I see smoke rising.................is it Kevin?  Nope, the smoke is coming from the DM cabinet in the shop.  Board being sent out again.  That is the sad update on DM.

ITG, we will toss a new marquee in there soon so people will know something is going on.

That is true, the hard charts didn't look so bad, but the Expert 9's were almost nothing but 1U/2D jumps and non-stop high-speed crossovers (get from 1L to 2R in 4 steps and go back in 3 before landing a centered jump and then jumping from corner to corner [for example 1DL -> 2UR] a few times).  I walked off near the end of the only 10 I played because my shoulder couldn't handle the strain of flinging my body from side to side.

It made us want to kiss it red. 

As far as the hack goes, I talked to Jon, and we think it'd be a nice thing to do to put a banner up next to the machine saying something like "If you like the music in this game, most of it is available on itunes!" Since artists don't get royalties from hacks, but almost all of the licenses are on itunes (I checked), I think this would be a nice way to make everything all "legit."

Otherwise, the new stuff is awesome!

I don't know why the screen is suddenly nice again; maybe changing resolutions by loading Linux did something...but again I doubt that.

Kevin, what version of ITG3 are you using? I've been waiting for the community to get the "final" release done, but so far I haven't found it. If you have a practically finished version, I'd like to get it from ya.

I'm not sure...let me check into that.

Bill, is it possible to run a Tetris the Grandmaster tournament at some point inbetween July 11th and July 19th? I am ready to do it, and there is some considerable interest...

Kevin,

I do not see why not.  Sadly, any day but Saturday is the new requirement.  Shoot me a date to run by the Acme staff. 

Friday the 17th, preferably in the early evening.  Thanks for the really prompt response! Sounds like a good thing...can you get Acme to advertise it? The preferred name would be Seattle Tetris: The Grandmaster. I should imagine it won't take more than 3 hours at most.

somethings wrong with the supernova screen and the 2p side select button is unresponsive sometimes

well i was there yesterday and the screen looked fucked up. haha and that bald kinda big guy is me. im travis. and the guy that comes with me is tuan aka rhaphsody on here. damnit im tired of being refered to as "big" i really need to go back to my weight from last year. im around 230 right now and early last year i was about 190

Kevin,
Friday July 17th looks like a go.  Consider it done unless I hear otherwise over the next couple days.

I guess Technika is now shipping.  Bill, any idea if Acme has plans to get it?

We have sniffed it out a bit.  Still unsure if it's a safe investment considering the niche nature of it.  I keep waking up in the middle of the night, screaming and sweating after a nightmare about how poorly we did with that big Beatmania cabinet awhile back. 

too bad that had to go.....it was fun while it lasted eh?

ya i know lol. but im 5'10. some people think im samoan. but thatll all change soon

Bill, whatever you do: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't buy one of the new DDR X dedicated cabinets. They are absolutely horrific. I got a call from a friend who just played on one and said that it was honestly the worst DDR experience he's ever had. If you're gonna upgrade to SN2 or X (good idea! but probably not because i doubt either would ever pay themselves off even), just get the upgrade kits. No problems have been reported with either of those.

Thx for the heads up.  It is no secret within our industry that this stuff is crap.  Not hearing reports of good earnings, but rather crappy earnings. 

Does it make anyone else chuckle to realize that the 8 year old 5th Mix machines in the US are probably more desirable and playable than the latest and greatest DDR Machine on the market?

Not chuckle so much as, I don't know, shed tears for the state of our arcade scene.

Part of me thinks we should all get together and R21 every single DDR song in history, one 50 song flash drive at a time, and just play "DDR every mix ever" on the ITG machine so we don't need to depress ourselves with crappy hardware.

I have this collection in mp3 format, if someone wants to take the time to go through, ogg-ify them, and check the BG/banner/sync.  I have every official DDR song from 1st mix through Extreme (no Extreme 2, SN, SN2, or X yet).  I also have all the home versions, club mixes, Disney mix, kids mix, etc etc etc.When I get home I could probably find a site to upload all my folders if people want to go through them and check them out.

I'd certainly like this, regardless! Especially stuff like Solo.

Umm you guys, you do know these have been available at DDRUK for about... forever, right?

http://www.ddruk.com/downloads/cat.php?cat=180

The latest arcade mixes and home versions aren't there though; for those you need to get the files from:
http://zenius-i-vanisher.com/v5.2/simfiles.php?category=simfiles

There was any other place to get DDR simfiles of the official charts?  ;P

Both those links have official chart files.

I used the DDR: UK packs for our ITG machine, but a LOT of the SuperNova songs and a handful of misc other ones seemed significantly off. I guess you can't expect 1500 songs to all be properly synced.