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Only months ago, I never knew that the In the Groove series of panel dance games could be so much fun – more so than the DDR line, for that matter. I don’t know for sure if it’s due to the more diverse step patterns, the great music selection, or just because it’s not a Konami game (or, at least wasn’t); hey, it’s more than just a Dance Dance Revolution clone.

And so, I finally passed an Expert song several days ago on the HUB-Robeson student center’s ITG2 machine. “This is Rock and Roll,” 9-foot. On a side note, if a C+ were my grade for the most recent CSE 297A exam, I would’ve been extremely pleased; too bad ITG2 and computer science can’t trade places. :/

Hard to believe that only a year ago, I wouldn’t even touch an arcade dance machine, nevermind a soft pad. Next goals: get better than a C+ for this song, and pass “D-Code” on Expert (because it sounds great and has equally-good steps). The following screenshot isn’t worth posting on GrooveStats.com, anyway.

Similar to a post in RELAy several months back, I’ve continued to make more simfiles and YouTube autoplay videos for StepMania 3.9. This time around, I have a non-lagging version of Animusic‘s “Stick Figures” and a brand-new stepfile built around Animusic‘s “Drum Machine.” The latter was a lot of fun to make, but I’d say it’s very difficult even for experienced keyboard players; actually dancing to it on a pad would impress me immensely because of the number of 3/4-panel hands involved. Finally, there’s a tricky negative BPM/mine-laced singles file created around Jimmy Luxury’s thumping “Cha Cha Cha” track.

All of these simfiles are Challenge difficulty, with “Stick Figures” clocking in at 12-foot difficulty rating (for a dance pad), “Drum Machine” at 13 (keyboard), and “Cha Cha Cha” at a whopping 20 (dance pad). Each video has a second version where I turn on the assist tick so that viewers can understand the rhythm better; for couple-type tracks such as “Stick Figures,” the tick is enabled for just the left side instead.

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