Youko's blog about music games.
A blog about anything interesting I find about this cool game named Dance Dance Revolution.
Someone on youtube replied to a video of Kyle Ward and Chris Foy freestyling with another freestyle. I didn’t like the vid, but I realized that I haven’t seen any freestyle videos from other countries than France in quite a long time.
So I just would like to put here this video (pretty old one actually). This is my first time seeing an arcade, playing this song and actually having fun by doing whatever I felt looked ok. Nothing prepared or anything, just what came to my mind.
Watch this video, the end with Twilight on Expert is magnificent. This would be impossible in my country….
Well, the title says it all. On the 22th August SN2 was released in Japan. 29th August the SN2 Upgrade kit was released.
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I don’t know what to say about SN2…I’m more confused about it than anything else.
Extra stage is no longer what it was. You have to play one particular song and get a good score. It does not need to be AA on Heavy difficulty-_-. Kind of sad about this thing.
Enjoy level/My GrooveRadar won’t never be used in Europe and what else? Internet Ranking is fine, unlocks are nice and this keeping track of how you are doing is also good. But without e-AMUSEMENTs it’s no use for Europeans…
Special Challenge charts seem to be here just to make a new ten footers. To fill you in. There are several songs like Dead End, D2R, Dynamite Rave etc. that have a new challenge chart. Those songs are ten footers and usually the song has 100% (a lot, does not need to be 100%) of something (air or freeze for example).
The jump and freezes songs are kind of ok. Even though it seems for me that KONAMI just wanted to create new ten footers without really thinking about a stepchart.
Dead End is a speciality. Groove radar values are like “100%”. It’s like 16th run overkill at 190BPM. It’s just CRAZY! If I would see this in StepMania, it would be ok…but actually on an arcade machine?
What I think about that? I think that it’s not a question of free time nor Cobalt Fluxes. I don’t know too many people having them so…A question of free time? Well, I know many people going to arcades once per week and they can AA ninefooters and AAA the rest (not counting in ten footers+). The answer could be somewhere in the arcades issue…
Anyway I went to our local arcades. It’s a real crap-o-cab with ITG1. I got some 97% scores so it’s doable but I have to say that it’s off and the screen is bad (low results for me). People don’t get high scores on this machine. I still hold the highest score on the machine. There were new scores on the machine since I went there last time, so it seems that from time to time people go there and play.
Cobalt Flux issue…well people have here home made pads from one person. Those pads are not bad, neither are the best. I would never pay for it, neither I would play on it. I would prefer playing on Impact Dance pad. Anyway you can get high scores on this pad no problem as I AAAed quite a lot of DDR songs on StepMania on it and I got most of my triple stars in ITG on it too. The pad is still in development so we still have to see how it will be.
But anyway you can get high scores on any kind of pad. (even a Deluxe Ignition Pad, at least I can do that).
The last thing they stated was that there is a concurrence abroad. It seems that I am no concurrence to them and also it seems that everybody here thinks that there are no players at all. I know about one player who plays all the time and wants to get better. He got better and is actually good when playing easy songs. But he will eventually clear more difficult songs and get better on them. But there are other players who can clear ten footers even though they don’t do this often and their PA is bad.
What do you think? What the reason could be?
Anyway I got that AAA on Mahou no Tobira today - First try.
At the same convention as the ParaPara performance was done, there was a Czech National Tournament in Dance Dance Revolution and In The Groove.
It was played on a Cobalt Flux, PS2 and a TV.
People weren’t happy about playing a DDR tournament but some people signed in and we could play. We were supposed to play 2 songs from DDR SN and 2 songs from DDR EXT2. It was the dance points which counted not percents or the actual score.
Most of us played DoLL and Shivers from SN and Sweet Sweet Magic and As the rush comes from DDR EXT2.
The ITG tournament was played on the same configuration. Only the game changed to ITG PS2.
One player from Slovakia didn’t manage to tip toe o a CF and other people complained about getting pad misses (way offs) on the pad. Especially a pad builder who wants to start selling his pads abroad.
