In the Groove (game)

In the Groove (abbreviated ITG) is a series of music video games that use a four-panel dance pad. The series was developed by Roxor Games as a response to the lack of new four-panel dance games in the arcade market.

The name In the Groove refers to three different things: the arcade version of the game In the Groove, the PlayStation 2 version of the game, and the brand name of the franchise itself. In the Groove 2 is the second game in this franchise.

This article discusses the franchise, with specific respect to the arcade games. In this article, the term "In the Groove 1" refers to the arcade game named In the Groove. The term "In the Groove (PS2)" refers to the PlayStation 2 game named "In the Groove."

On January 14, 2006, at the In the Groove North American Tournament Finals in Las Vegas, NV, Roxor Games announced that the arcade release of "In the Groove 3" and the Playstation 2 release of "In the Groove 2" would be sometime during 2006.

Gameplay

In the Groove is a game very similar to Konami's popular arcade game Dance Dance Revolution (DDR); the player stands on a large metal dance pad approximately 33 inches in width and length. The pad is divided into a three-by-three matrix, with sensors at the north, south, west, and east squares of the matrix. These squares are labeled with arrows pointing up, down, left, and right, respectively. The player must use his feet to step on the arrows in the correct pattern in time with a song played through the machine's speakers.

After inserting enough coins into the machine to begin the game, the player chooses a game mode as well as the number of players. The player then chooses a song to play from a list. At the same time, the player picks the level of difficulty he wishes to play at: Novice, Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert (from easiest to hardest.)

After choosing a song, difficulty, and any other options the player wishes to activate, gameplay begins. Four stationary arrows, known as "targets," are displayed at the top of the screen: left, down, up, and right (from left to right). As the song plays, moving arrows rise up from the bottom of the screen to meet the targets. When a moving arrow is at the exact same location on screen as the targets, the player steps on the corresponding arrow on the dance pad. This moment corresponds to the beat of the song being played. The player must step on the correct arrows in time with the music to receive a good score.

Every time the player attempts to step on an arrow, the game displays a judgment of how close to the beat the step was. In order from best to worst, these ratings are Fantastic, Excellent, Great, Decent, and Way Off. A judgment of "Miss" is given if the player fails entirely to step on an arrow. An on-screen indicator displays the player's current "combo" - that is; how many Fantastics, Excellents, and Greats the player has achieved in a row without receiving any lower judgments.

The objective of In the Groove is twofold: clear songs and achieve the best score possible.

An on-screen meter, known as a "life bar," measures the player's success in stepping correctly. The meter begins at 50% and raises if the player steps on an arrow with a judgment of Fantastic, Excellent, or Great. The meter stays the same if the player steps on an arrow with a judgment of Decent, and lowers if the player gets a Way Off or Miss. The player fails the song if this meter reaches 0% at any point during the song. The player may still continue to the end of the song, but is no longer able to score points. At the end of the song, if the player has failed, the game is over.

The player is scored by an on-screen percentage meter at the top of the screen. This display starts at 00.00% and increases as the player scores Fantastics, Excellents, and Greats, with more percentage being awarded for higher judgments. If the player gets nothing but Fantastics during the entire song, he will receive a grade of 100.00% - a very difficult feat in and of itself. Lower percentage scores indicate how close the player was to scoring all Fantastics.

History

In the Groove is based on a modified version of the open source StepMania engine, which was originally designed to simulate the Dance Dance Revolution series. While the core engine of StepMania was basically a clone of DDR, the engine has evolved over time to include support for a multitude of different rhythm-based game types. ITG is produced in the United States, and the majority of the In The Groove fanbase is made up of players who needed a higher difficulty of songs, since Konami's Dance Dance Revolution no longer provided a challenge. A total of 72 songs are available in the original release of the game, ten of which are unlockable and one of which (Liquid Moon) is only available at the end of a single Marathon course.

