Rock Revolution and the insane IIDX

High-scoring words of the evening:

ALFREDO (240 points) - against CJ N. [4W, 5W]
JETTONS (360 points) - against Nancy L. [5W, two 2W] {a good deficit-erasing word!}
KAFIR (144 points) - against Joyce T.-W. [two 3W]
EXCEPT (156 points) - against Luella R. [two 2W, 2L on X]

Corey and I had a conversation about Rock Revolution earlier:

[16:32:16] Corey: well, I got Rock Revolution today! :P it's not very good! but it was really cheap and has some good songs
[16:33:23] Corey: it's Konami's fairly pathetic attempt at copying Guitar Hero / Rock Band, which is kind of surprising since Guitar Hero and Rock Band sort of copied Konami's guitar and drum games in the first place.... Konami just never releases much over here and other than DDR, when they do, they do it half-assed
[16:33:47] Corey: they use their whole ass in Japan and make tons of money on them, so I'm not sure why they keep screwing up their American releases
[16:34:00] Corey: oh well, new guitar game for super cheap :P
[16:34:45] Flami: learning about martyrs: Konami did DDR?
[16:37:43] Corey: Konami completely owns the music genre in Japan.. the music line is called Bemani, which I think started with Beatmania (DJ simulation.. came out in the 90's)
[16:38:11] Corey: they have Beatmania, which has now turned into Beatmania IIDX... they're on the 17th IIDX game now
[16:38:34] Corey: DDR, GuitarFreaks, DrumMania, Karaoke Revolution (I think.. one of the singing series is Konami)
[16:39:17] Corey: Pop'N Music, which started out as a little kids' game, and is now about the hardest music game out there... it uses huge colorful buttons that would be as big as a kid's whole hand :P
[16:40:42] Corey: over here, we have DDR and the singing stuff. they released a very shitty version of Beatmania IIDX here, which I bought to get the controller, then downloaded all the Japanese IIDX games.. so they fucked up IIDX here.. bad songs, and not enough variety to be able to possibly get good at it (the learning curve is STEEP on that game.. I'm basically nowhere near even getting to the mid-range difficulty songs on that)
[16:41:37] Flami: but why?!
[16:41:49] Corey: so now Guitar Hero / Rock Band have really taken off here, and just now, they decide to release their own... Rock Revolution. it's not nearly as bad as reviews claim, but it's clearly inferior
[16:42:44] Corey: the notes are like DDR or Beatmania, if you've seen those... they just fall down the screen, like Tetris or something.. all 2D... Guitar Hero / Rock Band have the 3D "notes-coming-at-you" view thing that people are definitely more used to
[16:43:30] Corey: also all the songs except a couple are cover versions, not the original song... Guitar Hero / Rock Band have been all master songs by the original artist since after Guitar Hero II
[16:44:02] Corey: but why?? to what part? :P
[16:45:07] Corey: the arcades in Taiwan were like 75% Konami music games.. arcades over here are half dead now, so I don't see why they don't bring more of those over.. especially with music games being more popular.
[16:45:36] Flami: why are you not learning on the steep learning curve? or at least, why is it so fast?