Well, anyway I won the ITG tournament with 97% overall, the rest of the people with big difference behind. The same was for the DDR tournament but as the evaluation was based on dance points the difference wasn’t that big (400 pts from me and the person who got second place).
I got the idea that I would play some songs on DDR SN CS. So I actually did. Playing the game for the second time at home…I AAed songs which seemed to be good songs and I AAed 4 out of 9 ninefooters there.
After that I tried some songs on standard and easy and I got my first AAA on DDR SN. I also found out that the game is little bit early but I didn’t play with the audio settings yet.
Later on I tried Max300SMM on Challenge which is pretty difficult song for me as there is A LOT of jumps in there. I lowered the speed a bit, but even with that it was pretty difficult and I had hard time clearing the song. You can see that at the end I started getting everything from marvelous to miss. But I cleared it with A. (at normal speed I got B so far).
My boyfriend also tried the Battle Mode found in Advanced ?play?. It looks quite nice and sometimes it gives pretty difficult modes. You can also set the CPU difficulty and I have to say that LVL 5 is damn difficult to beat. It sends you the worst mods and it’s pretty accurate.
You can watch video of the battle mode here =>
DDR SN Battle Mode
DDR Hottest Party was announced some time ago for Nintendo Wii console and everyone wonders how the game will look like and what Wii mote and Nunchuk can bring into the game.
Few days ago we had the chance to get more information about the game.
Well, everyone already knows that the game has similar look of Extreme 2 (in gameplay).
KONAMI build a dance pad especially for Nintend Wii console. Though it’s just the “paper” pad for the time being.
In DDR HP gameplay you have normal arrows as everyone is used to. But then you have there some kind of wierd notes which represent wiimote (Wii remote controller) or Nunchuk notes. When you see a wiimote note you have to move the wiimote in that direction. If it appears in the Up column you have to move the wiimote forward. They said that there would be Nunchuk notes that you have to confirm by shaking the nunchuk. But who knows if it will be in the final release.
DDR HP has three normal modes - Free Play (the normal mode everyone usually plays in), Groove Gauge Mode (something like Dance Master Mode or Stellar Mode) and Diet Mode.
There are also other three modes - Friendship mode, which is kind of some wierd couple mode but both (up to four) players play one stepchart, Multiplayer mode (up to four players can play) and the last is Battle Mode where you bother your opponent with mods.
There is also change in the dance characters look. They look more chibi or wii-like and personally I don’t like the look at all. It looks pretty wierd and it’s not cute or anything.
KONAMI said there would be like 50 new stepcharts and 25 KONAMI original songs (wonder what kind of songs it will be). I hope there won’t be too many returning songs from Strike …(no oldies in DDR please!!!)
It’s been a while from April to now. The location tests in Japan were ok and also people were asked what songs they would like to see in the new SuperNova. Now it’s time for people in America to have the chance to test the game now. SuperNova 2 is soon to be released in Japan. Wondering what new stuff it will bring?
The first thing you will find out is that there is a Marvelous timing all the time (not just courses). Seems like KONAMI found out that Perfects is not enough. That’s why they first changed the grading to 95000k to get AA I guess. Well, you still need this score to get AA. So you need more marvelouses this time. Also you can triple A a song if you get over 99…. points. Everyone now wonders if there is something like a AAAA.
The also came up with some other slight changes. When getting a certain combo you will see a picture of a dance character on the screen. Well, it’s something more annoying then listening to the announcer announcing you a perfect combo^_^. Actually it’s pretty nice to see on the screen when you don’t play and just watch others play (if two players play then there are two images of dance characters in the middle of the screen - in between the scrolling arrows area).
Also you will be able to see both the name of the song and its artist in gameplay (why this?).
They also removed roulette which became pretty annoying on DDR Supernova arcade. It was really a pain in the a** during some tournaments.
The sorting got better so you can again sort the same way as in Extreme (BPM, Title, Artist, Difficulty etc.) But for there is one problem, older songs from previous mixes or games are now in Extreme or SuperNova folder so it’s little bit confusing and more difficult to find the song.