RedOctane published a PlayStation 2 version of In the Groove. This version retails for $39.95 and contains four 'preview songs' from the arcade version of In the Groove 2. The game reached store shelves on June 17, 2005, and introduced several new gameplay features, including the Novice difficulty, new Marathon courses, and new Fitness and Training modes.

At the Amusement Showcase International 2005 in Chicago, IL, Roxor Games announced that In the Groove 2 would be released with its own dedicated cabinet as well as an upgrade kit for old In the Groove conversion kits. The new cabinet is produced by Andamiro, the creators of Pump It Up, another dance-simulation game. In the Groove 2 is also available as a conversion kit for older Dance Dance Revolution machines. In the Groove 2 features 65 new songs, as well as every song and course from the original release of In the Groove. On May 9, 2005, however, Konami filed a complaint against Roxor seeking, among other things, a preliminary injunction preventing them from selling the kits. See Roxor Games (Or "Lawsuit", below) for details.

Scoring details

Judgements

Similar to other dancing games, the player is judged for how accurately they step relative to the beat of the song. From best to worst, possible judgements are "Fantastic!," "Excellent," "Great," "Decent," "Way Off," and "Miss". During gameplay on all difficulties except Novice mode on ITG2, all judgements except "Fantastic!" and "Miss" are prefixed or suffixed with a dash; a prefix indicates an early step, a suffix indicates a late step. During ITG2's Novice mode, "Decent" becomes "Too Early/Late" and "Way Off" becomes "Way Early/Late". It is possible during Novice mode, however, to get the Too Early judgement, and then step on the same arrow again for a better rating if timed properly.

On hold steps and rolls, if the player finishes the hold or roll successfully, they receive a "Yeah!". Otherwise, the player receives a "Bad".

In the Groove's judgement windows (the amount of time relative to the beat of the song a player has to attain a certain judgment rating) are generally slightly larger than DDR's. Therefore, a "Fantastic!" is easier to get than DDR's equivalent, a "Marvelous!!" (in terms of how many milliseconds a player can be off the beat and still get that judgement), an "Excellent!" is easier to get than a "Perfect!" and so on. However, the "Fantastic!" level of judgement is available in all modes of gameplay, whereas DDR's equivalent "Marvelous!!" is only available during its nonstop or oni courses. However, the Fantastic window on ITG is smaller than the Perfect window on DDR. Additionally, the combined Fantastic+Excellent window is smaller than Pump It Up's Perfect window.

"Way Off" and "Miss" steps take away from the life bar (to the side of the player's arrows), while "Great," "Excellent" and "Fantastic" steps ad to the lifebar until it reaches its maximum. "Decent" steps do not change the level of the lifebar. Too many missed steps will deplete the life bar. If the life bar empties, then the round is failed and the game ends (either immediately or at the end of the round, depending on machine settings). During two player games, if one player fails and the other passes, then the failed player can continue to play. During a one player game, most machines allow a single player to continue playing after failing the song, but will automatically end the game after 30 consecutive misses.

Scoring

For each judgement, the player receives or loses points depending on the accuracy:

Fantastic: 5
Excellent: 4
Great: 2
Decent: 0
Way Off: -6
Miss: -12

And for holds and rolls:

Yeah: 5
Bad: 0

Mines, when hit, deduct 6 points, but otherwise have no effect on score.

These points are divided by the total number of points possible for the song or course to make a percentage. The percentage is shown during play and at the results screen.

Grading

At the end of the song, the results screen displays a grade for each player based on the percentage of points that they got. These are the minimum scores required for each grade:

4 Stars: 100%
3 Stars: 99%
2 Stars: 98%
1 Star: 96%
S+: 94%
S: 92%
S-: 89%
A+: 86%
A: 83%
A-: 80%
B+: 76%
B: 72%
B-: 68%
C+: 64%
C: 60%
C-: 55%
D: Less than 55%, but not Life Depleted
F: Life Depleted - Round Failed

As of July 5, 2006, according to Groovestats, a popular website for tracking ITG scores, 50 out of 113 Expert difficulty songs currently available on In the Groove Arcade machines have been "quad-starred", meaning that someone has reported a score of 100% on that particular song. Most of the songs that have been quad-starred on Expert are of "9" difficulty (the lowest Expert difficulty), though a handful of the "10" difficulty songs have been quad-starred as well. Only one of the "11" difficulty songs (Charlene), and none of the "12" or "13" difficulty songs have been quad-starred.

