STsung’s Blog

Starting 19th December the big and awaited event called World Pump Festival will begin. It is a annual world championship in Pump it up. There are two disciplines - Speed and Freestyle. Speed is for technical players and freestyle is for those who want to show us a new dance routine danced to the tunes of mostly k-pop. Last year a female speed tournament was held for the first time and Andamiro will continue in it. There are also categories for junior players.

In each country (having PIU clubs) one player (or two in case of freestyle) can be chosen to represent the country in WPF tournaments (1 player = 1 tournament). The requirements for a country are as follows: 10 clubs, more than 150 active club members (silver members), events, tournaments, national tournament.

This year 16 countries were supposed to take part in. But most countries need visa to go to Mexico and thus 8 countries can’t participate (because there is 6 month waiting time for the visa and AM did not give that). Also note, that if you are a European player then your chances are little as there are only two active countries on PIU scene - Spain and Italy.

The chosen players will meet in Mexico this year to compete on the newest PIU machines - Pump it up Next Genesis.

For more info you can check the official site at http://www.wpf2007.com/

Today we went to play PIU Zero once again. I played some double songs and then some songs on crazy. NX decided that I should try more difficult songs so I tried Beethoven Virus on Crazy. I have to say that this song has a really nice stepchart and the end is the same as on hard.

After that I also tried Love is a danger zone on HD 15. I found out that this song is really nice, but I don’t like the stepchart much but anyway it seemed easier than Dignity on Hard which is supposedly a level 9 song. I cleared the song somehow and I have to say that it drained my stamina quite a lot^_^. But after this I was rewarded with a Mission Unlock!

I also accidentally choose Dignity on Crazy and I was fine till the first triplet. (playing barefoot and having small feet is quite a disadvantage for fast triplets, ehm ehm).

This day I also played PIU NX. At first I didn’t believe that this “new” PIU game could made me surprise by it’s quality. But to say the truth I was truly surprised.

The New Xenesis has the best graphics I’ve ever seen. It’s not my favorite but I still have to admit that the graphics is perfect. All the small details, animations - everything is smooth and always in motion. There aren’t any static moments which would be striking your eyes. Also the result screen is now clear and well readable.

I haven’t played much of the new tunes songs but I guess I would find some songs I’d like. I played mostly freestyle and some nightmare.

Here’s a video of me playing Winter [FS] 9, just click on the picture…

Today I had the chance to play the new Roxor/Andamiro game called PIU Pro. The machine I played on was an FX machine.

The game does not have any attract screen or anything which could attract you to the game. You just press START and you can start playing. In Normal/All Skill Levels there’s single player (easy, normal, hard, crazy, freestyle, double) and versus. You can also choose to play an equivalent of marathons from ITG in PIU pro. (it’s under Progressive/Advanced Song Courses). Blue courses are from the previous PIU games, red courses are new ones and has mods in them.

In song selection screen you may press the Options button to enter the option where you chose what modifiers you want to use (similar to PIU home versions). To exit the menu you press the options button again.

Also the machine supports USB flash cards so you can store your scores and screenshots and then upload it to groovestats (coming soon). Mainly I use the flash card so it remembers the modifiers I use. The good thing in Pro is that you can insert the card anytime you want and you still get the data saved on your card.

After setting up the modifiers you can select the song and choose the difficulty (or you may hold options button and choose the difficulty with the arrows).

The arrows are evaluated as follows: Superb is the best then there is Perfect, Great, Good, Miss.

There are quite some noteskins. The primary ones are the PIU Pro original ones and classical PIU noteskins. PIU Pro noteskins use the same colors as ITG notes. Each note has a color corresponding to its length (blue note = 4th note, red note = 8th note, yellow note = 16th note etc). PIU classic noteskin uses orange/red for Up-Right and Up-Left arrows, blue for Down-Right and Down-Left arrows, yellow for the center. There are also Xuxa or Smiley noteskins but they are rather annoying but in courses it can be fun.

The background animations in PIU Pro are really beautiful and they did not disappoint me with Energizer flowers at the slow down^_~ Seriously the BGAs are really worth it. But for the rest of the graphics I have to say I was totally disappointed. There are no nice animations (even small details would do the job), it’s mostly static all the time and well just without life. The whole game is more like “Play and get high scores nothing more”. But I have to admit that the noteskins are nicely done and the confirmation of an arrow has a really nice animation. But roll arrows are terrible, they just don’t fit in at all. Mines are nice, but are hard to register, at least my brain went like “WTF? Mines?”.

The good thing about the graphics/gameplay is that it does not show the percentage while you play. At least that’s what I think is better for me. Also the game shows a song progress bar and it counts down the stages. So you know which stage you are playing while playing it.

The hardest song is rated 15. All the PIU songs are thus rerated. It seems that songs rated 10-12 are 9s in Pro, 13-14-15 are 10s or 11s etc. But for example Pump me up Amadeus is
an 8 on Hard in both games.

