It's not often that I get to post about Japanese Music on the site. But when two of my favorite things, Idol Music & Dance Dance Revolution are put into one complete package I kinda geek out. I know I'm reaching out to a severe minority, but for those which this topic strikes a chord with, it'll really hit home.

Recently, Tron from Japancast, sent me a couple links to custom created stepmania files. For those of you unfamiliar, Stepmania is a program you can run on your computer simulating the arrows from Dance Dance Revolution. It was a big thing among the DDR community as it allowed users play the game at home via just a keyboard, or more extravagantly if they chose so. Besides bringing the game outside of arcades it also opened a new door because players could create dance steps to whatever songs they liked. This meant that even songs which never made it into DDR due to licensing issues could have a chance of finding it's way in some form.

But there were problems of course. Mostly stemming from quality control, incompatibility, and inconsistency. Plus a lot of people still only wanted to do popular songs. Just because you liked a song didn't mean it couldn't still be passed up but at least now you had the option of taking the problem into your own hands.

But long story short, someone by the name of Johpan has taken it upon themselves to create stepfiles for some of the most popular recent idol music. I was extremely excited to see someone still doing it as DDR is not as popular as it once was. I was even more excited that it was within this genre of music.

If you can take my word regarding my DDR experience, the steps are actually quite impressive. The movements are well constructed and they look like they'd be a blast to play. I was also glad to see a variety with in the Idol World as there's even a steps to the not yet released Pinky Jones by the up and coming group Momoiro Clover.

I don't have a way to play them right now but it's a possibility as Austin has a pretty good local arcade scene. But you can be sure that I'll be putting these on the DDR machine I'll eventually make when space allows.

David
www.japancastacademy.com

Also if you're interested in trying these steps out yourselves, a download link is included in each youtube video or at johpan.com under stepcharts.

AkKanbe Bashi by Watarirouka Hashiritai

Enkyori Poster by AKB48 Team PB

Comments

  • Avatar
    zekana
    13 years, 5 months ago

    Reminds me of Frets on fire, a guitar hero free pc game. pretty much the same thing as you were talking about. its always fun to see how people note charts and see just what they can manage. the only thing is, at times it felt like my timing of the song and the note charters timing were off a bit, though this never happens in the official games.

    anyway, you might enjoy Osu!, its a game like elite beat agents for the pc, again free with a strong community. get songs of many genres like rock, anime, and i think i saw a few pop songs too. probably find a bunch of them on youtube.

  • Avatar
    Mgs2master2
    13 years, 5 months ago

    This reminds me of OSU! The game looks similar except done with a mouse depending on certain modes

  • Avatar
    login_name_person
    13 years, 5 months ago

    There's also an entire website with thousands of Anime songs that are compatible with Stepmania. It's called Otaku's Dream - otakusdream.com Currently, the main website is under construction, but you can still download custom Anime song packages or singles at the forums - smallnsoft.com/od/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=7199a106a1136503877127d3b1a91f51&#c35

    Here's a sample video:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvNYL7qHIJo

  • Avatar
    SiShenDao
    13 years, 5 months ago

    hehehe stepmania, I used to have over 500 some songs in my song list~
    I reccomend
    bemanistyle.com
    and
    http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/sims/
    for most songs

  • Avatar
    dthhand5
    13 years, 5 months ago

    Agh. I had to delete my stepmania library and all a month or two ago to make space :< Had so many (now hard to find) charts. I may re-download it again and make some charts. Always awesome to find well made charts with your favorite tracks.

  • Avatar
    dafishies
    13 years, 5 months ago

    I was actually interested int he new ddr game coming out but not anymore. I dont have the money to get that and everything else. It's gonna be something I'll have to wait for and get later.

    I want to get back into ddr though :/

  • Avatar
    johpan
    13 years, 5 months ago

    Thanks for the write up!

    The arrow-based rhythm game community is still pretty lively up here in Toronto, though we play In The Groove up here. It's basically a professionally modified version of StepMania and put in an arcade cabinet and (with revision 21 or higher) it allows you to play custom songs directly from a USB drive. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Groove_(series).

    Anyway, I made these charts because I was sick of finding really bad / unplayable charts of songs I loved. FYI, my charts are all synced to the machine timings of the machines we have here.

    Glad to see more like-minded steppers :) Enjoy the charts!

  • Avatar
    TemjinZero
    13 years, 5 months ago

    ...I didn't even know Japancast had a podcast.

    What have I been doing all this time.

  • Avatar
    Mr Valentine
    13 years, 5 months ago

    lolz at that music, or whatever thats fucking called.