I also wonder if there will be some new Max songs? But anyway I hope there will be some good and well playable songs. Supernova CS made me almost cry, I know KONAMI does not want to revive old songs (and thus pay the licence)
Also it seems that the SuperNova “bug” that the difficulty you choose changed to beginner difficulty when entering the menu is fixed. ^_~
There is a new character. She’s quite cute^_^.
We are selling the new shiny sofpads from Positive Gaming in the Czech Republic. Before actually starting to sell them in big I decided to test them what they can survive.
I played In The Groove on it and everything went ok. My results were slightly lower than on my Cobalt Flux pad but I could play whatever song I wanted unlike on pads like Deluxe Ignition pad where you are happy if you actually clear a song on hard.
A friend of mine who actually started the distribution of the pads in the Czech Republic gave me a challenge - Pass Paranoia Survivor Max on a softpad and get over 75%.
So I said ok. But for that I will need PG’s Dance Impact Pad.
Well, here is the result - a video of me passing PSM on a SOFTPAD.
We were invited to Rubbinnex’s house so we came there for a weekend.
We played In The Groove on his own hardpads which I really like even though we had several problems with them.
At Rubbinnex there was me, my boyfriend, NX-306, Deirh, Suikun and Vikibunny. The first one who came there to play ITG was me so I played and I got some nice scores even though there was something wrong with the gameplay but I couldn’t figure out what. Then Suikun and VikiBunny came and tried to play a song. Both of them started to yell that it is offsync. After this song Suikun chose Disconnected Hyper on hard and got a nice 80% greats. Rubbinnex couldn’t believe it himself so he tried it too and got pretty much the same score.
After some time we found the right offset. It was around 80 miliseconds. After this I realized that the offset is right and I started to get even higher scores than before.
We played both In The Groove and Dance Dance Revolution (and other songs for StepMania). VikiBunnt played mostly songs from BeatMania found in DDR SuperNova and I got 94% in average on them. I also managed to get some Full Excellent Combo and Suikun made a compliment^_^.
Some time later Suikun wanted to try one Monolith edit called Monolith Micro (tenfooter). He wanted everyone to try it and played it no bar and without the tip toe - heel technique. I have to say that the stepchart is technically quite difficult but I still got an A. Poor Suikun almost killed him on the song and he failed the song. Next was Rubbinnex’s round who got 74% on that song. I guess he didn’t believe his eyes as he usually gets triple stars on anything.
Later it was Rubbinnex’s time to play what he wants so I played with him being the only person who can actually clear twelve footers there. We started with AA or AAA eleven footer. This song was quite easy and I managed it no bar. VikiBunny watched me with her big eyes not understanding how I could clear a song like this. Suikun stayed silent.
Another eleven footers and twelve footers followed but the difficulty really varied. Sometimes it was difficult as hell and sometimes I cleared it without much problems (like Healing Vision “something” mix - 11)
After a while Suikun wanted to try some difficult songs too so we played Vertex Expert together. Suikun played with bar (a heating unit actually) but died before the last speed up. I cleared the song somehow no bar and VikiBunny once again looked at awe.
Rubbinnex finished the day by showing us how to clear Insomnia (really nice course^_^) on a pad and that was our time to look at him without any understanding what’s going on.
The World Championship in both In The Groove and DDR were held in Oslo, Norway. This time the tournament was separate for men and women so I got my chances to win. But I didn’t come there to win and therefore I was chosing songs quite randomly and just by this losing even when I was better.
The tournament in DDR was played on completely offsync DDR Supernovas and that was the start of it.
I managed to get a good seeding place and I won the first two matches with “no problems”. I played Xepher against someone and I got like 96 greats. After this match (which I won by quite a lot) I went to the bar and I had quite a resigned look on my face. Someone asked me ‘How many greats?’ I replied with ‘96′. After a small pause he asked again ‘Did you win?’. I replied still resigned ‘yes’ and then we laughed together.
Who would ever say that he can almost manage to get triple digit greats on songs you can single digit great?
Next round was with Manda from Great Britain (I hope) who was pretty cold to me during our match. After she beat me she asked me about my machine location and the machine and I said ‘we have no machines in the Czech Republic’. After this she changed completely and stared at me like if I was a ghost. Unfortunately we had no more time to talk as I was supposed to play against Jessica.
