Pump it Up PRO

DJ LongCat · 03-11-2007, 06:47 PM

Before I get blasted out for whatever reason, its got the name PIU and its a machine and its got the Andamiro on the Marquee so unless they wanted to get sued into oblivion, its offical from Andamiro.

Discussion about Kyle Ward's PIU game.

All info taken from the front page

Quote:

from Kyle Ward

Quote:

The evolution of step has come. What is it? the secret can be found at:
16615 SE 18th St • Vancouver, WA • 98683 • United States of America

More info is on the way!

The future is here, the excitement has begun.

Kyle A. Ward
3-11-07
edit: here's a photo, looks like we get ourselves a new Pump game?

http://media.rhythmatic.net/gallery/...serialNumber=2

My guess is that its Andamiro trying to get PIU popular in USA by having a native person do it, they did work together for ITG2 cabinets, and its got buttons so its an edited cabinet.

Draigun · 03-11-2007, 07:38 PM

Takin' over ur dance games, one step at a time hurrrrrr.

I doubt this game has too much potential. Most Kyle Ward songs were used for ITG, so we're just going to get 4- to 5-panel crossovers for songs we've heard over and over again. Not to mention, my favorite Pump flair is the delicious K-Pop, J-Pop, and BanYa songs we get. Are we going get new BanYa/K-Pop/etc. songs, a mix of crappy crossover picks (i.e. beatmania US), or no BanYa/K-Pop/etc. at all?

Meh.

Tyma · 03-11-2007, 07:54 PM

I'm going to reserve my judgement until we actually see what it is, and how it relates to the Pump Series.

.. And then I'm going to reserve my right to absolutey shit all over it...

..Maybe..

Xayro · 03-11-2007, 08:01 PM

Gah! I want more info, quickly! If this /is/ official, PS2 release plz. Or better, PC release plz.

*Kyosuke Kagami* · 03-11-2007, 08:08 PM

No idea about this Kyle Ward guy, so I can't comment a lot about it.

Tyma · 03-11-2007, 08:32 PM

From my post on the main thread :

It's obviously produced by the ITG3 team, not the Pump It Up Team.

-

Songlist consists of

* BanYa songs
* Songs from the Pump It Up Exceed 'Pop' Channel
* Kyle Ward songs from In The Groove 1-3

Some of the Kyle Ward songs use psuedonyms, but they all sound like every other song he's ever released, so we can safely assume he's the only new artist.

-

The interface is based on In The Groove. It might be safe to assume that code from ITG 3 was re-used.

Songs are rated on a scale of 1-12 (which isn't the PIU scale), and a chart lists the ammount of steps, freezes, drops etc. It tracks high scores in percentages, ala ITG.

There's a mod menu which uses the ITG mods. In-Game is appears to play like Pump It Up, although nobody knows whether it uses the Pump Scoring system or the ITG Scoring system. This is a *BIG* deal, as the requirements for passing a song in each game are completely different.

Some of the songs have banners, some don't. The Pump songs appear to have the videos they had in Exceed, the Roxor songs have generic, unappealing ITG2 video clips (presumably their videos from ITG 3)

-

Confirmed songlist (far top and bottom of the song wheel)

BanYa - 2006 Love Song
Corporation - Aliens In Our Midst
Arch Of Darkness
Kristen - Ba Be Loo Be Ra
Papa Gonzalez - Bambole

Victoria - Watch Out
Remix - Wi-Ex-Doc-Va
BanYa - Will O The Wisp
BanYa - Witch Doctor
Yahpp - Witch Doctor #1
BanYa - X-Treme
Smiley - Xuxa
Affinity - Y2Z
Banzai - Zodiac

ChaosMaster · 03-11-2007, 08:38 PM

Kyle Ward was the sound director (or something like that) and did a lot of songs and steps for In the Groove, a popular 4-panel dance game that got sued out of existance by Konami.

Enoch-Fox · 03-11-2007, 08:41 PM

Index of ./archive/Pump Pro/

You want these.

Xayro · 03-11-2007, 08:59 PM

Thanks Dr. 1010!

This game looks AWESOME. Way better than ITG ever was. Even from just those short videos, I'm way more psyched about this than I was about ITG3. And I /prefer/ 4-panel dance games.

