Dance Dance Revolution

[drinian]

not even stepmania? you can play that during your c++ breaks.

And that's how I developed a repetitive stress injury in my wrist during my senior year at college.

[TheAyanamiOtaku]

I watched my friend tear his ligaments in two of his fingers while playing sum kinda Stepmania.....it was pretty brutal man...clutching his fingers and yelling lika monstur.

[Iron Rooster]

I finally got a used copy of DDR Max.

Max 300 is lots of fun. I can definitely read the notes, but the damn stamina problem gets me. Oh, well, Zimlord, I'll try your suggestions out.

[zimlord]

I finally got a used copy of DDR Max.

cool. Rhythm and Police and Exotic Ethnic are great songs from that mix to practice your crossovers. also, i'd prolly say Max has the smallest timing window of any ps2 mix, so it'll help your accuracy.

[BrikHaus]

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x2ASaDM0JA[/url]

[Iron Rooster]

I have officially gotten an at least an "A" on every song in DDR Max, including Max 300 with my feet. Now I gotta work on getting rid of this weird bad habit I have when certain patterns show up. To give you an idea, this is what happens:

Notes on screen
D
L
D
R
D
L
D
R

Me (L = left foot, R = right foot)
R
L
R
R
L
L
R
R

On slower songs, I do the proper crossover technique, but this habit is so ingrained with me that as soon as I'm given songs with BMPs higher than about 150, that weird 2 - 2 pattern emerges. Oddly enough, with that bad technique I can still full combo a lot of hard songs that aren't insanely fast.

[zimlord]

to double-step or not to double-step...or conversely, to crossover or not to crossover.


double-stepping (your current practice) doesn't look as smooth as crossing over, and in many cases sacrifices accuracy or speed for the sake of just getting the step. that being said, double stepping is certainly not a problem. there are actually certain patterns which require double-stepping.

example (starting with right foot):

U
R
L
U

if you tried to pull a crossover here, you'd just get tangled up. this is a case in which you need to double-step. you'll see this all the time--Healing Vision Angelic Mix comes to mind. it's natural if double-stepping seems awkward or 'incorrect' now. work on your crossovers first and foremost, since this is vital for crossover 16th streams, but understand that double-stepping is sometimes the right move. also, it'll look less awkward if you use less of your feet on each panel.



or you could bracket-rape, but i'd wait on that.

[Iron Rooster]

You know, I'm starting to think my biggest problem is eating too much Chipotle.

Maybe, we should start posting vids of ourselves and if we don't want people to know what we look like, we could wear fox masks.

[Iron Rooster]

A new DDR game for the PS2 has come out recently. It's interesting, definitely the oddest one of the main PS2 games, not counting the Disney version *shudders*. Oh yeah, they also changed the rating system from the 1 to 10 scale to a 1 to 20. I've yet to see a 20 so far, but I guess that would be reserved for the impossibly hard stuff.

Oh yeah, and necrophilia is HAWT.

[honsou]

1 to 20?! did they inflate the rating system? (to be honest thing kinda needed to happen, as there were 7 foot songs that were clearing 8 or 9, and 10 foot songs that were pretty much 13 foots). But like what are the maxx's rated?

[zimlord]

Happy 10th Anniversary to DDR and four-panel dancing games everywhere!


...


and along with it, DDR X: another (probably) disappointing game in the DDR series. I honestly haven't played it yet, but from what I have read and from the people who I've talked to, it's nothing special. The ps2 version's song selection is weak, looks like. which isn't surprising given the trend home versions have fallen into. also, the new ratings method seems like it may actually just be "re-ratings" for everything. i.e. Max 300 would be a 20 footer and something like Kick the Can would be a 10. I'll try to look into this a little more. And while I hope that it's different, it does seem like the kind of thing konami would do. still, I wouldn't mind playing it somewhere (preferably the arcade version), just to say I have.

I'm honestly more excited about Jubeat, but whatever.

[Iron Rooster]

^
They really need a game with a comprehensive track list of all the fan favorites. That'd be awesome. It's still interesting that they put that MC Hammer song in the game. I thought the difficulty ratings felt much more accurate, honestly.

