Mastodawn

Just got home after two hours from an arcade where I got to play a bunch of dancing rhythm games back to back. There's a surprising variety of such and the arcade had them all so I got to copare and contrast them.

The big three are #DDR / #DanceDanceRevolution, #PumpItUp, and #StepManiaX. They're all pretty similar in basic concept -- four or five pads on the floor that you have to step on, on beat to a J/Kpop song, and a bar that you can lean on to help you do that -- but surprisingly different in everything but that.

There's also #DanceRushStardom which is completely different and doing its own thing and which I cannot figure out how to play.

I have thoughts on them all 🡇

(I'd like to preface this by saying I'm not particularly _good_ at any of the games in question. I play sevens on DDR, fives on PIU, and Easy Plus on SMX, which I played for the first time today. This is very much a novice's perspective.)

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Vincent Sparks Mar 9

#PumpItUp is the most fun in my opinion, because the pads are big and hard to miss, they're arranged in an X so there's a handy place to put your feet (plus it's a lot harder to mix up up & down since they're not next to each other). It also just... I don't know, has dance sequences that are more fun to do, letting you jump and stomp all around on the pads instead of just barely moving your feet so you can hit the correct one in time. My favorite moments playing this type of game are when my feet touch the floor less than 20% of the time, and PIU lets me do that a lot.

It's also by far the most lenient of the the three when it comes to scoring :D

The window for a Perfect is insanely wide, and not only is there no penalty for extraneous inputs, it doesn't check if you start a hold before it told you to, so if you start a hold half a beat early and release it half a beat late you'll get a perfect. It almost feels like cheating to do that, so I generally don't, but it's still fun.

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Vincent Sparks

#StepManiaX (in, again, my novice opinion) seems to be for the technical crowd. There's no music video playing behind the scrolling arrows like on the other two, and it shows EARLY/LATE above an arrow, plus a little checkmark or warning symbol to show whether you released a hold on time.

The emphasis is very much on the scoring and there aren't many frills beyond that. It does have really good music, though -- techno remixes of several songs that work perfectly in the DDR format. I can't decide whether I like its rhythm-game-specific remixes of songs I know or PIU's kpop more.

Another thing I notice is I think the pads have springs under them. They kinda bounce your foot back up if you tap them as opposed to stomp. Maybe the technical crowd demands this; I'm not sure. Definitely makes for an interesting experience. I wont' say it's good or bad -- I would not like it if Pump It Up added these -- but it does make it more fun.

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Vincent Sparks Mar 9

I don't like DDR. I don't know what to say. It feels even more strict with the scoring than StepManiaX and I swear it sometimes completely fails to register inputs, either that or I'm missing the pads. Either way I'm getting misses that don't feel like my fault. DDR also counts missing an entire hold if you miss the beginning, unlike the other two.

Also DDR often has notes timed on the lyrics or instruments as opposed to on the beats, which makes it a nightmare if you play a song you haven't heard before before on anything but the easiest or sometimes second easiest difficulty.

There are also a bunch of codes (short sequences of pads) that you have to do on the menu screens to unlock certain things. Pump It Up has these too but they're printed across the top of the cabinet. On "DDR 20th Anniversary Edition" cabinet which I played one round of today and quit, I can only assume I needed to know one of these codes off the bat, because it would not let me select anything but the easiest difficulty of any song!

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Vincent Sparks Mar 9

I cannot figure out what's going on with Dance Rush Stardom. It is too clever for me. In contrast to the other three, there are no pads you have to hit, just one continuous dancefloor. The game doesn't seem to care where your feet are front to back, only side to side, and you have to slide and shuffle and moonwalk.

It's easy enough for me to figure out how to configure my legs to hit the pads as I'm reading the arrows (except on some of the harder PIU charts where they make you hit top right and bottom right on consecutive beats, grrrr. I know how to do it, I just have to tell that to my legs.) I _cannot_ figure out how to make my legs do whatever the hell DRS wants them to do. I've watched other people play it, I've watched the video the cabinet plays in attract mode, and my brain is not putting together how the instructions the game gives translate to those dance moves.

I plan to keep trying, though.

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Vincent Sparks Mar 9

This isn't helped by the game's interface, which gives you exactly as much instruction about how to configure any part of your body besides your feet as a DDR-like, or its scoring system, which is camera-based and unreliable, and (thankfully?) seems to err on the side of giving you credit when it can't tell, so I can sometimes pass a song without figuring out what it even wanted me to do. I walk away from the cabinet more confused than anything.

I'll get it one of these days.

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Vincent Sparks Mar 9

Also thoughts that didn't fit anywhere else:

PIU's chartings seem to be sort of variations on a theme, combinations of and varitions on the same basic note-sequence building blocks, from song to song and I think I like that. I like those building blocks and I like learning to do them, and those skills feel transferrable between songs without the songs themselves really feeling samey (or maybe I just haven't played enough PIU to notice that yet :P)

Also, for whatever reason, SMX's eighth notes (blue arrows) feel a LOT easier than DDR's. Maybe that's just because I've gotten better at such games since the last time I played DDR, but I think it's because they're rarer (3 or 4 per song on easy+ charts), they're telegraphed better, and they're sandwiched between two on-beat notes making it obvious what you have to do and when you have to do it.

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Vincent Sparks Mar 9

Few more random thoughts:

DDR makes you select your song with the buttons on the front of the cabinet, which I'm sure made sense at the time. PIU lets you select a song with the dance pads, which, thank you. Why doesn't DDR do this?

StepManiaX, somehow, is played on a 60" goddamn touchscreen. I didn't know they made touchscreens that big.

Also one other thing: DDR cheers for you. The DJ comes on every now and then to talk about how well you're doing, and sometimes in some of the songs it'll play a clip of a crowd cheering, which I wouldn't think I'd like but I honestly really love. Really helps me stay motivated to finish a track and honestly helped me get into the hobby. One of the few things I like about DDR. DJ voice can sometimes be annoying though.

SMX plays a random encouragement blurb both before and after the song, which is different, but still gives the game character and which I also really appreciate.

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Vincent Sparks Mar 9

Also, when you run out of life, StepManiaX doesn't stop the music, it just stops tallying your score. It will still make you finish the song and it will still grade whether you hit the notes on time. On the one hand, this is good for practice, but om the other, ARE YOU KIDDING ME JUST KICK ME OUT AND LET ME PICK A DIFFICULTY I CAN ACTUALLY DO

I hubristically decided to try a hard chart after passing an easy+ one with a good score, depleted my life meter in under ten seconds, and had to sit there awkwardly trying to find sets of notes I could hit for the rest of the time

Also DDR highlights which direction you have to hit first as a song is starting, which is nice but I honestly don't find it that helpful

Also I can't believe I didn't say this earlier. Rest beats. My brain works gooder if there's a gap of one beat every five notes or so and I tend to struggle when a chart makes me hit too many in a row. Not sure why.