UPDATE VIDEO HERE: czcams.com/video/ZkypVduZRHc/video.html Regarding the pricing: You can blame the owners or distributors for 'setting the price', but I invite you to look at the price of any StepmaniaX machine around the world. It's no coincidence that these machines are poor value for money when compared to Pump it Up or Dance Dance Revolution.
@@jbean3535 Harassing? Historically "Harassing"(?) got us Pump Pro bars (It was shipped without them) and the Pump Pro Encore patch. It's interesting that a developer of the game (jbean) watched the video, took nothing from it, but instead started talking about harassment lol 'Harassing' is such a 2023 liberal word.
I have a dedicab in my basement that has worked perfectly for 2.5 years of continuous use. The lag is really strange to see, I've never seen anything like that before. The arcade really should fix the pad issue. I've only heard of 1 other occurrence of pads not connecting, or randomly disconnecting, so it's probably something they could solve. But throughout the years the dev team has been super helpful from what I've seen. The arcade should change the price that is pretty steep, although not really a fair criticization of the game.
Frequent visitor of the DX at Seaton Carew here chiming in now that it’s had a few months of thrashing from me and the other local players. Them being put together correctly and being properly maintained seems to definitely correlate with the HW issues described, as this machine locally experienced all of them and they had to be fixed. This one was seemingly thrown together without much care and ran into them even faster. From what I’ve been told when I asked the developers about it, the lag issue seems to be a rare software bug that they’re trying to hunt down but is extremely difficult to replicate in a dev environment (gotta love game development lmfao). Otherwise the game runs buttery smooth and takes no power to run compared to offerings from other competitors computers which is welcome with the current energy prices here in the UK. The only addition I would make is some more visual cues on screen (or an outright warning box) for any hw issues that may arise as these age. At the risk of kicking a massive hornets nest, I’m definitely standing on the side of SR regarding the pricing thing. While the option for two songs per credit default is annoying, it’s probably the better option for a decent balance between play time/player satisfaction and the arcade making a decent ROI. It’s entirely on the arcade ops to set the machine to one song though (and as of a recent patch, the game tries to discourage ops setting it to that in the first place) so if people are unhappy with the pricing of one of these machines, complain to the arcade or chain themselves in as civilised of a manner as possible. Harassing them over it will NOT have the result you want. Other than that, SMX has been a great game from my personal experience and the very frequent content updates are nice for replayability.
That's sad that it was installed that way, but great it's working now. They must be 'installed wrong' up and down the country then. I think I know about 4 or 5 machines with the same issues. If you look at SMX installs around the world, the 1 song 1 credit is obviously discussed as a distribution deal (Namco/UDC in the UK) 🤝 compare with DDR and pump, you don't see this pattern. Its no coincidence that you find an SMX in Brazil or Australia or Norway, and the credit system is the same haha! Never in history has this happened with any dance game. Taking sides is so 2 dimensional. The world is a 3 dimensional place. Be better than that 😮💨 Its great to see that Seaton Carew has a machine again. I used to visit friends here to play on the ITG back in the 2005-2006 era. Its been a long time coming!
For sure! I got into dance games when the scene was pretty much dead around here and then the last DDR gave up the ghost around 2021/2022 when the 573 and tube shat the bed so it's nice to have a little spot. @@s34nvideos
That's one sick puppy, the Android box thing they use was straight up having a stroke there, in fairness i could blame the pad disconnecting on whoever put the machine toghether, which could also be the reason why it didn't let you select Full mode initially as it simply wasn't detecting the second pad lol
I have no idea why they are using Android boxes! I'm guessing it's a lot cheaper to make. I wrote to the owner, he said the pad connector is very loose and they have to 'keep plugging it back in for it to work'. Some epoxy, for example, is around 1GBP here 🤷♀️ ... But my friend who has been playing here (he came daily), he said the pad has never worked. Not once. Weirdly, rather than take any feedback from this video onboard, I was shown some posts on Twitter from the makers of the game getting kinda offended and saying: 'The one who wants attention the most will do whatever they can to get it.' and 'they are also easy to ignore' I know its 2023 and people get easily offended, but mixing that with business and ignoring genuine problems is totally bizarre to me!
Honestly I think their decision of using Android was a mistake, they could have used Windows for Tablets or Linux with like a TB of RAM and Nvidia Gforce, but they chose Android of anything possible.
