No fuckin way. Thank you very much sir =D

Oh my god bill you just eliminated every desire for me to choose GW over Acme, except the whole I can leave my car home if I go to GW part.  Maybe it's time to suck it up and bus to acme...

Didn't try out the fireball game yet.  It looked fun though.

So this is pretty damn awesome. Bill, you're the best. As usual. Just pointing it out again.

Looks like I might have to start playing again!

SN2 AND the new Fireball game to play with?! <3

Guys I think a community get together is in order!

We should do a tournament. You know you want to!! 

I'll see if I can run one of those sometime.

Bill, I gotta be honest about Fireball, my friends and I didn't really care for it.

I played a set with my buddy on Tue and it seemed to rely on all luck and no skill. The entire match was over in about 3 minutes and really, the swatting mechanism is just a bit too minimal to be really engaging.

The game came down to me spinning the paddle at a ridiculously fast speed in the opposite direction I thought the ball would come from. Then, I would hit it 80% of the time and it would fly so fast, that I made a goal 1/2 the time. It came down to my friend and I spinning both our paddles at ludicrous speeds and we left it up to chance and luck to determine the winner. If this game could incorporate a bit more skill and reduce the luck factor involved in scoring, I think this has potential, but as it stands, I still think air hockey has Fireball beat 10 fold.

Personally, they should convert the Fireball cabinet into a giant game of Crossfire as I joked about in an earlier thread. I'm dead serious when I say that it's probably be a ridiculous amount of fun, even though I'm sure maintenance issues would run rampant.

Edit: I should note that this game made me feel like I was playing foosball, and I suck at foosball and don't much care for it. That being said, perhaps some of the other members of this community will give it a shot and find it more enjoyable.

I'm better at Foosball than I am at air hockey, so I'm still anxious to try it out. Probably the soonest will be on Saturday though.

Suko, thanks very much for the report, and your honesty.  Your report is almost ditto of the one I got earlier today from the bar location we are testing the other one in.  Afraid this game may be a pig, but we will see over the next couple months.  Maybe just not enough skill involved.  Maybe we should get that Crossfire conversion started, haha.

man i haven't been to acme in so long.

why is it so inconvenient to get there

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From the Acme Twitter:

So we are revamping our menu and basing its contents on customer feedback! What would you guys like to see on our menu... http://bit.ly/9bD4cL

Fireball is weird, blocking definitely feels too luck based (you pick a side and hope, because it's too hard to reliably move to one side from a centered position).  Once you block, shooting is a little weird, but the actual table design seems to make the path fairly predictable.

The ball loading method (the tube) is terrible.  First, players can easily steal the balls.  Second, it almost always (17 out of 18 tries) drops the ball towards the tube-side player.

I can see the game working in bars, since it lends itself to a lot of "I know I can do better" and "I'll beat you next time" feelings, which are generally profitable when paired with alcohol, but in terms of getting regularly-practicing players... I just don't see it happening.

Well, we hoped it would be better in a bar environment.  But the one we are testing in a busy bar spot it also tanking, even worse than the one at Acme.  A few people like it, but more are not real impressed. 

News, SN2 is up and ready for play.

Here is another one possibly worthy of mention.  Acme will be getting Terminator Salvation in a week or two.  Hands down the best new video game release shown at the IAAPAA convention.  If anyone here enjoys gun shooters, please post your opinions once you get to try it out.

My honest first impressions on SN2 at Acme: Awful...

Pros:
Fascination Maxx and Chaos playable not as extra stages
Marvelous timing
AAAs at 99% instead of full perfect combo, which I dunno if that really counts as a pro, I got a AAA with 5 greats

Cons:
-Very few new songs
-Very lame new songs
-Very gimmicky or generic step charts to the new songs
-Practically no new actually hard songs; this game appears to be flashy and definitely not marketed to players who've been around and can do sub-9s while asleep.
-No 4th song as an extra stage. The only time I could get an extra stage was playing some REALLY gay "9" with awful steps as the third song and AAing it, and it was on 1stock battery with a terrible chart so I failed instantly to erratic BPM changes
-No high scores on songs to keep any kind of personal or local competition
-No songs pre-8th mix. Supernova eliminated a lot of great charts. SN2 eliminated even more...
-Bemani was involved

I'm sorry if it offends any of you hardcore DDRers but damn I was really disappointed with SN2... The charts were pretty awful. I could make a long list of charts on ITG1-3 and Rebirth that beat the HELL out of ALL of those crap songs. It just seems to me like the new DDR games are just Bemani milking their good idea and perverting it into generic bullshit. I think this is reinforcement of the fact that I die a little inside knowing Roxor can't continue what they started and do this shit right. Now I don't know just how much of this was machine settings, maybe new songs need to be unlocked or the settings can be changed to allow for more songs per play, but as it stands I personally will play SN2 WAY less than I played SN1, which was already becoming sparing. DDR Extreme machines honestly had the best list of music and we should just put one of these at Acme and be done with it. Give me more 3rd-8th mix when the game wasn't about Bemani's greed.



Alright all, go ahead, let me have it....

Yeah you need to play on a fully unlocked machine and say that again.

