In this thread we talk about rhythm gaming histories

[MrRubix]

Originally Posted by Shikari

Hey, Rubix, isn't funny when you see a thread where everyone was calling you BS, and nowadays almost everyone knows you?

Plenty of people still call BS -- just look at the FFR Scores thread.

This was my very first post on the site. Aaaaaaaand we can see that we get off to a very nice start, lol.

[JenovaSephiroth]

Originally Posted by tastelikepeaches

i am the master of it

Originally Posted by tastelikepeaches

i am the master

Originally Posted by tastelikepeaches

..i am the master

shut up already

Anyway, my first exposure to DDR was back in 2003 when I saw DDRMAX in an arcade. I played a few songs on Light, sucked horribly, but had an insatiable craving for more. A few months later someone tells me about this FFR place so I signed up, and as I didn't have internet at home, I had to play either at school or at the public library (with amazing 30-minute time slots). Not too long afterwards, I found out about SM, but I still didn't have internet yet, so I had my friend put it on a CD so I could install it on my comp at home. I had a few music CDs that one of my friends burnt for me by request, so I ripped the mp3s and started making simfiles in my own self-contained SM world with no internet.

Also around this time, a DDR club formed at my high school, and I was at about 6s or 7s, and I eventually managed to get DDR Extreme for PS2 at home. Sure, it was a pretty terrible version, but it was all I had, and I enjoyed the hell out of it, getting as far as passing 9s within a matter of months.

After a while I finally got internet at home, so I started downloading files and packs from everywhere (this was the KBMP era or so) and I started playing index. ITG eventually came out so I started going to the arcade more often (...which required two buses and took a total of 90 minutes each way) and I realized that I was really terrible at playing on metal pads. It wasn't until the first year of college, which had a Supernova machine set to free play, that I managed to get used to playing in shoes. I played on that day in day out until they got rid of it at the end of the year. I then went back to playing ITG and my timing was suddenly through the roof because apparently Supernova had one hell of a timing window. I also switched to spread (because there was quite a SM circle going on at campus and they were all spread players) and the rest is recent history.

[MrRubix]

Surprised this thread doesn't have more replies!

[Emo_Saur_]

Originally Posted by MrRubix

Surprised this thread doesn't have more replies!

The extent of many people's Rhythm Gaming is FFR. A lot of people play GH or Rock Band also but that's all.

Rubix is BS, just fyi

[Izzy]

I don't know what to say.

2001: Got introduced to sm/dwi
2002: Was playing ddr songs with 1 hand.
2003: switched to index
2004: posted scores on ffr
2005: Continued to play sm
2006: Continued to play sm
2007: Learned spread
2008: played ffr / quit sm
2009: attempted to play sm and ffr and failed
2010: playing ffr

[MrRubix]

Anyone remember TCL? Axe, Chango, Sabishii, etc?
JSB getting banned from an arcade for Matrix-walking the machine? (This is Matrix-walking for those who don't know -- 1:14+)
Cyber Beat Nation?
Godden?! lmfao
SHGL? Arcade Infinity?
S4R? SSR?

[MrRubix]

Izzy: Were you ever involved in the communities otherwise?

[Fantasticone]

Originally Posted by MrRubix

This was the thread where I basically came out of nowhere and got a great score on LW4 and eventually tied Shash for the only LW4 AAA on the site

Hehe, I remember this point of history so well, and the "gases are fluids" argument.

Unfortunately, FFR was my first rhythm game I played and only Stepmania came for me afterwords. I did try ITG for fun once but I can't do the feet based rhythm games, they are way too much for me.

[kommisar]

sharing where I came from


starting playing ddr in 2003, I had always thought of the game as a girl's game. Cuz who da fuc would play a rhythm game that involved dancing? HAH. Well I played it anyways. Feeling confident that I was good, passing 9's on ddrmax, I looked up videos online of other people playing. DDRfreak.com had a video of the first max 300 pass in america. Corey had an A on a song that I considered nearly impossible. It couldn't just end there, so I kept playing.

Later on in 2003, word of FFR had spread all over. I never bothered to sign up or join the forums since our group of friends just went on to play the actual game. I eventually did sign up to keep track of my rank and stuff in june 2005.

Stepmania was introduced to me through a friend at a lan center in 2004. At the time, it was just some other ddr simulator like dwi, only more appealing. They bragged that you could play two players through lan (who would've thought smo would revolutionize this). The only files everyone would have were arch's kbmp and whatever you could download on ffr. They were mostly considered complete bs and impossible. Trying to pass Exige's Hot Pepperz file was like listening to stevie wonder read the bible.

2005 came around and stepmania online was born. This is when, imo, stepmania was at the peak of its activity. Out of smo came smgroove, lead by DJ Ossa and jesushaxyou. This was the beginning of pure simfile elitism. ODI had close ties with smg and contributed to each others' simfile packs. The best simfile artists in the community hung out around odi and smg, until the latter died from a retarded admin.

smo was eventually raided by the new odi community. the site had been ruined and the only thing left from the forums were a few boards for bugs and such. everything else had been closed off and only re-opened a year later.