I was gonna mention how when i tried it in an arcade in the us recently, i had no issues, but im not sure it was a deluxe cab truly i would love if this game got more support in arcades, with it being cheaper to get than ddr cabs and not being exclusive, i would love to have an arcade less than an hour away from me with some ddr equivalent cab
It could be the older model that I talked about in the video. This cabinet didn't really have any problems. It kinda looks like a Pump FX cabinet with drink holders in the front. Where's you local arcade? Video games is a hard sell these days because they don't make as much revenue as a crane game or ticket machine sadly
They said it's a 1 in 100,000 bug. So 1 in 100,000 machines have this bug. You're the 5th person it's happened to. I think they have maybe 100 machines out in the wild. I'm not sure what the devs have been smoking lol
For these to really just roll out this is sad. The computer lagging and the Player 2 pad already messing up really worries me about how this cabinet is gonna hold up. The 1 song is how they set it because most people play one song and walk away but that’s not fair for dedicated players and I agree it should at least be 3 songs per set.
It's weird because it's not the first time it's happened either! What's weirder is: If you have feedback about problems like this, I've learned more recently that the team get both: offended and defensive over their product, so it's almost impossible to get problems like these addressed and fixed. Meanwhile, I don't care about politics, I just wanna play a working machine 😆☠️
I'm watching the video right now, and I'm surprised that the Deluxe cabinets have computer problems. In a recent video, I played "Cartoon Heroes" on a regular cabinet, and the video lagged out of sync to the song! I hope this is corrected very soon, because I want more venues to feature dance machines. Also, yes, one play should include at least two songs. Maybe the timer of 100 songs should be reduced. I would also like to see an option that skips the song select screen, selects random songs, and offers a bonus song play due to the time saved.
Tried one at a hollywood bowl in Glasgow, same issues. Had to ask staff to reboot the machine due to the same lag you experienced, still £1 per song. The screen is massive but the refresh rate is poor , can get hard to read using high speed mods.
That's sucks! The response I saw on Twitter from the dev team was something like: "People will do what they want to get attention" and "These people are easy to ignore" The response from Hollywood Bowl (before they started ignoring me), was: "We check these machines regularly, and plug the pads back in as they disconnect regularly." But despite their machines being dead (in comparison to other locations), they still won't budge from £1 for 1 song. But hey, let's find out first hand what happens when you: don't test a product, charge people through the roof and ignore all feedback
I remember playing the one in Stevenage a couple of months ago when it was brand new! It felt great to play but no way I can sustainability play this game over DDR where you can play SIX songs for £1 on Gold Rush ITG/DDR
Weirdly enough, this machine was 3 songs for 1 credit, then it was changed to 1 song per credit. There is a guy called Steve Smart which pretty much controls all of the pricing for Hollywood bowls across the UK. His twitter handle is @stevesmart236 Sadly, he just cares about revenue and profit
@@s34nvideos That's quite bizarre as surely if it was set to more songs, there would be more SMX regulars tempted to sink credits into the machine - I'd definitely visit and play more if it was set to more reasonable pricing. I've heard Portsmouth has a bit of a SMX scene compared to the rest of the UK as it's set to 3 songs (if I remember right)
@@emmddr I was thinking of making a follow-up video soon. I didn't think this review would be a big deal, but so many people have approached me thanking me for making the video and saying the SMX community has a bit of a mob mentality and cannot handle criticism. I had no idea about this, but after some digging around, I see this a lot. It's totally bizarre to me. Products and services are improved based on feedback. I've read Twitter responses saying that 'its easy to ignore', but this logic doesn't make any sense to me. It's like selling on Amazon and disabling the reviews. We are lucky that somebody has good relations with the manager of the Portsmouth machine. When ReRave, Pump Pro and SMX were created, the mission statement was pretty much 'a game for the community'. Somewhere along the line, it's turned into a money hungry machine, inanely protected by a small subset of the wider dance game community. These big corporations that fill their arcades full of redemption games aren't gonna be in the market for videos games UNLESS it's shown to be very profitable for the floor space it uses. Obviously, this is where the 1 song for £1 comes into play. But they wouldn't have purchased this machine unless they had proof (by the seller) its profitable. The mission statement is now something like: The world's most accessible dance game. I just wanna be able to regularly play a game, that works and that isn't a rip off. Then I'm happy. It turns out that many other people think the same way. Somewhere along the line, these original core values were lost. That's the danger is hanging out in bubbles with the same people and a bunch of 'yes men' with the same mindset; smelling each other's farts... It doesn't matter if it's: videos games, politics, anything really. You slowly lose touch with reality. Nobody is there to offer any constructive criticism or disagree with the most popular opinion.
