[Kalek]

here is what i think about these cabinets after having played on one extensively (at gameworks in columbus, oh):

HD lag is a BIG BIG BIG problem. i randomed mugen on final stage to try to get extra stage last week, got 48 greats fc, didn't AA it, and didn't get extra stage. on sn1 years ago i got 2 on mugen and i'm much better at ddr now than i was then.

we couldn't get edits working here. renamed the file saved from x jp to have a U instead of a J and the drives didn't even light up when plugging them in. plus, isn't a menu supposed to show up for this? we didn't get it here

many feel that the pads feel like poorly built home pads (cobalts fluxes, tx pads, etc). in fact, it seemed like mostly everyone who i knew who played it thought that. personally, i think they feel tons worse than old ddr pads, but not quite as bad as the above mentioned home pads.

before the "sensor update", on the first day the cabinet was even out on the floor, the pads were in horrid condition. the "better side" was still bad and took excessive force. my knees were sore that day because i'm not used to having to stomp that hard.

after the "sensor update", which pad was better had switched. the right pad that was better before now had a sticking arrow, while the left playable but one of the arrows obviously had to be stomped on harder than the others. the day after that, the arrow had worsened and the left was now hardly playable, while the right had become decent, but not perfect by any means. one week after, the left was still worsening, and the right was hard to full combo anything on.

also, all of the lighting was obviously stolen from guitar hero ac. the marquee lights are exactly the same, and the bass lights are the same idea (although GH has four sets of LEDs rather than the two DDR has). they don't really look good, and definitely aren't any improvement over the old cabinet's lighting. no LED bar under the monitor or light sticks like the japanese cabinet. also the buttons on the cabinet itself don't light up with the exception of the start buttons. the feature in x that shows what buttons are usable in menus by lighting them up is completely absent because of this.

a lot of reviews have said the sound system isn't very good, although i can't honestly say i can hear it well enough to tell! gameworks columbus is a loud place. however, sn, pump, and extreme are all louder than x in the arcade.

overall, this cabinet is really bad. at this gameworks, everyone is sticking to the pump it up nx, and the two ddr machines (sn1 and extreme) if they want to play dance games. even the beginners seem to be opting for sn or extreme rather than x. as far as i know, on this cabinet, two sdgs have been obtained: me with 2 greats on reach up (which i consider a complete fluke since my counts aren't generally lower than 20 on this cabinet) and ranatalus with 7 on koko soko. no pfcs have been obtained at all, and this is in a city where most prominent members of the community have 200+ AAAs/PFCs.