I won against Jessica and then my worst nightmare that day came. I was pitted against Lauma the best female player (she plays dance games like for seven years and came to the place to win the tournament. and she did win). Well, I guess we played some Max song and Lauma won. You know it was like…I had to play against her several times (even when we weren’t supposed to play against the same person twice) and it was always me or her.
But you know my problem is my accuracy. Other girls problem is not being able to survive difficult songs no bar. But the problem was that if someone failed a song and he still got more perfects he won. The thing that he continued playing because of the other person clearing that song didn’t bother anyone at that time…That’s the story about me.
I felt pretty bad having this in my head “ok, I’m going to lose against someone who can’t EVEN clear Max300 SuperMaxMe and plays for half of her life”.
It was up to me to choose a song so I decided to pick the hardest one I could come up. As Fascination Maxx wasn’t in the list I chose Paranoia Survivor Max Oni. I know I could clear this song on DDR Extreme so why not clearing it on DDRSN and I was sure she would fail badly at this song as she already failed some songs with me which were easier.
I picked the song to everyones awe. They were like “hell, she’s not going to play this song no bar isn’t she?”. Anyway I managed to get a decent score on this song and I made Lauma failed badly on this song. It was evil but my anger I got at Ole, Kyle and Chris was too big.
The last song was chosen randomly and I didn’t manage to get a better score (as I expected). I lost by 10 greats (not that much, huh) and I let Lauma continue in the tournament.
I kicked the Supernova platform quite hard making other people look quite surprised at me and left the whole building.
After this we had quit a nice time in Megazone so I was glad for that. But because of this I missed the finals.
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Several months later I saw the videos of the finals and I saw that it was all fails. The girls didn’t manage to clear songs I can easily handle. I was beaten by someone who would fail if dance point rule was applied. I was said and angry about this. But I told myself that I came there to have fun as I actually did not to win. I got what I wanted and it was definitely WORTH IT.
Lauma came there to win and she won. She is a nice girl and I would like to meet her again. She’s good at DDR and ITG and she has her style. Let people know that it was Lauma from Latvia who won.
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written on 13th July 07
Trying to AAA any of the easier songs on a soft pad is almost impossible. It does not like machine gun steps (even three arrows or sometimes even two in a row at 140BPM^_~) and it hates jumps (not to mention some random misses). So usually I end up with loads of perfects and nice bunch of misses. But usually it is sufficient for A and sometimes even for AA.
When I came here I saw WildAce’s another AAA. As this is a song which is in purple on a home version… I knew it should be something easy. It is also a five footer so why not challenge myself? ROFL
I thought that a five footer song would be doable on a softpad. I tried for the first time and I finished with one right arrow miss and the rest perfects.
The second time I got 2 greats somewhere in the middle.
Third time I got two misses because of nasty jumps.
Fourth time I once again got great rating on those very same arrows in the middle.
Fifth time several misses because of my Deluxe ignition…
After this I played some other standard songs…and I got several As and I Bed V for extreme. You know that’s exactly song you SHOULDN’T play on my softpad. The stepchart looks like this D,D,D,D,D,D, JUMP, L, L, L,L, L, L, JUMP etc etc with some random 8th notes. So I got hell LOT of misses and a lot of perfects as I can PA this song quite well normally.
Well after all this I went back to my CHALLENGE.
Another try and I almost burst in tears as I “missed” the last jump. I stomped on my pad as hard as I could and gave it another try. (well, ehm before I tried it with my hands on a game pad…but ehm..my hands sucks..I get greats at different places and sometimes I get more than 10 greats…so no way AAAing that with my fingers)
After this I was quite desperate but I tried for the last time…and I GOT IT. Such an easy song I would have AAAed on my first time….
You know it’s pretty easy as a song…but try it on a softpad of your beginning DDR fellow player…
the result is here…
S’Tsung - La Senorita Freestyle
At Epitanimecon convention in Kremlin-Bicetre, people had the chance to participate in a freestyle and score tournament in DDR (as well ParaPara Paradise tournament was held there too).
