Well since everyone is waiting on me to do the theme introduction (for some reason, idk) I guess I’ll make it now.

I’ve been hearing about a new theme for quite some time now. Longer than months from when Dan was still here. I kept hearing that Mach wanted to as well but couldn’t do to other IRL events that keep poping up. So Len and I finally pushed forward with the plans for a new theme (Mostly because I didn’t want it to be P4ever) and came up with either a Guilty Gear or a Street Fighter theme. You can guess which one we went with. Like Len said, most of this couldn’t be done with Linkman for the layout work. (Thanks, Chris. We all owe ya one.) And another big thanks to Len himself for all the work on the delicious banner and sprites you’ll all be seeing from now on. A lot of choices so it won’t get boring easily.

Dammit, it’s been cold here lately. Only God Arceus knows why. It’s been bothering me for quite a bit actually. It’s already Spring and we’re still seeing snowfall. Maybe it’s because the weather in Snowfall is finally drifting down south, but it just seems a little pecuiliar that it would happen now of all times.

On top of things that have been pissing me off as of lately, I suppose I could include this Egg that was left at my doorstep last week. It’s slightly mysterious only to the point that I recognized the handwriting on the “annonymous” note, but that’s not important. He couldn’t have just given me the egg in person though? The only mystery left is what’s inside this egg.

Oh, by the way, the name’s Vincent Kiba. Everyone just calls me Kiba though.

(more…)

Welcome to my new segment, A Step in the Revolution. It’s all about the Dance Dance Revolution series and it’s current 10-year history. Each entry will go into a different mix in the series.

This one will start with the game that started it all. Simply being called Dance Dance Revolution it was released in Japan in November 21st, 1998.

It’s a hard to fathom that such a simple game had not already been made. You have a four panel dance game in a 3×3 panel format with arrows going Up, Down, Left, and Right and all you have to do is hit an arrow on screen in rhythm to a pad beneath your feet. The more arrows you hit in succession, your Dance Gauge would go up and would have a better chance to pass the song. After playing through a song, you would be evaluated on your performance with a letter grade.

I’ll be going through each of the games in chronological order and through the ones I’ve played. We’ll be starting with the very first title simply called, Dance Dance Revolution.

Despite sporting the shortest song list of all the games in the series, it made a huge impact on the rhythm game community immortalizing many of these songs as classics to come for the games to follow.

The game itself was meant to be beginner friendly and what made this different from the other entries in the series is how you choose difficulty as well as the short lived Arrange Mode.

By default, you would be stuck on the Basic (the easiest difficulty at the time). If you wanted to play on Another or Maniac, you would have to enter a code to unlock the higher difficulties. Throughout my 8-year DDR career, I’ve only played this version in the arcades once and that’s when I was in the Philippines and completely new at the game. It’s a little weird how you would have enter a code just to play on a harder difficulty, but I guess if you knew that information, it meant you were a seasoned pro at the game. All I have is the home version for this game and it’s a little weird looking back needing to hit just to play on the hardest difficulty. It also makes me laugh a little that in the arcade version, at the time, PARANOiA (Focus on right side for actual Maniac Steps for the song, footage from DDR SuperNOVA) was one of the hardest songs, if not, the hardest against Trip Machine (footage taken in Stepmania).

Arrange Mode, in the home version of the game, on the other hand was an extremely short lived mode that was only available in this version. Many DDRers now a days tap on the arrows, hitting nothing on screen, to get the beat of the song and prepare for the first incoming set of arrows. However, this mode actually penalizes you for hitting the arrow while nothing is there and shooting some life off your Dance Gague. Why they did that, I wouldn’t know why. But it was kind of stupid and I’m actually happy they removed this.

While the arcade version had only 11 songs, a touring edition of the game was created and added three songs to the mix. Out of the three that appeared, only one song continued on in the series. Another, steps were created and later released for use in DDR emulators. The remaining song was never released in a future version and the step chart never saw the light of day. When the home version was released it added on another four songs as well as adding the one song that survived the touring edition bring the grand total of songs for this version to 16.

A couple of songs to note:
butterfly: A popular song that spawned the first simple freestyle for the game. Going with the chart of the song, you would spin a full 360 degree while hitting in succession, you would be doing a Spin. While I do like the song and it’s a very fun song to freestyle to, it’s annoying hearing this over and over again because girls like playing this song too damn much.
PARANOiA – Was the first and the base of the many remixes that would appear in the later versions.
Trip Machine: The second hardest song of the game. For some odd reason, this song spawned a lot of flip and stunts. There were plenty of spins in this song, but how people actually manage to fit these stunts in is beyond me. Nonetheless awesome.

This was the beginning of a revolution. It was the start for many great things to come…

Next Up: Dance Dance Revolution 2nd Mix

Mach here. Me and Len are back and we have a lot of stuff to rant about… When we can at least.