kid Whatever's last.fm account. Aside from one song, every song there is from ITG. I was never a fan of last.fm. https://soundcloud.com/kid-whatever - Kid Whatever's soundcloud, updated as late as 2012. https://soundcloud.com/diskowarp - Diskowarp's soundcloud; much larger and with far more content than Kid Whatever's. http://kidwhatever.bandcamp.com/ - I believe this album, Radical Ninja, is Kid Whatever's most recent album. In it is a song called Go *60* Go, which was featured in ITG2 in 2005, and was not released until five years later. Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Jun 23, 2014 |
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Jun 23, 2014 00:31
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Oh god, the columns bobbing up and down is driving me nuts and I'm just watching you.
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Jul 2, 2014 17:08
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I've got no idea how you manage to do these things. drat.
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Jul 2, 2014 19:59
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| # ? May 1, 2024 19:46 |
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I am a pretty serious dance game player, I stopped playing 4 panel a few years ago after I started beating 15s because the charts are so boring and most of the music people use for customs is awful. But 5 panel is still the poo poo and actually Andamiro has gotten much better at making the game challenging, Fiesta 2 notwithstanding. It's cool to occasionally revisit the joys of playing some of the officials though, particularly charts like Soapy Bubble and Sweet World which really felt like a revelation in a time where most boss songs were just a bunch of 16th note jumpstep patterns.
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Jul 3, 2014 01:14
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