In the Groove (series)
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In the Groove (commonly abbreviated ITG) was a series of music video games that used a four-panel dance pad. The series was first distributed by Roxor Games during a time when four-panel dance games in the arcade market were on the decline. As of October 18, 2006, Konami (makers of Dance Dance Revolution) has acquired the intellectual property rights to the series.
The name In the Groove refers to three different things: the arcade version of the game In the Groove, the PlayStation 2 and PC 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."
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[edit] History
In The Groove is based on a modified version of the free and 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 consists of players who desire songs and step patterns of a higher difficulty than those found in Dance Dance Revolution. 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 has all the features and songs from the arcade release, in addition to 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 was initially produced by Andamiro, the creators of Pump It Up, another dance-simulation game. However, in 2006, Roxor announced that they themselves would take over cabinet production for In The Groove 2 dedicated cabinets.[citation needed] In The Groove 2 was also made 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. Although a PlayStation 2 version of ITG2 was never released, the PC version (based on the first game) received a patch adding all the songs from ITG2 plus the new theme.
On May 9, 2005, however, Konami filed a complaint against Roxor seeking, among other things, a preliminary injunction preventing them from selling arcade cabinet conversion kits. See Roxor Games (or "Lawsuit", below) for details.
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 home release of "In The Groove 2" would take place sometime during 2006. ITG3 was to be previewed at the Amusement & Music Operators Association Expo 2006 convention in Las Vegas, NV, though was absent from Roxor Games' presentation area, presumably due to delays in the game's production. The release of In The Groove 3 appears unlikely, as Konami gained the intellectual property rights to the series. Some songs that were to debut on ITG3 found their way into Pump It Up Pro. Due to the open nature of the Stepmania platform used by ITG, the discovery of the ability to add custom songs to an ITG machine, and a patch for In the Groove 2 called "r21" (which adds support for custom songs, released shortly before the lawsuit) many fans of the series have used "leaked" song and incomplete step files from ITG3 to try and "rebuild" it as a fan-created product.
[edit] Common Gameplay Elements
The gameplay mechanics of In the Groove are very similar to Konami's Dance Dance Revolution series, involving stepping in time to the general rhythm or beat of a song using a four-arrowed Dance Pad. During normal gameplay, color arrows scroll upwards from the bottom of the screen and pass over a set of gray, stationary arrows near the top (referred to as "targets"). When the scrolling arrows overlap the stationary ones, the player must step on the corresponding arrow(s) on the dance platform.
Longer arrows referred to as "Holds" must be held down for their entire length for them to count. "Rolls" (as introduced in In the Groove 2), which appear to be spiky, green and yellow holds, must be rapidly tapped (like a drumroll, hence the name) for them to count. Mines deduct score and health if a player's foot is on an arrow when they pass by the corresponding target arrow on-screen.
[edit] Scoring System
[edit] Passing & Failing
On the player's far side of the screen is a life bar. This is affected by the accuracy judgements the player receives for hitting (or missing) arrows (see "Judgements" below for specifics). If there is anything left on the life bar at the end of the song, the player passes the song and can proceed to play another (up to the maximum number of songs allowed for one credit).
If the player's life bar empties at any time, the song (and possibly the round; see "Safety Nets" below) is failed.
Auto-Fail Feature
Most machines have the Auto-Fail feature turned off - that is, any player whose life bar empties during a song can still finish playing that song, but will be failed at its conclusion. All machines will immediately fail any player who stops hitting arrows long enough to accrue 30 misses in a row.
[edit] Judgements
Basics
Similar to other dancing games, the player is judged for how accurately they step relative to when they were supposed to step. From best to worst, possible judgements are "Fantastic," "Excellent," "Great," "Decent," "Way Off," and "Miss".
For holds and rolls, if the player finishes the hold or roll successfully, they receive a "Yeah" judgement. If not, the player receives a "Bad".
How Judgements Apply to the Life Bar
Steps judged "Fantastic," "Excellent," or "Great" add to the lifebar until it reaches its maximum.