Concerning the stepcharts. You can really see who made the stepcharts Roxor people have their own style and you can clearly feel it in it. Also they added new step patters which is really nice and stepping to the tunes of Kyle’s music is great. It really feels like playing In The Groove 1,2,3. As PIU Pro is mix of PIU songs and ITG songs you may notice the difference between stepcharts and difficulties. I personally prefer playing original PIU charts then “ITG” ones. But still I have to admit that the charts are actually good and they are worth it. For a person not liking PIU and liking ITG it’s a good change. Because the idea is still there and 5 panels may be more challenging (and Nightmare even more).

So I have to say Good Job on this. Even though it won’t change my opinion that PIU NX is far better than PIU Pro.

Today is the official release of the new PIU arcade machine called Pump It Up Next Xenesis (NX2). No one expected this. Many people thought that Andamiro will continue with the “one country sees the game first”. This we thought that it would be hosted by Mexico but it did not happen. The game was released earlier than we thought and it was released for the whole world at the same time.

Some songs from PIU Pro will be available, one of them is ZigZag’s Energizer (I wonder if the BGA flowers will be there too^_~).

Also there is the possiblity to use your memory card. You can see how many calories you’ve burned and such^_~.

The default noteskin is different. Now it is really blue and red.

PIU NX2 Demo was held in Seoul, Sinchom Area at Enter Arcade which is owned by Andamiro itself. People got the chance to try the beta version of the new Pump. There will be New Tunes and some favorite songs revivals. Harder missions are promised.

Some Korean people let out some of the information regarding the songlist but these people were caught by Andamiro and taken to Andamiro meeting. People aren’t supposed to spread the information about this new game.

In two weeks time this machine should be 100% complete and shown in Mexico (were the premiere of PIU NX was held last year).
I guess that when the machine gets to Mexico, we will finally get the expected information. The game itself will be released later for commercial use (maybe January?).

The rumored name of the new machine is 2NEXT or NX2

Also the grading is supposed to be more strict. I’m not sure if they will change the timing windows or just the grading scale.

You won’t believe it. I was just looking for Join the party CZ stepchart so I could show it to my boyfriend and you know what I found?

I found out that in a city named Rybnik (pond^_^) there is one Shopping Center with the (in)famous Fantasy Park (FP). FP usually has at least one music game machine so I wondered if there is one there in Rybnik. And you know what? Last week a PIU NX machine in GX could be found there!

It feels like one big joke…

Actually the machine is there for like a half a year but anyway…I gotta go there and see for myself.

A friend of mine built two PIU pads and the only thing he needed then were the PIU decals so I decided to made them. I have to say that they look cool. I couldn’t believe how well it looked. So if anyone interested you may ask me for them^_~.

Today we went to Liberec once again to play Pump it up.
When we came there there was a blond girl playing Pump it up. We asked her if we can play after she finishes her game. To our surprise she told us that if both of us want to play then we have to pay twice the price. I decided to quickly proceed to Arcade mode so I would avoid her in tutoring us how to enter Easy Mode and tell us how to actually play the game.

After this I chose Csikost Post on Hard to warm us up. From this moment on she didn’t say a word^_^. Anyway we had a nice time playing and some probably local girls had their time also. We also got some audience. It was quite funny to see them watch the local girls and then watch me playing let’s say Come to me CZ. I couldn’t see their faces but I can imagine their WTF looks. Well, I just got the description of their looks when they saw me play.

I don’t know when but we also decided to try our luck on Dignity CZ in two. We said to each other it’s possible, we could get D on it? Well, I wasn’t that positive on that but I said ‘ok why not try it.’ So we tried it I took the red arrows + center and NX blue arrows (and the center for a while). The result? Well, we passed the song somehow with a nice D. I have to say that I couldn’t almost breathe at the end (you know there is such a nice stream near the end…mostly of red arrows and then there is a series of triplets.)

I also cleared Canon D full remix. I have to say that the stream is not funny at all. But people watching me clear the song applauded me so I didn’t feel that awkward (I don’t like playing crazy-killer songs in public).

Anyway I have to thank to my friend who went there with me. And also I would like to say thanks to the local girls. I hope more underground players will show up^_^.

The first Pump it up arcade arrived in the Czech Republic so we had to go there and check this out for ourselves. The machine is located at Centrum Babylon (there’s Aquapark, Lasegame…). The good news is that the machine is in front of the main entrance to the amusement park. So we could just go there there and play.

Another good news was that one credit costs 10CZK. But we soon found out that there are also bad news^_^. The platform is not connected correctly. Player 1 is actually player 2 and vice versa. This meant for me that the real reason why I came there was now nowhere (I wanted to play double).

Next thing was that as I never played on this machine I didn’t know how to change difficulty (because I was used to be prompted for it) and also I didn’t know that there are four channels instead of three. This meant for me several credits lost, because I chose nightmare several times (because of the use of speed mods).

After some time I mastered the basic operations as choosing a song, speed mod and difficulty^_^ and I could finally play. But I got another problem, the middle panel did not work as it should. So after three credits I decided to switch sides and I tried P2 (player1).

Fortunately this side of the platform worked fine so after this I had a nice time playing PIU Zero. I found out that Moonlight has really nice stepchart and that Vook is actually a nice song. I played also Beat of War 2 which has also good stepchart and on crazy it’s like a nightmare. But I haven’t tried playing dignity yet.

Next time I hope the machine will be in a better shape and that I will be able to play double.