Next came red fraction in 2007. The site was founded by Rebirth who wanted to start a new community similar to smgroove's tight-knit simfile making group. The first red fraction stepmania pack was a great success and generated lots of activity. After ODI had decided they would no longer make stepmania packs, red fraction had any remaining activity regarding simfile making. Red fraction 2 pack was in production (as an invite only pack) but was soon brought to a close when rebirth stopped caring about the pack and the site as a whole.

From the remains of the red fraction 2 pack, Dew opened up his own forum to complete the project. These forums were unofficially known as the smg3 forums, later known as the Dark Chancellors forums. These forums were private and invited only the best simfile artists since the start of stepmania. Few were actually involved with the project (30 out of 100) but was eventually completed and hailed as one of the greatest modern stepmania packs of all time. Later came the Dark Chancellors Mystery pack, which was not as successful and marked the beginning of inactivity within the forums. A second dark chancellor pack was started, but barely anything was submitted.

Puppet decided to pick up the dcp2 pack and start the 3rd ffr community pack. this was just before ffr came crashing down for its year of downtime. Any remaining files from dcp2/ffrcp3 went on to Xoon pack 5. Bluexoon was a product of all the people remaining of smo/smg/rf who still played stepmania. Noon, the founder of bluexoon, had made his own xoon packs before I took over to make the 3rd and 4th ones. Rebirth then came back out of nowhere to help create xoon 5, another pack along the lines of dcp and the odi packs. The pack came out with great success. Plans of creating xoon 6 were discussed, but never actually took off.

The dark chancellors forums were completely dead. A new group of simfile artists was then born. It was to assemble the new age/old simfile artists into one big elitist circlejerk. The Light Chancellors board had been created on bluexoon. Having done 2 very successful packs to date, the Light Chancellors are the last remaining elitist stepmania simfile group.

[Charlo]

I started playing DDR with a friend in my Freshman year of high school (2004). He was quite good, able to pass most songs on heavy, and I watched for a while before trying. I managed not to fail my first time playing! By the end of that year I was doing standards with reasonable success. That same friend was also a good Stepmania player, so he introduced me to that as well. I got a pad and started playing at home with Stepmania (I didn't have a console so couldn't get any of the official DDR games) and got good enough to pass Max 300 on heavy with an A. Not great, but pretty good in my opinion.

I don't play on feet any more because the pad is broken, but I would like to get back into that (it's been about three years). Instead I work on my keyboarding skills and make simfiles. I've been doing that for five years now, and I'm still playing with my original style, 4 fingers on the arrow keys.

As far as FFR, I only joined because it was home to a large Stepmania community, not because I wanted to play the game (although the game is good too).

[Izzy]

Originally Posted by MrRubix

Izzy: Were you ever involved in the communities otherwise?

In what ways do you mean? I used to post on bemanistyle.com and some dwi website and was always a part of smo.

[tastelikepeaches]

Originally Posted by JenovaSephiroth

shut up already

oh sorry......you red..... furred... b4stard

you nut eating fur loving f4ggot

[MrRubix]

Originally Posted by Izzy

In what ways do you mean? I used to post on bemanistyle.com and some dwi website and was always a part of smo.

Ahhhh I see -- I used to get files there, but never posted

[StepmaniaGod6969]

Anyone remember Delight Delight Reduplication?? It was like stepmania but with DDR 1-5 mixes only songs. It was before stepmania.

[OneHandNow]

1999? DDR at the local arcades, I'm pretty sure.
Then.. 2004 = DJ Max Online
End of 2005 = found FFR, never joined.
Mid 2006 = joined FFR but played Stepmania instead.
2006-2008 = SM only.
2008-2009 = intense SM/FFR.
2010 = grace period, no FFR/SM.
now = now.




Edit: I found my previous account's post in Rubix's Lawn Wake IV AAA thread. 8-( Nostalgia.

[Gundam-Dude]

My timeline/history is here at Staiain's SM wiki.

Pretty much from 2005-2008 were my introduction, experimental, and playing stages.
From 2009 onward are improving in terms of skill and simfile making (2010 is a huge year for me in terms of simfile making, rofl).

[jimerax]

DDR simulator history

1997 started Beatmania
1998 started BM98/DDR
1999 started Diet Diet Revolution '99
2000-2001 started Dazzle Dazzle Realization/Delight Delight Reduplication
2003 started FFR/Stepmania
2006 started SM 4.0
2010 started SM-SSC
.
now

[rushyrulz]

For me, it all started back in ..oh.. I wanna say 2003 when I was watching Good Morning America (or some morning talk show) and they were advertising DDR as a great way to lose weight and they had some people there to play the game for the show. Right then and there I was hooked.

Sometime later that week I asked my parents if I could get DDR Extreme for PS2 for christmas, and they agreed. The months in between my initial encounter and christmas seemed neverending, but time rolled around and I finally got the game.

Initially I sucked at the game (but who didn't when they first started?), after only a few days of practice I was up to standard, and it wasn't very long before I was on Heavy. I couldn't pass the hard songs like Legend of Max or some of the other oni songs, but I was fairly good at it.