Steps judged "Decent" do not have any effect on the life bar.
Steps judged "Way Off" or "Miss" will take away from the life bar.
Timing Dashes
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 the player stepped earlier than they were supposed to, a suffix indicates the player stepped later.
[edit] Combo
In the middle of the screen, the game keeps track of a player's current "combo," which is the length of the player's most recent chain of good timing judgements.
Steps judged "Fantastic," "Excellent," or "Great" add to a combo; steps judged "Decent" or worse will break a combo. Contrary to what one might think, hitting a mine does not break a combo.
A player's combo carries over from one song to the next, typically ending at the conclusion of a credit. However, if the player utilizes a USB card to keep track of their scores, their combo will also carry over from one credit to the next.
[edit] Safety Nets
When a player plays on the "Novice" difficulty on an In The Groove 2 machine, the machine allows them to play all the songs in their credit regardless of whether they pass any of them or not.
When players play on the "Easy" difficulty setting (but not with anyone on "Novice"), the machine allows them to play their second song even if they fail their first; however, if they fail their second song, the game is over.
If all players are playing on the "Medium", "Hard" or "Expert" difficulties, there are no safety nets - fail any song and the game is over.
It is also worth noting that if two players are playing, if either of them passes a song, both get to play the next song.
[edit] Scoring
For each judgement, the player receives or loses points depending on their 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 when avoided 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.
[edit] Grade
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:
- Quadruple Star: 100%
- Triple Star: 99%
- Double Star: 98%
- 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 didn't fail
- F: Failed (life bar emptied)
[edit] Records
As of April 13th, 2008, according to Groovestats, a popular website for tracking ITG scores, 98 out of 113 Expert difficulty songs currently available on In the Groove arcade machines have been "quad-starred", meaning that someone has reported a perfect score of 100% on that particular song.
In The Groove rates song difficulty on a scale of 1 to 13, and according to this scale, the number of songs on each numerical level that have been "quad-starred" is as follows:
- 9's: All of them
- 10's: 34 out of 35
- 11's: 9 out of 12
- 12's: 2
- 13's: 0 out of 3 (For reference, the three songs that are rated a 13 are "Pandemonium," "Summer ~Speedy Mix~," and "VerTex2.")
Of note is the fact that only one Expert-difficulty song (VerTex2) has a world record score under 99%, and only four Expert songs have a world record score that contains 10 or more "Excellent" judgements.
[edit] Technical Details
In The Groove is built on a complete PC system running the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, containing a hard disk, contemporary processor, integrated graphics card, and a USB hub for transferring user statistics and edits onto a flash drive, dubbed the Boxor. 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 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. [1] The main hole exploited is in the OS boot sequence; utilizing a USB keyboard and a Linux live CD to directly access the filesystem. The monitors on upgraded DDR cabinets do not have the ability to display the correct refresh rate when in the system BIOS and in the Linux console, providing a challenge. Persons may connect their own external monitor to the cabinet, however, and complete the process with ease. Similarly, the PS2 version of the game may also be hacked to add new songs.
[edit] Songs
Most of the songs in the ITG series were composed by aliases of Kyle Ward (commonly compared to DDR's Naoki, who works under similar circumstances). Ironically, 3 songs found in the DDR series are now also present in In the Groove 2: "Bumble Bee" and "Typical Tropical" by Bambee, and "Sunshine" by Triple J (originally known as "Follow the Sun").
[edit] Song Synchronization
ITG is generally considered to have 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, according to many players, 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. Adversely, In the Groove 1's stepcharts were generally synced significantly later, often 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, Lipstick Kiss, and Turn It On). 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.
As of the most recent revisions (r21 and r23), most of the problems with songs' synchronization, even with songs that were once significantly off-sync, have either been eliminated or significantly reduced.
[edit] Games
- In the Groove (2004)
- In the Groove 2 (2005)
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Konami has acquired In the Groove (press release)
