In the Groove 2

In the Groove 2
Developer(s)	Roxor Games
Publisher(s)	Roxor Games/Andamiro
Released	June 18, 2005
Genre	Music
Mode(s)	Multiple one-player and two-player modes
Platform(s)	Arcade
Input methods	Two 4-panel dance pads, eight buttons, USB Memory Card reader
Arcade cabinet	Custom
Arcade display	Horizontal, Raster, standard resolution

In the Groove 2 is the sequel to Roxor Games' 2004 arcade game In the Groove. It was released to arcades officially on June 18, 2005. It is available as an upgrade kit and as a dedicated cabinet developed by Andamiro. The price for a dedicated cabinet is $9,999 USD and the upgrade kit (sometimes referred to as a "Boxor") is $2,999 USD. There is a total of 137 songs available in the arcade version. This includes all 72 from the original arcade game, the three new songs in the home version, and 65 brand new songs, four of which are hidden and unlockable. A lawsuit filed by Konami on May 9, 2005, asked for an injunction against the sale of the upgrade kit version. October 23, 2006 Konami and Roxor reached an out-of-court settlement which resulted in Konami acquiring the intellectual property rights to the In The Groove franchise and thus effectively terminated the distribution of the game in North America. [1] In development, it was known solely as In the Groove 2. On June 18, 2005, Roxor Games officially announced the release of the game, and announced that it would add the name of Andamiro's Pump It Up line, becoming Pump It Up: In the Groove 2. However, "Pump It Up" only appears on the marquee of the dedicated cabinet. It does not appear in-game (in either version) or anywhere on an upgraded cabinet. The game also features a modified interface, based on the first version but recolored red and incorporating other changes. The interface also features a new font; the first version used a generic font.

New features

The Novice difficulty level is a feature added to the home version of In the Groove, carried over to In the Groove 2. On this dfficulty level, all songs are rated as ones (including the hardest and fastest songs on other difficulties), and play in Novice mode places a traffic light graphic on the screen that tells players when to step. As always, two players can select different difficulty levels for the same song, but if one selects Novice, then the traffic light always appears instead of the normal backgrounds. It is also worth noting that on ITG2, Novice always forces a constant speed of 120 BPM (a "C120" mod). As a result, since C-mods disqualify scores from appearing on the scoreboards if the song played has pauses or speed changes, those songs will never have any Novice scores saved. Rolls are a new feature. They look like spiky hold notes and usually come in pairs. The player must continually tap the corresponding arrows until the end of the roll, much like the drum roll notes in Namco's Taiko no Tatsujin. Regardless of the song's speed, rolls must be tapped at least once every 0.3 seconds. Survival Mode is another course-based gameplay mode. The player must play a five-song course, where each song has a time limit less than the song's length. Time left over after each song is carried over to the next, and missteps deplete the time remaining - time is only added for Fantastics, with no change for Excellents and detractions for anything lower. The lifebar in this mode is not used to determine whether the player passes. Instead, it serves as a visual indicator of how much time is remaining. The game ends when the remaining time is fully depleted. Fitness Mode is a common home version feature on dance games that is included in the arcade version of ITG2. This gameplay mode allows users to keep track of time spent dancing and calories burned. Three previously Marathon-only modifiers - Bumpy, Beat, and Robot (a metallic gray Flat arrow type) - have also been added to the regular modifier list. In addition, a multi-colored arrow type, Vivid, has been added for colorblind players. It resembles the default arrow color scheme used in Dance Dance Revolution. "Excellent", "Great" and "Decent" judgments are now prefixed or suffixed with a dash. A prefix (-Excellent, -Great or -Decent) indicates that the player stepped too early; a suffix (Excellent-, Great- or Decent-) indicates that the player stepped too late. In novice mode, "Way Off" becomes "Way Early" and "Way Late" respectively; in other modes, the dash system still applies. "Stretch Jumps" have been included in double play, a jump that requires a player to hit two panels simultaneously that are farther away from each other than normal jumps, such as 1PU+2PD or 1PL+2PL.

