I was always better at playing with my feet than my hands :<
Haven't played in probably 4 years now but I used to be able to play all 10s and 11s comfortably on DDR and ITG, and I passed most of the 12s and a few of the 13s.
Best personal accomplishments that I can remember are fcing Emerald Sword with 97% or so on keyboard...as for on pad, I guess passing Quasar or Vertex^2 (with really shit accuracy though).
Dude tsutter sup, didn't know you hang out at tl, awesome.:D Yeah I also played SM extensively for about 2-2.5 years, never got as good as tsutter was in terms of speed or MA though, but I was fairly decent at what you would call jackhammers(jacks). Also have some vids:
2nd first pass in the "world"(if you will), wooke that tsutter mentioned ofcourse beat me by a couple of months atleast
Some speedy passes that were quite "unheard" of at the time when I passed em I think
this one's a beastly stamina killer, passed 1.4rate later on which I think I was first with, never got a vid of it though, took me 10-12 retries in a row to actually pass it(1.4, arms were dead)
On December 01 2010 16:06 Zona wrote: I play a lot of DDR and want to get into stepmania - what's a good economical set of pads to buy?
I used to play a fair amount of DDR/ITG for a while. What kind of pads are you looking for? i.e. foam/plastic/metal? Also, what price range are you looking at?
Are you looking for a pad that's compatible with Stepmania without a converter?
I have a 60 pound metal pad sitting in my dining room that hasn't gotten much use since I started going to the gym regularly last year. I first got into DDR way back in 2000 then played a bunch at Georgia Tech from 2002-2005 when a lot of the best players in the southeast went there. I was never good enough to pass any of the real 10 foot songs, but I had a great time playing anyway.
I got decent at Stepmania, I've been playing it since about 2006.
I use a 3 finger style that just kind of developed on its own, but a word of advice for anyone looking to get started: PLAY SPREAD. OP is completely right, I feel like I have gotten close to maxing out my personal skill for a 3 fingered style, in other words I really feel like I could've gotten much better if I had been using spread the whole time. Songs that have jumps mixed in with really fast streams are very difficult for both index and 3 finger players.
My best achievement is probably AA on Body Breakdown, but it wasn't a full combo or anything (I think my highest combo during that run was 1400). Still a pretty hard song (for me), but I found this youtube group a couple of weeks ago with guys that just shit on all of my stepmania advances. It makes me feel good that I can AA a song one of those guys posted on their profile though ^-^
This guy full combos body breakdown (spread of course).
Lots of other VERY impressive videos on his profile and the youtube group he belongs to. And by impressive I mean these guys are easily some of the very best players in the world.
Very fun game to get into, very fun to show off with =D
I play stepmania pretty casually and have for years.. About a year ago I started to play in Dizzy and then Hidden options and have never gone back.
I don't know what people find fun about playing songs over and over to get best scores, I just play songs for the fun of it!
My aim is to beat Terminal strike dizzy/hidden, so far got about 3/4 through it and I havn't played in months so i'm probably terrible now - oh well. :D
Anyone else play in some fun options all the time?
EDIT - My latest video (Still 4 months old.) I am no where near as accurate as some of the other guys in the thread but I think I play a bit crazier - I never practice songs to get higher accuracy, only replay songs I like to listen to/like to play.
tsutter is easily the best player to post so far, pretty good guy.
Tenox do you still play? I never see you post any scores anymore.
Anyway, I also play a bit, nothing really impressive though. The only things worth mentioning are vibro and split stuff. I passed some pretty hard stuff a while back. Nowadays I play on split a lot, as far as I know I'm the only one who plays it regularly.
Some vids:
All of them are old vids except for the first one which was filmed at dreamhack 4 days ago (Actually it was at the train station after dreamhack, but still)
On December 01 2010 16:06 Zona wrote: I play a lot of DDR and want to get into stepmania - what's a good economical set of pads to buy?
I used to play a fair amount of DDR/ITG for a while. What kind of pads are you looking for? i.e. foam/plastic/metal? Also, what price range are you looking at?
Are you looking for a pad that's compatible with Stepmania without a converter?
Ideally a pair of durable pads for under $200 USD? (Hmm, maybe including shipping? It could affect the cost a lot, I figure.) Even cheaper would be nice, of course. I don't mind using a converter, as long as it works trouble-free.
On December 01 2010 16:06 Zona wrote: I play a lot of DDR and want to get into stepmania - what's a good economical set of pads to buy?
I used to play a fair amount of DDR/ITG for a while. What kind of pads are you looking for? i.e. foam/plastic/metal? Also, what price range are you looking at?
Are you looking for a pad that's compatible with Stepmania without a converter?
Ideally a pair of durable pads for under $200 USD? (Hmm, maybe including shipping? It could affect the cost a lot, I figure.) Even cheaper would be nice, of course. I don't mind using a converter, as long as it works trouble-free.
I have no idea what shipping costs are these days. I have a DDRGame metal pad myself (got it from a friend used) (http://www.ddrgame.com/ddrmetalpad.html) which works okayish (considering that I can't pass anything above a 10 footer without a bar on feet these days.) If you're willing to spend the bucks for it, Cobalt Fluxes are awesome and last pretty long. The CFs we had at the DDR club during my ugrad lasted at least 2-3 years without major problems, I think. They're like nearly 300 dollars each, though.
There's also the iON metal dance pads, but I don't know much about those. The only non-arcade metal pads I've actually played on are CFs and DDRGame pads. I really hate playing on foam pads, so I avoid those whenever possible, but if you're okay with those, I heard the RedOctane Ignition pads are decent.
Check on stepmania.com to see if they have any info regarding PS2 to USB converters. My friend has one of those, but I currently have no idea where he is.
Your feet can theoretically keep up, that's not the issue, it's the balance issue. For the more ridiculous songs, you will be using some kind of aid to maintain your balance as you move your feet accordingly.
i have a CF, it works good... had it for about 1.5 years and its have issues registering... but i average about 5 hours of hard play a week, for 1.5 years lol
so CF needs maintenence every so often, then its fine
IONs are good
but for a PAIR, you probably want some Ignition foam pads, they arent too bad price wise and i passed Legend of Max for the first time ever on one way back in the day
Sup grokken man, yeah no, not really. I want to be close to the top if I play, and I feel there's just too much to catch up since I last played (6months since I last tried to get back into shape), leonid and those guys are just getting so beastly right now.