Impossible DDR/Stepmania performance

I've see this video before it's kinda old but It's still pretty sweet. His name ont he internet is Arch0wl u should go visit his site he has a whole bunch of sweet videos there. http://www.Arch0wl.com

IDK if he has it back up yet

This is an old video, and Arch0wl is a respected Bemani player. So yeah, I'd say it's real.

Well, coming from a percussion background, I believe this is completely possible. There are certain rhythms that look hard and fast but are actually easy to play. Once you learned the pattern on a slow speed, you could gradually increase it and become quite profficient at it in very little time...

However, I did see that the title screen says 1.5x rate... hmmm...

The 1.5x is just the scroll speed. If you've already got the pattern memorized, then it could be at 8x speed and be just as easy.

1.5x actually is quite popular, since it spaces the arrows out more and makes it easier to see the steps without making them scroll too fast.

Arch0wl is a loser. He can respect the contents between my thighs. Whoring himself out. Not even that great a IIDX player.

Are his pinky and ring-finger on his right hand malformed somehow? They look smaller and don't appear to extend in the normal way.

if he likes BMania so much, why doesn't he just get a dance pad? playing on a keyboard is unsatisfying in the first place and taking the time to become so proficeint on it seems like a waste.

This video is real, I have a friend thats just about that good. It is quite possible.

There are a huge number of people who can play at this speed. Personally, I can do about 14 keys a second. (Though when the video first game out, years ago, it was impressive)

Unfortunately playing w/ keyboard gets boring after a few months, and it's simply not as beneficial or challenging as playing with your feet.

This video came out a few months ago, not years first off.

Second, he's playing the song at 1.5x the actual BPM, so it's not scroll speed, it's the actual song that's been sped up. If anyone here plays bmIIDX, then you'd hear the different pitch....and the fast bpm.

Third, there's little to no effort to be that good at StepMania, since you're hitting four buttons with 1,2,3,or 4 fingers, and with seperate hands or not.

Fourth, this isn't the first time he's done that. In his other video, he used that FRAPS program and recorded it while he was playing it, and his fingers weren't visible. In his other video, he showed the timing windows and all the other SM options in their original default state.

This is the very first site where the poster has not only done some research about me, but actually backed up reasoning for why the video is real. I have such a great amount of respect for the competence of Vladimir Cole right now more than any other webmaster that has posted this video.

Since most people here got the basics right, I'll just say that the "1.5 rate" is referring to an option in the game itself that allows you to speed the song up, obviously making it more difficult.

I have played DDR, all the dancing games... I did so for a few years to lose weight; lost about 60 pounds. I find playing with my hands much more satisfying because you don't get sweaty and exhausted. There's a video on my site - http://www.arch0wl.com/winter.wmv but be sure to check back because as of 8/30 the site is down for server repairs.
My best DDR score is probably AA'ing MAX300 on heavy.

IIDX and Stepmania are totally different types of skill just like being a good pianist and being a good drummer are totally different types of skill. They're slightly relative but not enough to compare the skills, so it's dumb to compare them. IIDX is based more around timing whereas Stepmania is based more around speed. CStar (a really good IIDX player) will tell you this as I keep in regular contact with him.

I am very intrigued by J Parker because I have always wondered what someone with a percussionist background would think. Obviously the speed is possible, because drummers like Mike Mangini have done 1-minute single stroke rolls that equal to approx 302 bpm 16th notes - this video is only 232 bpm 16th notes. The patterns in this video are very simple, the only difficult parts of playing Stepmania are the timing and the speed, but speed moreso than timing.

Commonly, people believe that the hardest part about playing SM is reading the notes (which is why people say things like "what a loser, he memorized it) which is simply not true, sightreading a Stepmania song is so much easier than sightreading even simple snare drum notes. This generally applies to any rhythm game. When people ask me if I memorize the notecharts after I play DDR, IIDX, Pump It Up, Stepmania, whatever, I just say "Have you ever read sheet music? That's about 50x harder to read and understand; lots of people can sightread sheet music without much trouble."

I do play musical instruments, I played piano for a year, played some other instruments and I've been playing drums for about half a year. I pretty much gave up rhythm gaming for drums and now I really only play rhythm games when I go to the arcades, which is like, maybe once every month or two.

I try to not really associate my rhythm gaming background with instruments I play because not only have I quit playing them for the most part (except dancing games because despite what the haters will say, once you get up to doing the harder songs like 9 and 10 feet, it is good exercise) but most musicians consider it a joke. I like what rhythm games have done for people's music taste, though. Mainly games like Stepmania and IIDX - not so much DDR, I think DDR made happy hardcore/eurodance more mainstream and I dislike both of those genres.

So yeah, this is my essay of a reply. Kudos to all the people who read through it because for some reason, when something is on a monitor it's much harder for them to focus on. I don't know why because reading something off of a screen is tons easier than off of a book because it's at eye level, but whatever.

-A0, Arch0wl, Josh, etc
arch0wl@gmail.com
www.arch0wl.com
http://www.livejournal.com/users/arch0wl
chat.othersideirc.net #a0.com

First, read what Arch said.

Second, much better scores have been accomplished on SM than this, including index (which is Arch0wl's style). So that adds even more credibility to this. Although anyone who actually does research, like this site, will know it's not fake.

Third, Jon D is ignorant. He has absolutely NO CLUE what he's talking about. Go play Stepmania. You won't be half as good as Arch.

Fourth, it's the most wide-spread SM video by far. But that's because Arch0wl whored it like mad. :P Still, nice to see it's actually going around more. It helps the popularity of SM.

>>The 1.5x is just the scroll speed. If you've already got the pattern memorized, then it could be at 8x speed and be just as easy.

1.5x actually is quite popular, since it spaces the arrows out more and makes it easier to see the steps without making them scroll too fast.>Arch0wl is a loser. He can respect the contents between my thighs. Whoring himself out. Not even that great a IIDX player.>This video came out a few months ago, not years first off.>if he likes BMania so much, why doesn't he just get a dance pad? playing on a keyboard is unsatisfying in the first place and taking the time to become so proficeint on it seems like a waste.<<

It may be unsatisfying for you, not for others. Getting a dance pad is also pointless unless it's an afterburnber ($200) or a cobalt flux ($300) and you've bought In The Groove (a better dance game than dance dance revolution made by RoXoR games).

-Hayden

Actually banditcom, the reason the video got so popular is because it was uploaded to muchosucko.com and pretty much everything went from there. Out of all the rhythm gaming videos, I'd say I have more responsibility for the one handed Pop'n video getting into circulation.

Hey, I can't find the link to the video's and the site is still down >.< anyways you should see some of the stuff me and my friends do on foot and on finger's it's awesome!!!