oh yeah that derp
nine panel bullshit-ass mugfugg
StepmaniaX is a 5-panel dance game.
It's made by Kyle Ward (from In the Groove), which, if you recall was a fairly blatant DDR rip off. Konami sued ITG and won completely and entirely
twenty years ago (fuck I'm old) - seemingly centering around the dance pad layout being so identical (4 panel, U/D/L/R) that ITG could be installed on DDR machines, which is why Konami went full-bore into the lawsuit - and why Pump It Up still exists.
Time went on and more or less, DDR died as well. Konami got fairly lazy about releases and cheapened out very hard on the construction of new machines (DDRX US machines were made by the literal lowest bidder) as well as the death of arcades in general pretty much left DDR tied to arcade operators bothering to find/maintain old 8th Mix machines - which was a dwindling number. This would be around 2008 to 2015, more or less.
In this realm of "DDR sucks real bad" - StepmaniaX was conceived, with Kyle Ward seemingly ready to take another run at the market that Konami had seemingly abandoned, although they would show signs of life again in 2016 (DDR A, the end of the X era) released and not only was it not complete dogshit, but, they actually deigned to sell new cabinets to US operators - notably with Dave and Busters adding 1 or 2 to all 160 locations in the US. Konami is already teetering back into their lazy phase again (with DDR A3, DDR World, the DDR Gold and Platinum Cabs, and likely whatever comes after DDR World) being locked back into "favored" (aka Round1 only) operators - there's been a fair bit of abandonment of the game again.
StepmaniaX does several important things
- It's a 5 panel game, legally distinct
- You can buy a machine for an arcade for $11,000 all in (Konami DDR cabs cost similar but have other purchase requirements such as network connectivity and profit sharing). This is probably more expensive now, but, it's much easier/cheaper to attain.
- You can buy a pad (or two pads) separately - to use at home or on a bootleg machine
- The SMX pad are cutting edge for the genre, instead of contact sensors (which can get stuck, dirty, or break) - they use FSR sensors and seemingly annually redesigned for the newest tech. DDR still uses more or less the same design as it did in 1999.
- SMX has actually gone out and licensed some of the music that DDR let slip (Captain Jack and some Naoki songs)
However, the main frustrations are
- SMX pads are really nice (and can be configured for DDR or PIU), but $1,900 each is fucking insane
- StepRevolution (the parent company) never stepped up production, meaning they're almost always out of stock on everything. If people are lining up to drop $3,800 on pads, you should probably step up production. This has been an issue for nearly a decade.
I don't think it'll catch on because Arcades are pretty dead and Konami has a pretty firm lock on the popular ones (Round 1) and more than anything I think SMX missed it's golden window somewhere between ~2014 and ~2022.
It was a good day today