[p06]

i play some very little bit of FFR. tried stepmania online once, but realized there were very few people on. too clumsy to play on a pad (and too poor to afford one)

[honsou]

^
They really need a game with a comprehensive track list of all the fan favorites. That'd be awesome. It's still interesting that they put that MC Hammer song in the game. I thought the difficulty ratings felt much more accurate, honestly.

the arcade version of extreme is basically this. The amount of songs in the game were nuts, had every single version of most songs, all the maxx's, all the paranoia's, all the trip machines. Too bad they closed down the local arcade that had it :(

[zimlord]

Yeah, the Extreme AC mix was the best, by far. Best songs, best interface, best timing window. There used to be a substantially less awesome Supernova cab near me, until the place closed. The PS2 version Extreme is also the best home release to date, imo. I could play LoM all day. Though, the Ultramixes were pretty good from what i played.

[Iron Rooster]

Did they quit making MAXX songs for some reason? They seem more bent on making songs with ludicrous tempo changes and nutty ass steps instead for challenge.

[Iron Rooster]

Okay, double post, but it's been about two weeks.

Does anyone notice that DDR is moving towards using Chaos (nutty steps) instead of shear note quantity (and probably better note charts) to create "hard" songs? Also, the quality of the songs themselves has just gotten . . . just bleah. Personally, the PS2 Extreme 2 and Supernova were my favorites. I think the franchise is in a slump; I spend more time playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band now.

[The Eva Monkey]

I think the game needs to start dispensing crack whenever you double or triple A a song.

[zimlord]

Does anyone notice that DDR is moving towards using Chaos (nutty steps) instead of shear note quantity (and probably better note charts) to create "hard" songs? Also, the quality of the songs themselves has just gotten . . . just bleah. Personally, the PS2 Extreme 2 and Supernova were my favorites. I think the franchise is in a slump; I spend more time playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band now.

I think it's really a move to try and pull more converted ITG players back. In the Groove really started the whole "let's throw in a million stops and sudden speed-ups to make a chart more interesting," primarily because of r21 custom songs. You could make a crazy-ass file like Silikon or Dancing Box and bring it to the arcade and actually get to play it on a machine via USB slots. Very cool.

Konami's new gimmicky charts you're talking about (Pluto comes to mind as an example) are trying to cater to this rapidly growing group that loves gimmicks (see [url]www.r21freak.com[/url]). Supernova 2 was really the first DDR mix to include this type of stepchart. Older mixes hardly had any such songs, and, if they did, there were at most two or three stops or BPM changes in a tune, i.e. Era nostalmix (bpm changes) or Maxx Unlimited (stops). Now we have Pluto, a few others named after planets, and Paranoia Hades that all shoot for this...

Gimmicks in a file are very hit or miss among players. Some love them, others can't stand them. There oftentimes isn't a median. As for song quality, I can't say much considering as how I haven't played the newer mixes (SN2 and X). Though from the songlists, it looks like they're bringing in some good IIDX stuff like DJ Yoshitaka, but bringing in a lot of mainstream pop that does not belong in DDR imo.

I like Bemani games, but I will admit that DDR isn't giving off the great vibes it used to. Though, I guess we could blame this on Roxor stepping things up with ITG--at least, to an extent. Still, we do have some new Beatmania IIDX and Pop'n Music mixes to look forward to.

[Iron Rooster]

The customizing in ITG really was an awesome idea. It's just too bad DDR as far as I know doesn't have it to the extent ITG did. What happened to the ITG programmers? Did they just find new jobs or did Konami do anything with them? If Konami didn't do anything with those guys, or even the community built around ITG, it's a shame. I know ITG people tend to love hard stepcharts, so they'd be great people to get input on making new challenging songs charts.

Personally, the last "hard" songs I liked the stepcharts on were Fascination MAXX, Healing-D-Vision, and Paranoia Hades. Trip Machine Pheonix wasn't too bad IMO, I just suck bad at it. The two versions of Pluto are really whacked up. I think in one of them, during some holds, the BPM shifts to 800. It really disorients you when you don't know it's gonna happen.

I think I need to get some stamina and improve my ability to read fast notes before I could bother to get good scores on the tough songs. And on another note. Is it me or does it seem to be easier to read Guitar Hero notes than DDR/ITG notes? I honestly think I'm learning patterns instead of developing shear skill in Guitar Hero.