I thought you were gonna say... IIDX! Both IIDX and Guitar Freaks launched in February 1999. I guess we kind of missed those bithdays.

On July 10th Drummania turns 10. Then on Auguest 19th, 6-panel turns 10.

Next year we can celebrate DMX, PPP, and Keyboardmania. Or not. :P

Jason Enos left a couple years ago. That's all I know.

Do you know anything about this? It makes me sad. I heard/noticed that the Bemani team all quit in the second half of 2007. What the crap?

 

I've noticed it by some of the bad songs that they've been putting on the PS2 DDR games...

Actually, I think the songlists kick ***. Mostly because Konami Original music has become especially good in the last year or two. And they don't need your help anyway. They were making good games before you were playing them.

Imagine if you became a developer. And you did something I didn't like. And I called you stupid on the Internet because of your work on a video game. See?

Back to the topic of USB/SD, I'm sure there was a good reason. Back in the day we could always count on dancer-x to stop by and post the bad news that we wanted hear. (A critical parts supplier..., or be patient, lol whatever.) Now we're just kind of hanging. Sucks.

"it's a user-friendly game with a very simple interface, learning curve and fun factor/high replayability. in IIDX there really is none of that."

That's debatable. :) Arguing this for IIDX and DDR is easy because the two games have so much in common. IIDX versus some other video game... well then I'd have to stop and think for a bit. But IIDX and DDR share quite a bit. Both games want an eclectic club mix and they borrow music from each other all the time. Both games are played by picking songs off a wheel in groups of 3 until you get bored. Both games offer doubles. And that's not what they have common - that's what sets them apart from other music games.

If IIDX has a bad interface, what about DDR? I could be wrong, but I think it was IIDX 3rd style that invented the songwheel. Then 5th Mix added the difficulty selector. Then IIDX 6th borrowed it back and now IIDX, DDR, GF, and DM all look and work the same. In-game, it's always the same array of columns. DDR is backwards because it feels natural that way. But if you can play one game then you can play any of them.

Now for the differences. DDR's controller is harder to use and IIDX's charts are far more dense. Foot-eye coordination is new skill to everyone. But even non-gamers are good with their fingers. People "get" DDR when they stop stumbling around. But people "get" IIDX when they learn how to read the screen. Both skills are needed in both games. And I disagree that one skill is harder to learn than the other. IIDX has a reputation for having a steep learning curve because people have been saying so for years. But I don't buy it. The "high end" content is rediculously hard, but levels 1-4 are pretty tame. The curve from 5.1.1. to Nageki no Ki might be long, but it's not steep.

Coming from you it doesn't mean a thing. You always post one-sided crap like this. But if it makes you feel better, every single one of those points has already been raised on this forum.

Even the legit stuff like the "OK" in the middle of your marv/perfect looking like a broken combo has been said before. (By me.) The difference between you and me is that I appreciate the good things.

Kalamari - If you don't get the open pick analogy, you don't get it. Shock arrows are one indivisible unit. They're not ornaments added to a chart like mines are. They're a basic command just as much as the left arrow is. You could make a modifier that is "left - off." But that would ruin the chart. And you obviously can't move the left arrows into other columns without causing unseen problems. The charts turn out much better when the designer says "this is my chart both with and without the left arrow." It's why Guitar Freaks has separate basic/advanced/extreme charts for each of guitar/bass/open pick.

I was playing devil's advocate for shock arrows. I hate them as much as Arctic does. But at least I gave them a few days. DDR might survive just fine for another 20 years with only freeze arrows and normal arrows. But it'll be a boring game for the hardcore fans if we all turn closed minded. Just because shock arrows blow up under your feet doesn't mean that they're like mines. Think about what they force your feet to do and what choices you have when you see one.

Since people like to be haters, here's a list of inexcusably bad things everyone can easily hate! :P

- Load times inexplicably worse than last year.
- Songs from SN1 and SN2 that we're still waiting on. Most of the holdouts were stolen by the XBox. Actually, Japan stole them from the XBox and we just feel entitled to have them on two platforms. But still!
- The incomplete arcade version already having more features than this shipped PS2 game.

^ That's hillarious. Wrong, but hillarious.

Normally I'd say something smug like "Do those idiots see the Sony Online logo on the box?" But I don't blame 'em this time. All the online people are on the 360. 

New Songs

LAN Battle Mode - can't use it

Street Master Mode - same as every year, but good

Enhanced Workout Mode - I never use it

New DDR Characters - I care, but not that much

 

It doesn't even seem like a choice. How about the real new features?

- Shock Arrows

- the xmixes

- being able to save in Endless Mode

- being able to use mods in Challenge Mode

- getting a useful summary screen at the end of your 3/4/5 songs in Game Mode (each banner and each score now, not just the combined totals)

- yellow/orange halos (and AAAs) being visible in new places on the songwheel

off the top of my head

More!

