I am firmly convinced that Konami does not know how to make good hard steps and is much like a Tournamix contestant - fine to an extent, but when you crank up the difficulty they have trouble creating quality. My experience on a project proved this theory to me when an entire chart team, mostly made up of people praised in Tournamix, collaborated on a song and led to very unpleasant results.

This is my perception of what Konami should have done. While I am sure many people will disagree with me, and I am sure many people will agree with me as well, I feel that ITG and all dancing games in progress that by default will be less popular than ITG, are threatened. PIU is my favorite dancing game and will most likely continue on regardless of what happens. However, ITG's fanbase and DDR's fanbase are interchangeable. If DDR SuperNova causes ITG to sell less units (which it most likely will) it will become harder and harder to locate and ITG players will become more and more disgruntled. Then they will have an entire fanbase that they have failed to support. These are the people that put the most money in their machines. 

A rinky-dink extra mode like "nonstop oni mode" that was introduced in DDRMAX2 is a poor excuse for competition or challenge. So are "hard-to-read" stepcharts, and so are songs that have what I like to call "visual difficulty". I have made this edit to show that you can make LEGITIMATE super-hard charts while still having quality. 

There is a significant portion of the dance gaming community, that, I believe, is ignorant to what they cannot do. When I play something like Toph's Nemesis on the hardest difficulty, I can see how good of a chart it is, regardless of the fact that I cannot pass it. I don't think many people have the ability to see that runs are equally the same. An 8th note run is fundamentally the same as a 16th note run except one is faster than the other. When some people look at 16ths, all they see are "16th stamina runs" and not what the stepchart is actually doing.

I don't think a lot of people will see the complexity or depth that I used in this chart. The original Konami steps for this used a lot of complexity and depth as well, which I have expanded on. After dissecting them, my opinion of the steps and song has changed significantly. I actually like the song and mainly the steps well. For instance, in the part where it changes to 200 bpm and I use long runs of 16ths - in the  Konami steps, they accent the 16ths with a quarter note, and then the 12th notes are added by the kick. I don't think they used jumps to illustrate this well enough though. In my version, I use the kick to change the direction and positioning of the 16ths. This is just an example of the depth used in this chart. I do think Konami made a lot of amateur mistakes, but for what it's worth - and, for the comparisons of Vertex^2 to this - I think Konami has made a much more solid chart. Musically, I like Vertex^2 better.

I have made this stepchart to address a lot of problems that I think exist in the dance game community today. Once I find a full, clean mp3 of this song, I will revise my chart and re-release it, so be sure to check back for that. You may love or hate this chart, but I hope that you understand my points and have full comprehension of what I am trying to say.

Shout outs: JSB (especially for giving me the idea to make an edit), JJK (for testing a lot of my simfiles), Tiza (you KNOW!), sq3r (for making the graphics for my upcoming simfiles), nike (for being awesome), and everyone who is registered on my site.
 
-Arch0wl,
www.arch0wl.com