Note that it is difficult to exactly compare grades between ITG and other dance games, especially DDR. This is because an Excellent attained in ITG could have either been rated as a Perfect or a Great in DDR, meaning that even if a player gets a small number of Excellents on an ITG song, it's impossible to tell if all of those Excellent steps would have been within DDR's perfect window. However, a grade of AAA on DDR--getting all Perfects (and Marvelouses for Oni courses) on a song--would certainly be a "Full Excellent Combo" on ITG, though there's no telling what ITG percentage or letter grade is equivalent to a DDR AAA.

Technical improvements

In The Groove is built on a complete PC system running the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, containing a hard disc, contemporary processor, integrated graphics card, and a USB hub for transferring user statistics and edits onto a flash drive. The software used to run the game is based on the open source StepMania computer program. Anti-piracy measures are achieved through the use of a "serial dongle," which attempts to make sure that, even if the program were copied, it will only execute on a licensed machine. A custom adapter which maps the input to a joystick-like interface, along with connectors to interface the PC with the monitor, audio, switches, and lights, provides compatibility with the original DDR cabinets.

As a result of the system's advanced hardware, ITG is theoretically able to store more song and movie data than previous CD-based dance game systems, and has the ability to add new effects by using already-available 3D libraries, such as OpenGL. Additionally, with the introduction of new cabinets manufactured by Andamiro and Roxor, In the Groove 2 is able to run at a higher screen resolution than previous versions of arcade dance games.

However, because ITG is based on commodity PC computer hardware and open-sourced software, enterprising users have found ways to "hack" the game and change settings and theming, add songs, etc. In the Groove Exploits The main hole exploited is in the OS boot sequence; both USB ports are used - first to attach a USB keyboard, allowing access to the BIOS and input for a Linux console, and on the second a USB drive containing bootable Linux. As of 2006, exact knowledge of this procedure is kept limited to small groups of people out of fears of possible score-cheating or vandalization of the ITG harddrive. Existing hacks only use dedicated cabinets because of hardware differences. Similarly, the ps2 version of the game may also be hacked to add new songs.

Song Synchronization

ITG generally has good synchronization between the step charts and the background music; most charts in ITG have steps fairly close to being on beat with the song. However, this wasn't always the case. DDR tends to have an early bias in its steps, so a player would have to step a few tens of milliseconds ahead of the beat to obtain a perfect score. It was due to this that In the Groove 1's stepcharts were generally synced significantly later, oftentimes to the point where the opposite issue was presented: players generally had to step after the beat in order to obtain perfect scoring. The initial release of In the Groove 2 presented generally better synchronization between stepcharts and their songs than its predecessor, though some charts were still considerably offbeat (notable examples include the charts for the songs Agent Blatant, Amore, and Lipstick Kiss). As a result of these findings, patches (known as revisions or R for short) were gradually implemented that improved the overall syncing and fixed various bugs found in the initial release. Despite these revisions, universally perfect synchronization between stepcharts and songs in the ITG series has yet to be accomplished.

