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.

STsung - Don’t Try To Stop It

ITG Multiplayer

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.

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!!!)

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^_^.

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.

Paranoia Survivor Max on softpad

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.