 * Shrink the window for shock arrows. It feels like if I have any panel down anywhere from the early good to the late good window of a shock arrow, and I don't hit another arrow, then I hit the shock. That's harsh. I'm hitting shocks wayyyyy late after I think they've already gone by and I think they're safe. For Horatio I'd like to "jump rope" over the shocks while hitting the 16ths (I wish I were that good). But instead I always land on one shock or another because the shocks are so close together that they seem to overlap or run into each other.

 * Not my idea, but I agree with the TGA regular who originally said it. Consider displaying the "OK" of the shock arrows at the same y-coordinate as the freeze arrows. (The current x-coordinate is good.) When "OK" appears at the spot where my perfect/great judgement is it looks like I broke my combo.

You'd need to wait for the Wii Motion Plus+ technology to become available to developers in order for that to work. A normal Wii controller can only detect its orientation (by gravity) and where you're pointing it at. The Motion Plus is what allows the console to detect your local position. So the idea is at least a year off, maybe two.

You're right about the standard pad requiring some work. If you're going to play DDR sneaky-like in the morning then I recommend the Ignition or an imitation. The key feature of that pad is that it has an inch of thick foam. That makes it plesant to step on because it absorbs the impact of your steps. And you'll make much less noise. You may still need to play with the jumps turned off if you're not on the first floor. And you'll need a PS2 or XBox -> Wii adapter for the Ignition pad.

AJMix: these are good things

 * Triplets represented by blue and purple arrows instead of green

 * the shock arrow charts being just existing charts with shock arrows in them

 * N.G.s on freeze arrows breaking your combo

Why are these bad things? I don't want to debate anything else, but these are 3 pretty solid good ideas.

Shock arrows aren't like freeze arrows. They're more like "open pick". And just like "open pick" they have to be in a separate chart. It solves the crappiness of mines. There are only two types of mines: mines that you weren't going to hit anyway, and mines that require you to move. And with the exception of triple and quad mines, both kinds are totally pointless. But then triple and quad mines screw up scoring. Let's you say you have a quad mine coming up and you just stand there. You'll get 2 NGs and 2 OKs. You'll never realistically hit all 4 mines. So they're free points? All mines suck.

Now look at a shock arrow. It spans all of the columns just like "-O-P-E-N-" and it means "Let go of your controller and grab it again." And when you do it correctly, you get scored for one Marvellous/OK. That solves every problem with mines. You can still hate them if you think they're annoying. But DDR X is the first dancing game to implement the concept of an anti-arrow correctly.

Unlike freeze arrows and jumps there's no consistently good way to autogen a chart with the shocks removed. So the chart designer has to say "Well, if you take this shock out, then replace it with an arrow or jump over here." That's why we don't have a shocks on/off modifier. Instead you just have to pick the alternate chart.

whats wrong with so deep?

Nothing. It's on MAX2 and it's awesome. I should've been more clear. I was talking about the type of person who would say "Wow! So Deep is awesome! Konami should license that song and hire whoever wrote the steps." Really, that happens. It happens when someone puts a video of So Deep being autoplayed in SM on YouTube with a descr iption like "I love this song. It's my favorite!" And then you get that comment. Of course you can't blame the new fan who doesn't know that the song is from a 6 year old game. But it's still wrong. It also happens when people share simfile collections. Someone will give someone else a copy of SM with 500 songs. And then the next day the new guy will go back to his friend and say "Wow! Stepmania has awesome music like Red Zone!"

30 Lives - I like this. He basically says "If I were to be reincarnated, I'd be bored to death without you." Awwww. And I can't hold being a dork against anyone.

Put Em Up, Reach Up, Wine Red, Till the Lonley's Gone - 4 really good licenses

Bloody Tears (IIDX Edition), Blind Justice, Why Not - FLASHING 10 Awesome, but disqualified because I've already played them to death. Venus, Soul Crash, and Shades of Grey are also awesome, and also disqualified.

Dream Machine, On The Break - Darwin is unstoppable!

Flourish, Trigger - Who is sonic-coll? Besides a synonyn for awesome. I really like both of these.

Puzzle  - It's cool if I'm the only one who likes this.

Flight of the Phoenix - More Jena Rose in the future please! Although she might be better in IIDX or PNM.

Saber Wing - :)

Waiting 4 U - This might be my favorite song in the game.

Horatio, Time Hollow - also very fun

Xmix1, Xmix2, Xmix3, Xmix4, Xmix5 - Forget about shock arrows. This is the real new hotness. Put these in every DDR game from now on instead. (Well, "new hotness" if you ignore DDR Solo and the XBox series.

Here's how you make an X-edit:

• take a song from 1st or 2nd mix
• extend the song by undoing the cuts that were made in the original
• take the old maniac or maniac2 chart and put all those arrows in the same places they used to be
• add new arrows (don't take any old ones away) to fill out the chart

TADA! Good stuff. You can't complain about that unless you just don't like old songs.

SMM is good so far (Disco, Gus, Ruby, and Julio remaining) because I can play DDR normally. Although I like doing a bit of the weird stuff like staircase or whatever, I also like normal DDR. In SMM I'm playing normal standard or heavy songs with whatever mods I want. I also unlocked half of the game with about 4 hours of effort. That's nice too.