Songs and artists

Of the many artists and songs found on ITG, here are some of the most famous:

Kyle Ward, AKA KeeL, made many of the in-house songs found on ITG. However, he never uses his usual alias "KeeL" in any of the songs, and instead uses a different alias for each style of song. His aliases include KaW, Inspector K, Kbit, Symphonious, Banzai and ☺ (Smiley). Most of the songs by him are very difficult on Expert, so all are relatively famous. Arguably the most difficult is "Summer ~Speedy Mix~" by ☺, an ITG2 song rated 13 on Expert difficulty with large streams of 16ths at 185 BPM. Interestingly, all his songs use technology and synthesizers to create unique sounds.
- One Marathon track, called KeeL Over, contains tracks entirely written by Kyle. However, as he never actually uses the alias KeeL in the game, most players miss the pun.
- Many of KeeL's aliases represent specific types of music; for instance, Banzai's songs are tribal house, and ☺'s songs tend to be happy hardcore.

E-Rotic, a Eurodance act from Germany famous for their sexual innuendo and appearance in the Dance Dance Revolution series, make an appearance in ITG. However, their songs in ITG are tame compared to DDR mixes - only one song, "Touch Me", makes any strong sexual references. Their other songs, including "Lemmings on the Run" and "Queen of Light" (covered by Missing Heart), contain little or no reference to sex at all.

ZiGZaG created the hardest songs in the game, which are some of the hardest steps ever written. They are "Pandemonium," "VerTex^*" and "Energizer." All the songs have incredibly difficult steps, and dancers will often find themselves pushed to the limit on the hardest difficulties.

Many players believe that ZiGZaG is in fact Kyle Ward, but there has been no way of confirming it so far. Both Roxor and Kyle Ward have denied said allegations repeatedly, and are intent on keeping ZiGZaG's anonymity.

Music

Some notable songs from the ITG series include:

Pandemonium- The most difficult song in the original In the Groove, Pandemonium scrolls at 330 BPM and its stepchart, although much less technical than other notable stepcharts, contains constant 8th note streams, jumps, and more often than not, a mixture of the two. The song has a difficulty rating of 13, but it is hard to imagine a mere rating to describe it.

Euphoria- Another very difficult song, Euphoria is extremely difficult on Expert difficulty. It contains many 16th notes and even 32nd notes at 140 BPM, forcing the player to "drill" between two panels (one for each foot) at a rate of over 18 times per second, making it one of the most infamous songs in the game. At one point the song slows down to 70 BPM and contains 64th note trills. Although it is easier to pass than it sounds (though not easy at all by any means), it is extremely difficult to get a good score on. Many players find themselves getting higher scores on Pandemonium.

Determinator- A song of extremes, this otherwise mellow song contains an extended "run" of 24th notes at 147BPM, the fastest single section of any stepchart, barring the extremely short, yet frequent, 32nd/64th bursts in Euphoria. Although this section lasts just five to six seconds, it makes Determinator one of the hardest songs to pass in the game, and the world record (currently known to be 97.79%) is the lowest for any song other than VerTex², mentioned below. Determinator also has many shorter 24th bursts throughout, which are meant to weaken the player for the big run in the middle, or to fail the player after surviving the run. The stepchart concludes with a second 24th note run, which is simpler than the first and lasts about 2 seconds.

Bloodrush- Often considered along with Determinator (see above) to one of the hardest 12 ranked songs in the game, Bloodrush contains relentless streams of 16th note patterns at 158 BPM, including many difficult patterns involving the feet "crossing over" each other frequently. The "slow" section in the middle is anything but a respite from the rest of the song, containing 32nd notes at 79 BPM in more difficult crossover patterns, which are particularly difficult to read due to the slow scroll speed in this section. Bloodrush was actually slated to have a 13 rating during beta testing, but it was changed to a 12 for the final release, to the chagrin of many players who believe it deserved the 13.

VerTex²- Arguably the most technically challenging chart ever composed for a four-panel dancing simulator, VerTex² frequently changes speeds (from quite slow, 88BPM, to blindingly fast, 555BPM) and has a wide mix of extremely technical and rhythmic steps. Like its predecessor, the song features a high number of mines, which are often difficult to avoid. The final run is considered one of the most difficult patterns in the game. It is telling that the known world record for this song is considerably lower than any other song in the series, currently standing at only 94.55%. Although there are 2 other songs in In the Groove 2 which hold the same difficulty rank (13), many consider VerTex² to be considerably more challenging than the others.