Gerrak I can agree on a lot of what you said about the charts. Most of everything SN - X is crap, but that doesn't mean everything. The machine at Pink Gorrila is fully unlocked (I think, there were only 6 unlocks right?) so I recommend checking that place out. Besides, there getting a 4th mix plus soon

You need e-amusement to keep track of scores, but that is only available on the Japanese cabinets, which is disappointing yes, but seriously, boo hoo, I know usb's are a lot easier to keep track of scores with, but come on dude, you can take a picture with your phone or camera if you have one.

How is bemani being involved a bad thing? because well......it's been a part of bemani since the beginning....so if you can clarify, that would be nice.

Extra stage can only be unlocked  by playing certain songs on third stage and getting a AA on them.

They removed a lot of stuff from previous games yes, but they still have quite a lot of konami originals. You have to understand that the reason why those good licensed songs that we all cherish and love are gone is because the contract is up on them. It's been 12 years.....konami is not going to keep re-licensing older songs because that costs a good amount of money.

Once the unlock codes are put on that machine, you'll see its got some harder songs, WAY harder songs, but alas......most of the charts are crap for stuff like Paranoia Hades on Oni, or god Pluto Relinquish is just god awful gimmicky. Which btw, Pluto Relinquished is probably harder that some 12's on ITG in my opinion, but that's only because of how gimmicky the chart is.

I don't think SuperNova 2 is a gift from god by any means, but it's a bit better than supernova in my opinion. I just wish acme wasn't in such a sketch area so I wouldn't have to worry about being randomly shot all the time. Hell remember that mall shooting that happened 2 years ago? I was at the top of the escalator when that shit went down, freakin scary beyond belief......ok sorry, I went off on a tangent there.

Pluto relinquish is a 13 by ITG standards.  Point me to any ITG chart with 200bpm 16th crossover runs and tell me I'm wrong. It's actually a good chart until those runs though.

Gerrak> there's a lot of pre 8th mix songs on SN2.  They're just under the "DDR Extreme" folder. There are very few songs that were in SN (under that same folder, btw...) that aren't in SN2.  Today I played Rain of Sorrow.  That is a Max2 song.  I almost picked AM3P.  That's like a 2nd mix song.  I actually don't like a lot of the SN2 songs either haha.

3rd-8th mix wasn't about bemani's greed, but later it was?  You obviously don't know anything about the history of DDR games (or uh, business in general...), haha...  7th was probably the firsty game that happened as a result of peoples' voice (which actually just translates to profitability), and then later SN. 

One thing I can't argue is the fact that you like ITG.  ITG and DDR are not marketed to the same people.  DDR is marketed to a, well, market.  ITG is marketed to just competitive players.  You like hard shit.  ITG provides a means to play hard shit.  You like ITG.  DDR doesn't.  You don't like DDR.  QED.

What kind of charts you consider crap is a totally subjective matter, btw.  I think a lot of ITG charts are total shit (ESPECIALLY ITG1, not as much ITG2, and then rebirth/3 are hit or miss with experiments with gimmicks).  I'm not saying I like all DDR charts, but I also happen to dislike charts that just go with every quick succession of noises in the song. Sometimes it works (summer works I think) but other times it's just a massive fail (like hardcore symphony).  All in all, SN+SN2's expert/challenge charts are similar in quality to those on ITG.  At least to me. 

I'm also biased because I'm a double player.  ITG double charts are complete and total shit.  period.

I share this opinion. Quote for truth. Period.

You can actually get Extra Stage in SN2 by picking Random for your 3rd song and then AA'ing it. Then if you pick Random for Extra Stage and AA that, you get OMES. Yeah, it's weird...

Wait a minute erratic bpm changes?  NGO has a slowdown at the beginning, which has a speed up awkwardly placed 8th note before one step, but otherwise has very predictable speed changes.  And not many of them.  Also Unreal is just as hard as any other 9 on DDR OR ITG, I wonder why you put it in quotes.  The one stock battery thing means you just didn't do all that well on Unreal.  950000 is one, 990000 is four, I remember 977xxx was two, so probably three at 980000

Gerrak, in general, I can't "let you have it," because you're just expressing your opinion about subjective matters, and I totally respect that! But I do feel the need to say what everyone else is saying about the music - namely, almost everything that's playable in Supernova is playable in Supernova 2. The "Extreme" section actually contains songs from DDR's earliest history all the way up THROUGH Extreme. Supernova 2 also fixed some of the weird sync glitches that remained untouched (or changed, but not for the better) post-patch in Supernova.

My opinion is basically that Supernova 2 is a better game than Supernova, in that it's basically just Supernova but with fewer horribly off-sync songs and more music. Of the US distributed DDR games, it's by far the best. That said... my personal preference is definitely for Extreme (or 4th +, or 5th.) I definitely have fun playing SN2, though, and will definitely continue to play it.

Regarding ITG, I'm mixed. On one hand, it's not really a game that's made for me. I have breathing problems that prevent songs rated over a 10 from being safe for me to play, and hate any song that sounds even remotely like the Maxes or Paranoias (so half of the music on ITG.) On the other hand, I can't argue that custom songs give the game unlimited ability to improve. And while I don't necessarily love most of the music that's "native" to an ITG2 cabinet, I can't help but love playing Lucky and Spinnin' Around.

I don't know how different my assessments of these games would be if I didn't have all kinds of health problems that made some of the hard stuff physically unplayable for me, or if the focus was simply not on extremely difficult charts. I'd probably like ITG a whole lot more than DDR.

I love how every post Gerrak makes brings back an ITG vs DDR debate.