I hope I get one near me. (Kyle, if you ever get on here and read this. Put one near Kokomo, Indiana XD Preferably in the Kokomo Raceway :P)

That one song (_______) that sounds like KaW, looks fun. Mines are much better suited for PIU than a 4-panel.

Please keep posting more videos and pictures!

DJ LongCat · 03-11-2007, 10:14 PM

This honestly looks like a converted PIU cabinet into stepmania running the PIU mod. The arrows are even 3D. And the buttons look a little off to be professionaly put in.

I don't know what to say now but that I hope it gets a lot better soon.

*Kyosuke Kagami* · 03-11-2007, 11:21 PM

If it's produced by the ITG team, then the chances to see it outside US and Canada are extremely low :/

As much as I don't like most of ITG music (the opposite, in fact)... I'm curious to see how this version evolves.

EDIT: Because it seems this thing is for real, I'll stick this thread.

EDIT2: Call me a pessimistic guy, but... I saw those videos, and I didn't see anything outrageous or extraordinaire. Those WD#1 steps are too similar to Pump NX's :/ Unless they're the same and I didn't notice.

BBH · 03-12-2007, 12:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kyosuke Kagami

If it's produced by the ITG team, then the chances to see it outside US and Canada are extremely low :/

Kyle informed me that it's getting a worldwide release, and not to think of it as the successor to New Xenesis, but rather a whole new "series" of Pump.

in other news, yes I did play it today but haven't had time to make a full review. Will do later tonight!

cj iwakura · 03-12-2007, 01:14 AM

I'm cautiously pessimistic, let's put it that way.

I like Kyle's music, but I really don't think the two will go well together... I'm all for trance in PIU, but this wasn't what I had in mind.

I won't judge it until I play it, but the last thing I want is this taking attention away from 'real' Pump games, which it could easily do.

And I'm still stunned that Andamiro approved this. They must not realize the impact this could have if it starts stealing their thunder in the US.

Unless, of course, they've already written us off as not worth their time... way to throw us to the wolves, AM. :P

BBH · 03-12-2007, 02:10 AM

So I spent a little time playing Pump it Up Pro, currently beta testing at Big Al's Sports Bar & Bowling Alley (or as it's more commonly known, "Bi Gals") in Vancouver, Washington. I think people already know the basics behind what this game is already, so let's jump right into it.

DISCLAIMER: I am not the most knowledgable or experienced Pump player. Not that I'm very good at DDR/ITG, but I'm even worse at Pump. So I don't know all the details of which songs appear on which mixes and whatnot.

Also, my camera sucks. Sorry.

Let's first address the songlist, as that's what seems to be causing arguments already. Yes, there are Kyle Ward songs in the game. No, they are not the bulk of the songlist. Most of the songs are indeed songs from older Pump mixes, some of which apparently did not make it back for New Xenesis. Then you've got a good number of Kyle's songs from ITG1 and 2 (not all of them though), along with a handful of songs that were rumored to be in ITG3. Stop & Go, Esperanza, Ra, Hasen Mich... probably some others I'm forgetting. I believe there are some other new songs by artists who aren't Kyle too, but like I said, I honestly can't always tell which songs are new because I have no access to newer Pump mixes. Anyway, there's around 126 songs or so on this beta, and I don't know if more will be included later.

For what it's worth, the step patterns for the returning ITG songs are not identical to their 4-panel counterparts, i.e. there's nothing like the repeated Right arrow stomp on Utopia. Zodiac's chart looked a lot easier too. ITG1 songs like Utopia and Xuxa were edited down time-wise. Robotix has no 1337 bpm speedup, instead it's just one long pause in the middle, which is pretty lame. Xuxa has no BPM stops at all.

When you push Start, you're greeted with this screen. The "Progressive" mode is not selectable in this beta. I think it's safe to assume that the Progressive mode will likely be Marathons with scripted modifiers and all that. Also note the "INSERT CARD" at the bottom-left of the screen. In this beta there's no USB support, but it will be in the final. Presumably it'll save song records and modifier preferences, but who knows what else.

Here is what the song select screen looks like. One of the new "borrowed" enhancements from ITG is that you can see the number of steps, holds, 3/4/5 arrow steps, jumps, mines, and rolls. And of course you get to see the machine record, and the not-yet-implemented personal best through USB card support. For me, being able to see the number of steps is another welcome change. I always seemed to have a knack for finding Pump songs that were misrated because I had no idea what I was getting into when I selected the song. At least here you have a better idea of what to expect.