Songs

In the Groove 2 includes more than 60 new songs in addition to the entire songlist from the previous version, In the Groove. The sequel includes new songs from established artists like ZiGZaG, Kid Whatever, Inspector K, Nina, Digital Explosion, and Machinae Supremacy. It also introduces songs from newcomers like Tekno Dred, Affinity, Hybrid, Lynn, and Onyx. As with the original game, several artists that have released songs for Dance Dance Revolution games appear on ITG2. These include Bambee, Missing Heart, Spacekats (known as Bus Stop in DDR, with the exclusion of one member), Ni-Ni, Triple J, E-ROTIC and Lynn (Papaya in DDR). In fact, three songs appear on ITG2 that have been on Dance Dance Revolution games, though with different step charts: Typical Tropical and Bumble Bee from Bambee and Sunshine (originally Follow The Sun) from Triple J.

Song list

This list covers the 64 songs that are new in the arcade version of In the Groove 2. This song list does not include the songs from the original game, although they are playable in In the Groove 2. To see those, reference the ITG song list. The difficulties are abbreviated to conserve table space:

N = Novice

E = Easy

M = Medium

H = Hard

X = Expert

Songs that need to be unlocked are highlighted in red. Some Expert step routines have to be unlocked separately, even though the songs they go to are playable from the start. These are denoted with an asterisk. This list includes the five songs made playable in the home version of In the Groove. These are highlighted in green, and do not have to be unlocked in this game.

Custom Songs

On October 11th, 2006, Roxor released Revision 21 (also referred to as r21). The patch added a feature that allowed players to play custom songs with accompanying .sm files (see StepMania) stored on their USB card. Current limitations to the feature include:

• Music must be no more than 120 seconds in length.
• Music must be in Ogg Vorbis format.
• Banners and song samples aren't loaded and are absent from the song selection screen.
• Backgrounds aren't loaded; random background videos run during play
• 50 songs maximum are loaded per player; sometimes fewer are loaded if the USB load time exceeds a certain limit.

An unofficial patch was later released online which tricks the machine to think that an Ogg Vorbis file that is longer than the 120 second limit runs at a minute and forty-five seconds, commonly referred to as the Ogg Length Patch. This allows songs of any length to be played on the machine, but songs that are usually longer than 3 minutes are looked down upon by arcade operators due to the possibility of losing money and have even issued bans on players who play songs longer than 3 minutes. Revision 21 was released a week prior to the official announcement of Konami's acquisition of the intellectual property rights of In The Groove [2] On January 26th, 2007, Roxor released Revision 23 (also referred to as r23). R23 serves as a countermeasure to the Ogg Length Patch, as r23 forces all custom songs to end after the alloted 120 second time limit. It is also listed with an ambiguous "fix inaccurate input on some kits" change. Despite the changes, Revision 23 is more unpopular with the fanbase than Revision 21 was due to the strict time limit, since some official Dance Dance Revolution songs and many songs on the In The Groove 2 cabinet itself go beyond this time limit. Some players feel that RoXor should have implemented a system similar to Dance Dance Revolution 5th Mix (and already implemented in StepMania) in which songs longer than 150 seconds should take up at least two to three stages on the players playthrough than try to just counteract the Ogg Length patch.

Tournaments

In The Groove 2 tournaments are held at arcades throughout the world. Some of the most notable tournaments are NAT05 and the ITG World Cup, in which first place received an ITG2 dedicated cabinet (would have been itg3 for the world cup, if the Roxor settlement did not take place). Most tournaments are scored on a player's dance percentage. There have been few others that have involved the use of mods, double, and even some that make use of custom songs with the R21 feature. After the lawsuit, the tournament scene began to die down, in part because Roxor could no longer produce ITG2 dedicated cabinets for prizes. Still, there are tournaments held throughout the USA today that give out cash prizes and other various gifts, such as arcade tokens, coupons, and other video games.

See also

• Dance pad
• List of dance video games
• Comparison of video games using a dance pad
• Roxor Games
• In the Groove (game)

External links

• Official In the Groove Website
• Official RoXoR Games Website
• Official StepMania Website