Detail Update for the Valley River Center mall StepManiaX (VRC SMX for short)

Played earlier this week after work and here's what I noticed.

• Location - The arcade is centrally located, in its own corner across from the candy store. I think it was called "Jerry's Arcade" or something generic like that.
• Songs - Most of the songs were new to me, but a few were from familiar names like KaW or had familiar non-dancing-game-related song titles. Didn't see any traditional DDR, ITG, PIU, or SM titles, but I also didn't play many. (Had to get home for dinner!) Song difficulties are also strange, with "Hard" songs ranging from a 13-18 difficulty rating, approximately equal to 6-8 step songs in DDR.
• Payment - The "credit card reader" is literally for credit cards, not charge cards or game cards (like what you would expect at a Main Event or Dave & Busters). So make sure you have one with you. I didn't test a debit card, but theoretically it should work too. There is a slot for cards with chips, so swiping might not work if you have a "chipped" card. Adding game time is a 30-second process which requires you to press a button on the card reader, so kind of slow and annoying compared to quarters, but it wasn't really a huge deal.
• User Experience - The whole thing felt really cramped. The pads felt small and were way too close to the screen. The bars are big but very close behind you. There are two cup-holders but otherwise very little room to put keys, phones, wallets, purses, jackets (for colder months), etc. The lights are not blinding, thankfully, but the touch screen was like looking at your phone first thing in the morning, full brightness.
• Gameplay - The actual gameplay is pretty good, but takes some getting used to. The default settings have dumb guitar-hero, Star Wars style perspective bars that float up to an arbitrary point near the top of the screen. That's right, bottom to top, and no arrow outlines. Might not bother you, but for me, it means I will be changing the settings EVERY time I play. Also, you MUST select songs and options using the touchscreen. The pad does not function as a controller, unfortunately. And, as you might have heard, there is a "center" pad. I thought I would hate having a fifth "arrow" but this little button actually fit right in and I enjoyed the slight challenge it posed in more difficult songs. Lastly, there is an options menu, but I didn't have time to look through it. Also the play timer is a separate timer on the main screen, not to be confused with the timer on the card reader.
• Quality - That said, the construction is solid and really good quality. The touchscreen is excellent and the sound is also good. The pads are solid, backlit but not distracting.
• Sound - The sound was, however, very loud. I think it could be safely turned down 20% and still be audible over the rest of the arcade.
• Game Time - The time definitely needs to be increased to 8, maybe 10 minutes. It is nice that players have an incentive to pick songs quickly, but I was barely able to get through two songs for $1.00. I greatly prefer having time to find a good song and talk to my friends between songs. With the custom ITG cab at Putters, we could take a short break to brace ourselves for the next 9-10 step song.
• Management - I'm not sure who manages this cabinet, but if I ever find out I will ask if they can add songs and make a few other adjustments.
• Misc. - I did not have a chance to try playing doubles, but I'll do that this weekend and report back. I also did not try pre-loading dollars; had to use my card after each 6-minute play. The arcade is small, maybe enough standing room for four people, but not many more than that.

More details as I have them. Everyone please check it out. Despite my grumbling, it's really a great cab (though more like just a mounted screen these days). I would love to hear feedback from the community, and maybe we can get an event organized some day.

So I want to touch on a couple things just to be informative.

So StepManiaX is produced by StepRevoltion. The same company that made Rerave.
Kyle Ward is the head of development for the project and is the guy who made ITG series/PIU PRO series/ReRave series ect. He is also a musician so some of those familiar songs are songs he wrote and produced.  

This is a brand new game that is still some what under development that was released about this time last year. It's a small crew of like 5 people so things are moving slower but still being worked on every day to improve.

Difficulty Range is approximately  ITGx2 plus 1 IIRC.

The cabinet you are playing on is actually called a AIO cab or an "all in one" cabinet and it's original intended market was for Gyms and pay to play places like Trampoline parks or those PC lan centers where you pay money for your time and use the game as much as you can during that time.