Summer ~Speedy Mix~-The third and final 13 block song in the ITG series, Summer contains many long, challenging 16th-note runs at 185 BPM. In the middle, there is a very technically challenging jump/stream section, and there is a very long run at the end, with seven 8th-note jumps in the middle. Summer ~Speedy Mix~ certainly deserves its 13 block rating, though not as technically challenging as Pandemonium or VerTex².

Community response

ITG is in a sense a product of the DDR community, created in response to the seeming dearth of new releases in the official series. It already enjoys an impressive level of popularity with the more dedicated members of the dance gaming community, although there are still quite a few contentions surrounding it. Briefly, some of these are:

ITG tends to cater mostly to a small fraction of expert players. The experience for casual and novice players is much the same as that of DDR (apart from the aforementioned technical improvements) and in some cases the easy step charts are viewed to be lacking in quality. There is much debate about the general "feel" of the music and step charts -- some find the ITG step charts severely lacking in variety (the typical song being about 105-120 seconds in length instead of 85-90 seconds probably contributes to this), while others find them fresh and original. The music in ITG is also considerably more western (with an emphasis on techno and trance) compared to DDR, which had a variety of songs from Eurobeat to J-pop.

While many of the expert players see the increased levels of difficulty found in ITG as a welcome addition to dance games, casual players have a mixed reaction to the harder songs. Many of the expert players find new challenges in the intensity of the songs, while many of the casual players dislike ITG's hardest charts for the same reason, seeing these difficult songs as having no other purpose than to see how fast players can move their feet.

The "Hands" gameplay concept, where players are required to use their hands in addition to their feet to hit three or four arrows at a time, is considered by some to not work very well with older arcade machine hardware, which was originally built for a game where you only use your feet. On some older machines a considerable amount of force is needed to make a hand slap register, and completing a hold arrow with a hand (as some songs require you to do) is difficult for some players. However, many players consider the newer, dedicated ITG2 cabinets to have much better responsiveness to lighter presses, allowing for easier triggering of Hands.

There is some controversy as to whether Mines make for an interesting addition to the gameplay or simply make it more tedious. Some players feel that songs such as Hardcore of the North contain an abundance of mines, added merely to give a cheap difficulty boost to an otherwise unremarkable step chart. Other players feel that the mines give a new challenge, prompting the player to adapt a new way of reading stepcharts and allowing for more sophistication in step charts. Some songs, such as Liquid Moon, use the mines to create "hidden steps" on which a player may step to easily avoid them, and some have even used mines to spell something out in the stepchart (Notably Xuxa with "ITG" and Infection with a "K" for Inspector K).

Lawsuit

Konami filed a lawsuit against Roxor Games on an infringement of various rights on 9th May 2005. Additionally, they amended their complaint on 1st July 2005 to include the dance game "MC GROOVZ danceCRAZE" (a game produced by Mad Catz to accompany their 3rd party dance mat). Konami primarily claims that Roxor has infringed their dancing game patent rights, but also goes on to accuse Roxor of trademark infringement, false advertising and unfair competition. This mostly originates from the first ITG, which was an upgrade rather than a complete arcade cabinet. ITG2 and any subsequent releases should not be affected. However, Konami is demanding a lot of damages and this could delay, or possibly destroy, any chance of a continuation of the ITG series.

ITG fans have been quick to criticise the lawsuit, pointing out that Konami's Japanese arcade games are illegal in the United States. However, as with the Konami v. Andamiro lawsuit which took place years ago, Konami believe they have a strong case and are prepared to stand by it (even though, in the resolution of the Andamiro case, Konami made concessions that would relegate DDR to the home market for years to come). At this stage, it is impossible to say which of the companies is going to win each accusation.

References

External links

In the Groove

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