The song select timer in this beta is 40 seconds, which is waaaay too short.

Selecting a song brings up the difficulty/modifier selection menu. Pretty much all the modifiers from ITG are in here too. One important change Pump players might want to know about are the noteskins - by default, the arrows are colored by 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc. Of course in old Pump versions you had orange for UL and UR, yellow for Center, blue for DL and DR. If you prefer that format, fear not! Select the "Classic" noteskin and you're good to go.

Speed modifier wise, it seems that they're faster than what the same mod would be on a previous Pump game... i.e. x1 feels more like x1.5 on older Pump mixes. I ended up playing most of my songs on x1.5 because x2 often felt way too fast... but maybe that's because the pads were pushed up pretty close to the screen. So I would highly advise against picking x3 on anything if it's your first time playing this version. Also, the available speed mods for selection were (this might not be 100% right): x0.25, x0.5, x0.75, x1, x1.5, x2, x3, x4, x8, C200, C400, Random. Yeah, those are two pretty horrible choices for C mods.

(P.S. I thought Aliens In Our Midst was really fun, yes it's very slow and hand-heavy, but I enjoy hands and much prefer to play songs that don't have 8 bazillion steps)

Ehh, figures the only results screen I'd take a picture of would end up blurring and looking like shit. Ignore the generic Pump it Up Pro banner, the game does show the banner of whatever song you played, but some songs did not have banners in place yet. So you've got mines and rolls from ITG, but that's not the only things that were borrowed - there is now a "Superb" step timing in the line of Marvelous and Fantastic. The Perfect window has always been huge enough to drive a truck through in Pump, the timing windows in Pump Pro... are roughly the same size as ITG, but slightly looser. It certainly felt easier to stay on beat with Superbs than it was with Fantastics, although I was sort of annoyed that Superb and Perfect have roughly the same font color, making it a little more difficult to tell when you're going off-beat. Also, you can't see your percentage score until the song is over, there's no score display during the song.

Maybe it's a side effect of having slightly larger timing windows, but the song syncing? It felt wonderful. I can't think of a single song I played that felt "off". (it's worth noting that Bi Gals has an unpatched Supernova machine placed back-to-back with Pump Pro. I played one game of that while I was there and I was so spoiled by the nice syncing that it became impossible to get assloads of Greats)

yeah, I'm dreading having to read that on potential marathons ;o

At the beta test, the price is $1 / 3 songs, and there is NO Extra Stage. Whether it will be added later, I don't know. Also, double premium appears to be disabled, so Freestyle/Nightmare songs end up costing 2 songs. I'm sure this will be an operator-adjustable setting (hopefully defaults to On)

It's worth clarifying that Pump it Up Pro is NOT the successor to New Xenesis, but rather it's going to be a whole new "series" of Pump. It will get a worldwide release, and possibly a home version if it does well.

I'm rather surprised that the game is already getting so much bashing from both the 4-panel fanboys who refuse to play Pump, and the 5-panel fanboys that don't want any ITG influence in their game. I'm someone who's infinitely more comfortable with 4-panel arrow smashing games, but guess what? I enjoyed Pump Pro more than I did than with my limited experience with the other games in the series. I think it may just end up being fairly successful in getting 4-panel players to finally give Pump a try though, because I really appreciated the improvements to the interface (seriously, it always felt so awkward to me to have to select songs with the arrow panels, so better late than never having selection buttons on the cabinet). In talking with Kyle, he said that he truly believes that players should have a choice in what types of dancing games to play, and that variety is a good thing. I couldn't agree more.

Give it a try before you write the game off. Seriously. I will definitely be playing the finished version when it's released.

cj iwakura · 03-12-2007, 03:09 AM

As far as I can tell, the reason this is under so much crossfire is because of exactly what you said. Five-arrow fanatics don't want harsh grading, generic backgrounds, and DDR interface.

Four-arrow fanatics don't want five arrows.

I respect him for trying to blend the communities, but unfortunately, I think this is doomed to fail. It'll turn into another Techno Motion. A cult hit, maybe, but it'll be gone before we know it.

If it miraculously becomes a success, shoot, more power to him, but that's going to make it a lot harder on Andamiro and official mixes, which I really don't want.