That's why the current cab is so small and compact. It's an industrial strength design that is supposed to fit in a small area and take up a small about or real estate. It also currently has no coin mode, "credits for songs" feature which makes sense because the game is intended to be on a freeplay and it's designed where a second player can join in at any time while another player is playing.

With that said the card swipe thing was implemented by the arcade company and they are just doing what they can to make it playable and still make money.

Currently there is commercial arcade unit that complete and it's the same pads but moved away from the cabinet so you can create space between you and the monitor. The cabinet will have have a coin mode so that people can still pay for a number of songs. It won't really have more room to put your phone/wallet/keys except for maybe in the space between the cab and the pads.

The credit card swipe seems a little unfortunate, I've used one where it was a preloaded game card and the swipe was instant and loaded your timer every swipe and if you had 30 seconds left and swiped it just added to the next swipe so you'd have 5 minutes and 30 seconds and it would keep rolling over. I think that is a better way to handle credits then what you guys are stuck with, but that's an arcade vendor choice sadly.

Brightness and volume have to be adjusted in the options menu which you need a key to access those options so the arcade owner has to come in and make those changes. Perhaps the vending company has a sticker to call for assistance somewhere in the arcade?

There are song packs that can be purchased on the StepManiaX web site that is linked with the account that came with the cabinet. Right now I believe there are still less than 100 songs total available but we are currently waiting on a ITG revival pack that promises to have a lot of our old favorite tunes from ITG 1 & 2 and well as some new remixes. Hopefully that will be available in the coming month or two.

Also there is a phone app for android only atm that lets you scan the QR code at the bottom of the Eval screen and will keep track of your rankings and scores. You can also create a profile on the website and check scores if you don't have an android.
They are currently working on an update to allow you to QR scan up to 5 songs in a row to save time for score tracking as it's annoy and time consuming to open your phone at the end of every song.

One more thing you said it feels like a mounted screen these days.

On that note you can actually purchase one or 2 of those pads and a SMX Touch display that has the android PC inside the case. The pads are USB connected and also run with Stepmania or other PC dance game software.  You provide your own audio OR you can simply but the AIO unit or the arcade cab unit. It's all totally versatile.

I currently have a SMX monitor and a single pad at my house and I have it upgraded for 9 Panel so I can play ITG/DDR/SMX/SM5/SOLO 6 panel/TM 8 panel/RH 9 panel.
The pads also come with a config too to adjust sensitivity which is also in the options menu of SMX should there ever be pad issues.

If you're on Facebook I'd go follow Kyle Ward and you can check his snap chat, he was recently in china posting about the production process and showing the different styles of pad options and cabinet options.

ALSO rectangle PIU panels are coming to SMX pads AND adjustable bars.

Hopefully this was informative and helpful.

 

Excellent information Andy, thank you!

I always appreciate context and background info. Since my last post, I've been back to VRC twice now and I have gotten used to the setup. Over all, it really is a great experience and very satisfying for anyone craving DDR (or a suitable alternative).

I plan to save up and buy set of those pads for my own homebrew StepMania PC setup one day (mostly so I can play Max300, Healing Vision, Drop Out, etc)... But for now, I'm quite happy with StepManiaX.

Quasar, thanks for the info. I really enjoyed reading. However, I was a bit confused when you were complaining about the notes going from bottom to top. Is this not how the other dance games also do it?

@Suko - Sorry about the confusion; I worded that poorly.

Bottom-to-top is normal for most dancing games.

I was trying to emphasize that it was familiar in some ways and unfamiliar in others. I probably should have said "bottom-to-top (as expected), but no arrow outlines".

StepManiaX (at least during gameplay) is very similar to a normal DDR experience, but the lack of arrow outlines means it falls just short of my desire for a traditional setup. This probably will not bother most people.  

 I have no doubt that the lack of target arrows is due to some kind of copyright thing with Konami. I know that seasoned players will be able to adapt to the lack of these. But I wonder how beginners handle it.