[16:47:22] Corey: well, when IIDX was released here, it'd already been out in Japan for well over a decade, and all the new stuff (and basically all of IIDX) is tailored to people that have been playing for years and years and are really good at it
[16:47:31] Corey: it's a LOT harder than Guitar Hero
[16:48:14] Corey: and it's hard to get good because the songs go from easy to HOLY SHIT WALL OF NOTES AND CHORDS
[16:49:31] Corey: not a lot of room between to learn... and IIDX has 7 buttons and a turntable, so 8 buttons really, and chords are any combination of those, not just two keys next to each other or whatever, so you have way less than a second to react and you have to learn how to twist your hands around to all those different chords.... they just throw it all at you, it's not like they teach you how by introducing new ones every couple songs or difficulties or whatever
[16:50:52] Corey: also, you really play the songs in that game, not like Guitar Hero where it just turns off the guitar track if you miss. oh, and it's also graded on accuracy, which has to be EXACT.. it can look exact, but you won't get full points on the note.. if it's even a millisecond early or late, you get docked points, and your meter that determines if you pass the song or not goes down :P
[16:53:43] Corey: check that out. that's not even that hard for a lot of those people
[16:53:45] Flami: what?! that IS insane
[16:55:00] Corey: when it flashes GREAT, that means they got it perfect.. if it's just a yellow GREAT or a GOOD, it means they were a bit off. that video goes so fast that you probably can't tell where it's off or not, but I sure as hell can't see anything significantly off, but they do get some normal GOODs and GREATs
[16:55:28] Corey: I'd lose at that song almost immediately.. that one really doesn't look all that hard (it's hard, but there is much much much worse)
[16:56:09] Corey: watch this one next... it's hard to see, but that's basically a wall of notes :P
[16:56:28] Corey: and you're supposed to be able to decipher that one the screen AND play it? not me :P
[16:57:22] Corey: so if you ever want to get that good, it's a LOT of practice, and you'll need a lot of help by playing easier songs to get to that point :P
[16:58:04] Corey: the US game has learning WALLS more than a curve, and the Japanese one is already pretty wall-y to me :P
[16:59:07] Corey: and that's with like 15 games to choose from and hundreds of songs... I think the second video is a 12 ranked song.. on "Another" difficulty (hard).
[16:59:33] Corey: there's Normal, Hyper, and Another. I fail miserably at 4-5 ranked songs in Normal
[16:59:45] Corey: and I can beat SOME easier songs on Hyper
[17:00:04] Flami: Hyper? hahaha.
[17:00:06] Corey: most games only have one or two 1's, and very few 2's and 3's... so you only have a few songs before it starts getting insane
[17:00:17] Corey: oh and if that's too easy, there's DOUBLE mode
[17:00:44] Corey: that's where instead of 7 buttons and one turntable, you use both controllers on the machine at once... 14 keys and two turntables
[17:01:04] Corey: it's really damn hard :P
[17:01:37] Corey: it's also a bunch of J-pop shit I don't like for the most part, so while I do like the gameplay and would like to get better, I enjoy Guitar Hero a whole lot more
[17:02:51] Corey: oh, also in that game, you're playing the whole damn song. so like one hand might be doing the drum beats, while the other plays the melody or whatever.. you just get so lost so easily, it switches instruments you're playing and stuff, so it's hard to "feel" the song and know what you're doing, other than just pushing a ton of buttons
[17:03:12] Corey: so Guitar Hero is about a million times easier and more straightforward
[17:05:47] Corey: check this one out too... that's a guy playing some insane classical song on Pop'N Music
[17:06:46] Corey: on Beatmania, you can at least place your fingers on the keys... Pop'N Music is like 9 buttons, so it's already a lot more complicated, but you have to move around a whole arcade panel to even push anything :P
[17:07:27] Corey: Japanese music games are way more hardcore than anything we have :P yet they completely suck at making good ones here....
[17:08:14] Flami: that is so insane, man.
[17:08:42] Corey: there's a girl playing a fairly calm (at least at the start) song on Pop'N Music
[17:09:45] Corey: even that, with easy-to-follow music... just look at all those chords and stuff. you have to figure those out on the fly, or play enough to know all the various hand positions (which would cost about 9 billion dollars at an arcade, so I don't know how these people do it if they're not practicing at home...)
