STsung’s Blog

We went shopping with my boyfriend and as usual we started with local game store. And you know what? I just stood in front of the PS2 section and I was just looking at Rogue Galaxy as this is my favorite game but Xsoft saw something else which caught his interest.

So I looked at it and I couldn’t believe my eyes, I saw a black haired girl on a blue background with DDR arrows. I told myself “I know this game, it’s Supernova”. After this I was like…’I want this, even though I won’t play this’.

On the 26th of September DDR Supernova 2 CS was released.

It has marvelouses always on, it has a different scoring system (you can get AAA by even getting some perfects^_~). It shows the name of the song when you play the song. SN2 has smoother graphics. Really the difference can be really be seen this time. It’s more gradient and shaded. It has also more visual effects in the background animations and song selection (but I guess we don’t care much about it).

Here you can switch Extra Stages on/off if you like. (you no longer get Extra Stage by AAing anything on heavy-_-). The red songs are NGO, Unreal and well known FELM.

The first songlist you will see is quite “American” there is almost no Japanese song but later on when you unlock other songs you will discover new crossovers (ehm actually new KONAMI originals). You know songs like Arrabiata, Stars, Raspberry Heart. Ofcourse there are returning songs.

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.

STsung - Don’t Try To Stop It

Watch this video, the end with Twilight on Expert is magnificent. This would be impossible in my country….

ITG Multiplayer

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?

Lately we’ve been discussing why people in the Czech Republic can’t get high scores on easy songs or even heavy songs. People said mostly that it’s because foreign people have so much time that they can play all day and all night. Also they said it’s a question of arcades and Cobalt Fluxes. And the last think stated was concurrence.

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!!!)