 I'm also wondering how it might affect very complex charts with lots of mods/marathons. Might be hard to understand what's going on without those.

VRC cabinet is me!

It'll have coin-in next weekish, working on dumping things to add more sings now. For pricing, I can get 3 songs easy every time, and 4 songs if I use QuickPlay; it sucks but its ultimately a limit that is out of my control.

Machine that was at putters is still private at the moment, but we may move it to Albany soon. May host private sessions soon too, currently unsure. Machine has received much love and updates in the meantime.

Beatmania from levelup was gutted and converted by a friend of mine, that machine should be indefinitely private.

THINKING of a public Soundvoltex, but that is way way way back in the queue.

Can you add more songs to machine or are you just talking about DLC?

I've had all the DLC on the machine since day one, but still it's a disappointing amount of songs IMO; I've been playing with a couple possibilities for adding more additional songs.

The board that was used in the machine can boot linux off a microSD, so i've been trying to weigh the pros/cons of a dualboot setup in public. Also I've dumped off all the data from the machine, but every file is an encrypted database.

Trying to see what all I could do given that the machine just runs android 4.4.4. I've got a bit of Android experience on the development side, but potentially not enough to tackle something like this. Have a few more options and things I'm looking into now, but don't know how far I'll take them.

Had a ton of fun with SMX, but IMO i'd rather just have the pads and a stepmania setup with a billion songs -- Plus it'd be a few thousand bucks cheaper

That sounds great! Thanks for the machine and for the details Zen. I just moved to Albany, so a machine up here would be awesome. But I definitely enjoy the one at VRC.

Keep up the good work and let us know if there's anything you need in the way of feedback, testing, etc.

I have been playing on the VRC machine for a couple weeks now and am reasonably impressed with the overall game, although I find basically the same things lacking (or just plain strange) as you guys seem to. I wanted to mention that I would be happy to put in any work I am able to to help the dance games effort in this area, just hit me up on discord if you need anything! Alternate locations to put a machine in particular have been on my radar, including possibly getting some space on UO campus if that would be a good place. Thanks a ton for all your work Zen in making this a possibility! I've personally been slowly dying inside for the last year and a half since the lost of the Putters machine and the VRC machine is a much needed oasis of arrows in a particularly difficult point of my studies.

Awesome to hear that you're playing SMX! I'd love to see the scores you're getting.
Hang tight because there is a massive ITG revival pack coming with TONS of new content. I hear rumors of Bloodrush and Go60Go as well as many many other songs being brought back!

Speaking of which 30 songs were just added today. Make sure and get your cab updated because there is a LOT of awesome new stuff!

Confirmed that a number of new songs are on the machine at VRC.

Warning: Some may get stuck in your head and make you play them multiple times.

If anyone from Eugene/Springfield area is looking for additional community for dance games, there is another discord which was set up specifically for this area!

https://discord.gg/hh7jKuy

In current news: the VRC machine is getting moved to the second floor, above the theater, for (at least) the holiday season. Thanks a bunch to those who have worked hard to make this happen so we didn't lose the machine altogether!

Round1 is coming to Eugene!

https://www.bemanistyle.com/round1-quarter-4-2018-financial-report-store-opening-and-current-store-status-list/

http://www.round1.co.jp/company/ir/pdf/saishin/20181109_tenbo.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1267tT8_QaD1w4nbfpK-bIp8EDoWTWQoG3h2dIG9I8ZSTCQnnWCbbl34s

Woo! Here's looking forward to 2020!

Well, it's 2020. It looks like Round 1 opened last month and has a unique cabinet. Sadly, still no actual DDR, or even ITG. Dancerush and PIU fans check out this post: https://www.pnwbemani.net/oregon/round-1-also-coming-to-eugene-(valley-river-center-mall)/


In other news, has anyone heard about anything in Albany?

You're definitely not going to see an ITG cabinet (upgrade or otherwise) at a R1 location. They have "legit" cabinets, so you can expect DDR or PiU, but nothing like a stepmania machine.