[17:10:54] Corey: Pop'N Music was designed for kids, or couples on dates that wanted a light-hearted fun game.. that's why the buttons are big and colorful :P you can't see it on the videos really, but the notes are little animal guys that pop when you play the notes. the original ones were all kids' songs and stuff.. there's Disney version, too :P
[17:11:12] Corey: then they turned it into ultra-hell wall of notes game for music game freaks :P
[17:12:23] Corey: I'm probably going to make a Pop'N Music arcade controller one of these days... I have all the games, but it's really just not possible to play on a regular controller... you can set up a Beatmania controller to play it, but then you have to use the turntable up and down as two buttons, and that doesn't work at all for chords
[17:12:36] Corey: I can buy those big buttons from a couple arcade places online
[17:13:19] Corey: the controllers they sell for that are pretty expensive and way smaller and suck... best bet is to build one or buy one from someone that does (for hundreds of dollars)
[17:13:52] Corey: building one is just mounting buttons to some plywood and soldering wires from the buttons to the contacts on an old Playstation controller you don't need anymore
[17:17:56] Flami: that sounds cheaper
[17:19:13] Corey: there's a Rock Revolution video
[17:19:34] Corey: it works, but it should be pretty clear why people would prefer the look of Guitar Hero :P
[17:19:49] Corey: but it's the same Konami-style notes...
[17:21:06] Corey: also, the whammy bar does NOTHING... it works, but there's no reason for it... in Guitar Hero, that charges up your star power on star power sections with held notes. the star power stuff in this game is essentially tacked on and useless too... after a while, it charges up... and when you use it, all that happens is you get some bonus points.. it doesn't save you from failing, or give you bonus points on notes while it's active or anything
[17:21:34] Corey: it just briefly makes the screen blue and you get 3000 points, or however much it really is :P
[17:23:52] Corey: so basically, Konami made GuitarFreaks / DrumMania, then Guitar Hero / Rock Band took that idea and made it a lot fancier... then Konami copied THEM to make this, but they didn't really update their game to match :P
[17:24:32] Corey: the biggest upgrade is that there's 3D graphics of a band playing in the background.. the Konami music games usually just have some video playing in the background, if anything... so they made that, but barely did anything new with the gameplay...
[17:25:23] Corey: apparently, it sold 3,000 copies TOTAL across North America when it came out.. and that's the combined number across the PS3 / 360 / Wii / Nintendo DS
[17:25:31] Corey: so basically... total failure :P
[17:26:07] Corey: if they'd been releasing them here all along, they'd already be the kings of the music genre... but instead, they let someone else do it better, so now they can't win at their own game
[17:27:52] Corey: but anyway, I got it for $10, so that works :P it's really not BAD, it just has no chance of even competing with what's already out
[17:30:49] Corey: this is the same company that makes millions on Metal Gear and Castlevania and all kinds of awesome games, so I don't understand how they can continually fail at music stuff, when that's one of their main specialties in Japan
[17:31:39] Corey: other than DDR, they have a horrible music track record.. and they put English menus on all their Japanese games, so they could so easily just do some minor translating and release the Japanese ones over here :P
[17:33:49] Corey: lots of people import them from Japan (I download them from Japan or whoever is willing to copy them and put them online :P I bought the US release of Beatmania, though)
[17:40:24] Flami: that sounds crazy
[17:40:57] Flami: why wouldn't they just do that, then? (translate and release)
[17:42:22] Corey: well, they SORT OF did that with Beatmania.... but.. the problem is, Beatmania IIDX is fucking HARD, and like I said, most of them don't have easy songs to learn on.. so they TRIED (and failed at) making a US- / newbie-friendly version instead
[17:43:11] Corey: original Beatmania (not IIDX) was 5 keys + turntable, so they added in a bunch of old 5-key songs to try to give people a chance to learn.... but that's really different from normal 7-key, and doesn't help a lot
[17:44:21] Corey: they also tried to make the songs more Western, and there aren't many Western songs in IIDX.. so the one we got has Britney Spears, Moby, that cheesy "CELLLEBRATE GOOD TIMES!! COME ON!!" song... nothing really that great :P it has Japanese songs too, but anything good is really really hard
[17:45:14] Corey: what they needed to do was just make new songs that were easier or something, not go for songs from regular Beatmania, which while very similar, isn't really the same game since the hand positions and stuff are all different
[17:46:12] Corey: the only good that came from that is that the US controller is better than the Japanese one, since they fixed most of the issues they had with keys sticking and stuff... so it gave US players an easy-to-get superior controller instead of importing an expensive one
[17:47:40] Flami: OH, THE WEDDING SONG!