I have to say that my arrival wasn’t lucky. I arrived slightly before 9 am and entered the convention at 2:20 pm. The freestyle tournament began at 2 pm and I managed to get there in time not ti be disqualified.
There were about twenty participants and most of them had already a choreography prepared and learned by heart. But there were also people who freestyled without preparation like me.
The atmosphere during the tournament was really great, because French people were applauding, singing the songs, clapping their hands in the rhythm and cheering as well, which was really nice. One of the participants did actually a salto backwards (poor Cobalt Flux..) which was quite amazing. Another participant was dancing with his friend which was fun.
When my name was announced everybody looked little bit distracted and surprised because they never heard of someone called S’Tsung. When I got to my feet (almost fainting - it was over 30 dgrs outside and 35 dgrs inside the building) they looked at me with no comprehension in their eyes.
Anyway I managed to get to the computer, I chose a song named La Senorita SM and showed the French people my “online” freestyle. They applauded and cheered me when I had no idea what to do on that nice shiny cobalt flux.
At the end they yelled and applauded as I never heard before and that warmed my heart. They liked my performance. Even though they really liked my performance I came up fourth (mainly because my performance wasn’t prepared so I looked at the screen mostly, I also tripped of the pad which got me minus points and I guess it wasn’t original at all^_^). But I was really happy about that. It was really a nice achievement for something not prepared and it was also a good experience for me.
Today or yesterday someone started a “game” on the dutch Dance Dance Revolution Netherlands Forum.
Each participant in this game has to write a short story using the names of Dance Dance Revolution songs. This is my story:
Since my graduation in 1998 I have a bad luck in love. At the summer Matsuri Japan at the end of the century. I met My Summer Love, Mr. Wonderful. He was calling me Senorita as we danced to a latino-american music in the heat of the night. After several hours spent together he asked me if I wouldn’t like to spend the next day with him. I’m naive person so I started to believe in miracles. Could this Mr. Wonderful be my Petit Love?
I agreed. Next night was wonderful. But several days later he has broken my heart. I arrived a bit earlier to our date and I’ve seen him flirting with other girls - Bad Girls for me. I couldn’t stand this attitude (no one can share my love!) and I decided to leave him alone and I went home, to a small house in a dead end. At night it’s quite dark there but tonight I was glad for it. I stayed outside for a while and I was looking to the sky. It only took a minute and I saw a shooting star which made me completely forget the anger which was still in my heart. What a miracle I thought. Even though the anger passed, I still felt a pain so deep buried in my heart. That night I have dreamed a dream. In that dream I met a handsome young man, who was actually a film superstar. His name was Tsugaru and he was living in America. We were at a one party. He came to me and I told him ‘I’m in a mood for dancing’ and he replied: ‘ follow me,’ and we danced the whole night. When I dream this dream, I always fall in love with him. I just can’t stop falling in love with my sweet darlin’ - Mr. T. It is true, that it’s highly impossible that this would actually happen. From time to time I feel… down. Tears start coming out of my eyes. I try to remember some joyful memories, but I don’t have so many. So I recall this dream. It’s a sort of healing vision.
This year I decided to finally get rid of my depressions. I went out several times with my friends. My closest friend Sakura told me: Come with me, I will show you something, which will help you. She took me to the arcades and introduced me a game a cool game called Dance Dance Revolution. I never thought someone could be dancing all alone a whole night (and spent so much money^_~). After that night Sakura told me: “I would never let you down, you know it, don’t you?”.
Now when I’m depressed I just go to the arcades and I play my favorite song “Butterfly“.
At the European DDR Championship some of us got an invitation to try the first beta of DDR multiplayer. It was based on StepMania and it supported 20 pads.
We played on 20 brand new Cobalt Fluxes and that was quite a catastrophe for some. I couldn’t find myself on the pad. I realized I’m not on it when I found myself on the hard and cool ground.
Anyway we all watched the big screen in front of us, we had no feedback from the game as we all saw the song played on autoplay. We could see our score, combo and grade if we were lucky but that didn’t help much with syncing.