The SMM locations are such horribly, horribly, horribly, horribly, horribly, horribly, forced puns. The SMM Mall? The Final Stage Airport? Would you board a plane there? "Attention passengers, please fasten your seat belts because we're beginning our decent onto the Final Stage runway." Guh. *facepalm* Revolution Park seemed almost normal, just merely forced. But I actually reeled from the blow of Verse Mansion. I was done with 5 or 6 full stories before I figured out why it was as bad as the rest of them. And then when it hit me, it was that much worse because of how long I was stumped by it. And I knew enough about DDR lore *cringe* to recognize Akira and and Pix.

I'm a huge fan of Beatnation Records and I always like to hear more of them. Although I do play an unhealthy amount of IIDX. And I loop Beatnation's music constantly while I'm at home and in my car. So it's probably good that I'm listening to something else for a change. But yeah, I do feel like they're absent even though they must have no fewer than 10 songs in here.

Yeah, I got the feeling that this was an early August build of the arcade machine too. I tried to pick 2.5x for Horatio. NOPE!

But I am loving the charts though! It kind of feels like the average standard chart is now a 6.5 footer on the old scale. It used to be that light was horrifically boring and that a standard chart was like a heavy chart with the exciting bits removed. (Or, Forever Sunshine could fill in for any song as a generic standard chart.) But the designers got kind of 3rd-mix-gutsy with the standard charts. They follow the music now. I was forced to play a bunch of standard charts as part of Street Master Mode and I actually didn't wish that I was on heavy. (shocking) I've only seen about 10 of the new heavy charts so far.

Thank you for letting me use any mods I want during SMM! So good, so good. I was sleepwalking through SMM when Disco picked Saber Wing basic against me. I said "pfft", put it on 1.5x, and started the song. Instead of getting yet another easy AAA I got a low B because the arrows were moving wayyyy too fast. After the song I looked at the banner...

The x-mixes are fantastic! They're my favorite new thing about X. I've played all 5 now, and they're musically awesome. There are 1 or 2 transitions here or there that I could nitpick, but they're so much fun it's not worth it to do so. Can these be nonstop courses in the arcade version? Like, I pick Nonstop Mode, and then I pick x-mix 5? I'd pay a dollar for that.

There is no online feature for X, is there? PS2 online play was always kind of dead, I heard. I think you have to play on the 360 now.

What you might be looking at is LAN play. You need a couple PS2s for that. I don't know what Party Mode does and the manual doesn't say much about it.

^ That's a little harsh. You don't have to be old (I mean twenties) to like the classics. As long as they appreciate them now it's all good.

And thanks to YouTube and Stepmania, everyone has access to everything. Can you imagine someone actually saying "I love So Deep! I hope they bring it back someday so I can finally play it." That's wrong on so many levels, but I'm sure someone somewhere is thinking it.

Based on one day with the home version:

 * You know the one announcer comment where one/both of them sing "You're dancin! You're groovin! The flow is really movin!" Yeah, that one. About 70% the time it sounds bad when they sing on top of the music. (Wrong pitch, wrong BPM for what I'm playing.) And because of that it's also distracting. Please move that VO to the results screen or something.

 * Whenever the announcer says anything involving the words "Perfect Combo", can he please only say that when I actually have a PC? I had a couple misses and the guy said "Keep up that perfect combo!" Whatever.

 * The home version doesn't have the 2.5x or full combo flash that the AC version has. Please invent a time machine to fix this.

 * If you PC a song in the arcade, is the flash gold instead of green? That might be awesome.

 * Can we save random menu settings to our USB/e-amuse? Putting a dollar in the machine and then selecting beginner mode because the cursor starts there is such a rip off. The game should know that I last played standard mode and start with the cursor there. (At least in SN2 you can still play heavy, but the songlist is still reduced to 20 songs.)

 * Allow operators to set completely different prices for singles, versus, and doubles. Like, singles = 4 credits, versus = 8 credits, doubles = 6 credits. (And then there's still a separate coins per credit setting.) I ask for this because implementing versus premium and doubles premium as two separate options is probably too confusing for some operators.

There have been a couple, actually. And magazine ads too.

The G4 one was the best. And I don't even think it was a paid ad. I think they made it themselves as a neat filler. It's so well done! Look at the pad - it lights up! How did they do that? The concept is great and they picked the perfect song to match the concept - something that people step hard to with an easily recognizable sound. That 30 second clip would make me want to play the game if I didn't already. It just screams "Fun? Now imagine how much more fun it would be with the music turned on!"

I miss the old G4. It should be a crime for them to continue using the name. :\

Unusually good intro video. Normally I don't notice that in a DDR game.

Disc Beings! (Not a typo.) They were never my favorite, but still.

Boys looks like it is rated 3/5/8/10/5. I'm assuming that last 5 is a 15? I assumed that if you had a 'red 5' that it would have 5 red bars and 5 yellow bars, but actually print the number 15.

That's a pretty big initial songlist!