Down the arcade today, somewhat gutted that home improvements haven't fully transferred to the arcade setup on iidx, failing on some things I was breeze-clearing at home.

Is all about the conditions, it may sound silly but things like distance from the monitor, offset, height from controller and key setup (weight of springs and micro switches) all make a huge difference. Biggest of those is probably distance to the monitor - at home I'm about twice as far from the screen as in the arcade, which means notes appear to move faster on the cabinet, and it's just generally harder (I'm finding, atm) to grok the action and let the brain take over.

Still, always good to play on a cabinet, and there was another new random kid playing today about the same level as me (11* breaking into 12*), so good to chat to someone also invested in this utterly solitary pursuit.

Yeah I find generally it's a case of whatever setup you dump 1000s of hours in at home is obviously gonna be your most comfortable experience. Anything very reliant on reaction times and being able to 'grok' patterns in an instant is going to suffer more from changes to conditions than other titles, I think.

On IIDX for example people tend to play at their peak reading ability, what they can most comfortably play at speed yet still understand easily enough to react in time; it's a big factor in scoring, playing at the right / most comfortable speed (which may be faster or slower, depending on person). When you play a strange setup like an arcade or someone's house that's all blown out of the water and it's all unfamiliar, with even a few inches difference in screen distance making noticeable differences in timing / reading. It's why 'green number' is so important, the green number in IIDX ensures you're always at the same scroll rate from song to song.

This is boring chat, I know.

A man's got to have enthusiasms.

Yes, anything previously bought will be available, but you can't export discs anymore as the licenses have run out.

Have you played the PS4 Amplitude Davy?

I think the Hero branding probably did work against it, but I think the saturation point of the market was the bigger issue as you say.

My housemates brother is a former DJ, and he loved it for how close it felt to actual DJing.I've never given it a proper go, probably should.

nick_md wrote:

. Kaboom looks great fun! Can certainly see the resemblance to falling-block music games.

Obviously the control scheme is entirely different and requires a different set of skills. The patterns in Kaboom are random too (though there is a certain feel to it as if it made up of a finite set of patterns chained together). It only just struck me how there is a similarity at least in appearance. 

When you are on form with Kaboom it's a great feeling - I can even avert my eyes to the score to see how close I am to a 1000pt barrier which awards an extra bucket but doesn't store it for you if you don't need it - which gives scope for some tactics. In my video I deliberately miss when in range of a 1000pt barrier as it reduces the time played at top speed.

The thing about this game is you are never more than 10 secs away from a game over. He actually had a wobble in the last 999 points - if he had made a 2nd mistake he would have been under serious pressure (he was catching bombs with the bottom-most bucket when down to two lives).

Such a brilliant little twist to remove the bottom-most bucket when you lose a life - a real turn of the screw.

Impressive but doing that on difficulty A (half width buckets) would be inhuman - at least in a single sitting.

I know. As soon as I posted that I said to myself that someone somewhere has either done it or is working on it.

Jaaaaaysus...







It never ceases to amaze me what sort of mentalist this genre attracts. Guy here is playing IIDX, a game designed for 7 fingers, on a pop'n controller, a game designed for 2 hands.

First clip is probably in the upper 3rd of hard 12s (so hard).

Second clip is a mid-tier 11 but a 'scratch song' and you can see how he handles dense scratches from 1:10.

It's like, wtf... these people actually exist.

1:45 in first vid he does elbow hits ffs

Mental is right.

Beatmania 20 years old today apparently, an excuse to post some vids for sure.

Love these old 6th style vids - players are AGOP and Lisu, both since retired. AGOP was the de facto top ranker in his day, much surpassed now but still love watching him play, his style is all over the shop, love it. Lisu is the OG one hand master, stopped playing probably near 10 years ago, still only one or two players can equal him on one hand play.





Those were included on PS2 6th Style as 'Tatsujin Videos' in a time before Youtube etc.


And the modern game - in official IIDX no one beats DOLCE. (although a number of Koreans beat him on unofficial sims, where timing is more loose and it's about reading more than accuracy):






The guy is a legitimate machine, a sick head.


But I have a soft spot for Rag, the FC monster:



That's one of the upper tier hardest 12* FCd 4x back to back. Mental.

Love Rag - BMS (sim) player, wrist scratches (a dirty word in IIDX, I wrist scratch also), but has an FC (full combo) on everything. Basically the man's all about combo'ing and reading, not accuracy (despite him getting AAAs everywhere).

Any road, happy b'day, Beatmania.

Hard gauge clear yeah boi, def haven't done that before, held in and came out at 2% bar at the end.




Got to keep playing harder stuff, too easy to chill in your comfort zone on this, ain't gonna make gains that way.

Thanks pal, means a lot. Got inspiration for man-on-a-mission gaming from our Davy. Will try to post some actual gameplay over the weekend.