Ole chose us some easy songs so people would come see us and then he chose songs like Sakura, The Legend of Max, Neomax, Stoic etc. Songs technically difficult and for me it was like WTFo_O. I could clear Max300 barely and I was supposed to play those songs?
Anyway I managed to clear all the songs and I ended up 13th or 14th which wasn’t that bad at all.
But this wasn’t important. Important was that it gave me a new experience and the atmosphere was really awesome. I was in some kind of delirium and it made me play all the songs even with fever. It’s true that I was quite dead and the European Championship didn’t go well for me.
this is how it looks like when 20 people play the same song at the same time => http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPYzHiepn40
This weekend a European Championship was held in Norway. It was held along with the world largest LAN party - The Gathering.
I went there with Halfling and T_Bone_X_Zeo from the Netherlands. At the airport in Oslo we waited for T_Bone as he was there bidding for PNM controller (if I understood correctly). We also played some BeatMania IIDX on the way and could see that we won’t miss playing PNM too as T_Bone had a PNM controller with him too (just KOC).
In the train to Hamar where the LAN party was held we were quite bored. T_Bone played some invisible BeatMania with his hands and we tried to enjoy the Norwegian country. After some time we started to sing some DDR songs together and I think people had us for some silly people. But anyway we managed to get to Hamar a city where the Winter Olympic Games were held.
There we had some problems finding the Olympics Game Hall but we found it after some time.
We arrived there when the network didn’t work that well. It was overflooded with the newcomers. We registered and went to find our spots for our computers. I find mine but there was someone sitting there. So I asked the security guy who wondered what’s wrong. I asked him about that so he went away to find out who the person is. Later on I asked someone about the numbers and he told me that the sticked numbers don’t count. That there are actually new numbers which lay on the tables. So I wandered around and finally found my number. Then I went to find the security guy and tell him everything is alright.
After this small problem we went together to play DDR. The machines were on the other side of the hall so for me it was quite far away. There we found out that one game will cost us 10 Norwegian Crowns which is a lot for a Czech student. But anyway we played as everyone else around.
It was my second time standing on a machine and I have to say that I was deceived and depressed. My scores were really bad and I thought that I had to be the worst DDR player at that place so I started to freestyle. Some people crowded in behind and were watching me without understanding.
Later on we started meeting all the other BEMANI players there.
Pop’n Music was played on ASC, BeatMania IIDX was played on KOC and of course DDR was played a lot. Many people played DDR on a keyboard and most of the players at the LAN party who tried this sucked badly at the game. But anyway it was fun.
The European Championship started the next day and there were 62 players. The seeding was done by a computer program. The seeding was supposed to be the following: let’s say there would be 3 groups and in each there would be 3 players. The computer was supposed to take the first three best players and put them in each group. Then he would take the fourth and put it in the first group, fifth in the second group, sixth in the third group etc.
After I got into my group I knew that there was something wrong I was in a group with 3 almost the best players at the event and Amegon (who is better but not that good to match those we were pitted against).
Anyway we played as we were told. The ones before us all played Max300 and got AA on it. Amegon played Max300 too and got an A. I said to myself ‘Ok, I’m out in this round so why not play any song I want’. So I choose Paranoia KCET and got a pretty bad score on it. Me and Amegon were out.
In the third round the organizators of the event found out that the second round was seeded wrongly and thus they said they would continue in seeding in hand. So it took some time and we had the time to chat with each other.
I have to say that there were real differences in total our group got 22k but there were groups which got 17k or 19k. If I would end up in one of those groups I could go on. But 22k was too much for us to muster.
The tournament continued on and I was watching other players play. Especially I watched Eric from Belgium and Erik from the Netherlands. There were some other players I put in my mind - Stelisevil from England who was really nice to me, Snute who was really nice and good player, the Izraelian player who showed us that age does not matter and who showed us how to SDG Max300 (8 greats), Jukeboksi with his dreds and other people…
This event was a great experience for me. Both the LAN party (and demoparty) and the DDR tournaments. But I have to say that I felt like a noob when I was there. It was difficult to adjust to the arcade machine from not really good working softpad. Anyway it was worth the money.