I never really had any intensive arcade practice other than just going a few times and playing with my friend (who was remarkably bad). I remember drawing crowds because back in 2004, playing DDR on heavy was pretty good I guess. I eventually grew bored of the game because the songs were kind of stupid and I had beaten most of them anyway, but I brought it along for thanksgiving one year at my uncle's house and I started playing it again.

Apparently, my cousin had a friend who also played DDR. She called him on the phone and we had a little competition. After failing Drop Out [heavy] I realized I had finally met my match. He then mentioned this strange new website that I had never heard of before called..hmm..what was it?? Oh! I think I remember, something like flashflashrevolution.com or something like that. I think I made an account quickly on my cousin's computer and played him in MP. I got my ass freaking destroyed, but did that get me down? Definitely not.

I started playing DDR again more regularly and I eventually hit my limit around 2005/6 (I'm kinda chubby, so my legs aren't very fast). So I was compelled to find that site again. My amazing memory served me once again as I typed in "flashflashrevolution.com" into the address bar. I signed up with a new account, because the account I made at my cousin's house before was just a quick who cares type deal. My new account name was rushyrulz.

-sorry this story is like super long-

After several hours/days/weeks of playing I knew I had a new passion. With an enormous song selection that I would never get bored of and a competitive community to play along with, I thought I would never leave the site. I was quite skeptical of some of the more elite players who were FCing CIA Rave and NeoMAX, and I sluffed them off as hackers and their scores were impossible. I was even drawn to the point of leaving a rather nasty comment on Shashakiro's wall saying something along the lines of "Quit making such hard files that only you can do, nobody can play them but you, you have no respect for us new players." (but I think I was a biiiittt more vulgar >.>) If I recall correctly, the song in question was Maple Leaf Rag which I just found utterly impossible.

I was introduced to spread in MP one day and I decided to start playing spread a couple weeks after. I felt like I had reached my limit with one hand, and I knew there was only 1 way to get better. Later on, I reached my accomplishments of 1000 combo, FCing (and ultimately AAAing) CIA Rave and NeoMAX, and now here I am today writing this extremely long post.

The end.

EDIT: I guess I'm pretty good at guitar hero too... I pretty much had immediate skill with that already being good at FFR.

[T-Force]

I have a short story, really. Not to mention an extremely long hiatus between games.
In 2003, my cousins and I discovered DDR in an arcade in an area called the Shuswap and we tried it out. It was whatever one had stuff like "Butterfly", "Boom Boom Dollar", etc. Anyways, I sucked and never really tried it again after that.
Come early 2007, I was sitting in my computer class and my friend was sitting next to me playing... frick, I don't even remember. Some BNS stuff. So I asked what the site was called and tried it out. I played for a couple days with no account and one handed.
Made an account on January 21, 2007 (This date is forever immortalized in my brain. Also, account was StormKlowd61) and picked up 2-handedness the next day after trying Legend of Zelda Remix and horribly failing. My biggest accomplishment in that first week was getting a 100+ combo on Bubbleman Remix and beating my buddy to the pass on Alpha Helix (we hit those trills as jumps as we couldn't figure it out).
He eventually quit a couple months later, but I stuck around.
And because of that, I saw FFR go from a place with maybe 20 color files, 1x speeds and meh songs, to tokens, skill tokens, profiles, 700+ public songs, speed mods, a style change, all that stuff. I got my first AAA almost a year after I made my account (Dance 2 This) and picked up spread a few months later. Back when it was all <v 86.
I switched spread styles a lot once key mapping was public and eventually got to the point where I could luckily scrape FMO FC's and even a Challenging AAA or three.
However, my parents decided to change keyboards on me and I got stuck with a wireless from February to September of 2009. I would play StepMania on Judge 1 just so my scores would look like ones I'd normally get (I could still get better scores before). I got my laptop when school started, and made this account soon after (September 21, 2009). I did lose a lot of skill after those 7 months though. I could still FC FMO's, but my PA went straight to Hell. Soon after I got some skill back, FFR died.

I also picked up StepMania around 2008 after seeing the one FFR player I've met continually play that at school (DjRiDDeR), but never learned about packs till around mid-2009. I've never really been into SM. I could care less about MA, and I'm still obsessed with combo'ing rather than MA/PA'ing. I've tried my hand at stepping and after about a year and a bit of no stepping, I picked it up again when a couple friends and I decided to basically make a "pack" for ourselves. I've tried my hand at a couple other files just for the heck of it, but nothing really serious.

Then came the death of FFR, and the rise of Dragons Fury. I joined the site around 5 days after it came up and have been lurking there every day since. I stepped a couple files for their custom and played the occasional round of SM and then a few weeks of whoring on LD's site. Picked up decent scores there, but I really didn't get too much into the arrow smashing.
RiotFinger came and went all because of this site coming back.

Now: Just a tad bit better than I was before... okay, maybe a few more tads, but that's beside the point. There's my history.


EDIT: Okay, not so short.

[MrRubix]

Originally Posted by StepmaniaGod6969

Anyone remember Delight Delight Reduplication?? It was like stepmania but with DDR 1-5 mixes only songs. It was before stepmania.

Haha, yes, and Diet Diet Revolution