Played the older version today and it plays pretty well. The default of one dollar/pound for 2 songs is *okay*, but I agree it should be 3, that’s still only like 6 minutes of play time. One song is ridiculous. Some of the music is nostalgic, but in my humble opinion, playing a lot of songs that have already been around for like 20 years gets old fast. Don’t know if it will ever happen, but I think the ability to create and play customs would add a lot to the game, just like it did for ITG. Thank you for the video!
Customs would be a great addition! (if they can get the game and hardware to work normally first). It would be interesting to to see that. Normally I would say it would kill off an original release, but I think the high scores for official songs only would keep people interested in the officials The whole thing is kinda weird for me. When this project started out, the devs were saying its a game for the players! So the song list represented that! You can see some of the old posts if you scroll back on socials, and then talks were made with returning artists from DDR/ITG etc to make similar content for SMX. Then somewhere along the line, it turned into 'the most accessible dance game', but that's because the big corps are sold on the pricing strategy. So you have this song list that appeals to old school players, but pricing that is geared to casual play. None of it makes sense (to me) haha! The reality is: NONE of these money hungry UK businesses would remotely touch this game if they were not promised a good return on their investment, and by default, dance games dont do that, unless you jack up the price. So yeah, I don't deny it was a passion project at first, but nobody is addressing this insane pricing strategy in (at least) the UK market.... and the game on the new cab doesn't even work!
I'm on the side that revived songs are a good thing. Having 45 songs (not including "Eternus" and "Megalovania") from _DDR_ available in _SMX_ means there will be less fighting over which dance game to get, and if a venue only gets one game, _SMX_ has a great variety of content. I agree that the game should include at least two songs per play. It means less time wasted navigating menus or logging in, and people can better enjoy the game.
Wow, everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong. "The cab was a paid actor" As for the lag, I couldn't help but notice that during the reboot sequence at 5:50, a "home bar" pops up at the bottom as if the entire touch screen is a massive Android tablet. I wonder what the actual hardware specs are, and if there could possibly be some overhead from the underlying OS. A game like this shouldn't need anything north of a smart toaster's worth of computing power...
Yeah, that's even more weird is that: they are fighting me over getting it fixed. I tried for a while, but in the end, I gave up. They obviously don't want a community of players there and they (the owners and the devs) are more interested in milking casuals. It's sad really
This is why the arcade shall using portable one like Windows LTSC or Windows 10 IOT, because if driver have issue in mid game they will automatically throw an abort signal (error triggers) until owner diagnosed and reboot it, windows arcade if programmed have a self test. Android are not prepared to deal this disconnections.
If it was on the software side as you describe, it doesn't explain the pad working for 1-3 seconds after the disconnection. I'm thinking it's either a connection issue or a grounding issue (on the pad side). Definitely a problem in the manufacturer process as I've counted 6 StepmaniaX DX Deluxe cabinets with the same exact issue. I'm sure there are more But all of that aside, the Android hardware was a terrible idea
The fact that this is only £1 pound per song (here in the USA that would be $1.26 USD) for this is ridiculous. For pro players that's just unfair, it should be like three songs per play. Not to mention here in the USA, DDR A3 finally got released on Round 1 White cabs, so this DX version of StepmaniaX failing prematurely is just unacceptable. Even DDR A3 has some songs locked behind a paywall via it's PC only port DDR Grand Prix, DDR A3 is at least nice enough to give players three songs and Extra Stage if you're doing premium play with e-Amusement. I hope this gets fixed, because this shouldn't be happening especially for a game like StepManiaX which has some of the best dance pads out there.
Correction: Even though DDR A3 has certain songs locked behind a paywall via it's PC only port DDR Grand Prix (you need a Japanese account, have an active subscription for Grand Prix, and purchase the pack required. Edit: As of 2024 most of the packs i mentioned are now available to all players), DDR A3 is at least mostly nice enough to have players play 3 songs plus Extra Stage if playing premium mode with e-Amusement and fill up all 9 stars. For this reason I prefer DDR A3 over this version of StepManiaX. Edit: As for SMX you're better off playing the current standard size cabinet, even the older standard cabinets with loadcell sensors (current standard models and DX models use FSR (force sensitive resistors) sensors) played better than this crappy DX cabinet.
@@jasonmartinez5116 also if it’s any consolation, most of the GP required songs are the terrible songs being ported from the 😑 Wii era of DDR. They got new steps which makes them a little more terrible but the songs are still 😣
Update: My local Round 1 in San Antonio Texas recently got a StepManiaX DX cabinet, and it played a whole lot better than this one on the video, almost as good as the current standard cab. One, you got to play 3 stages like this should have. Two, the pads functioned a whole lot better, and I got some Full Combos out of them. Three: Cost. Each play was 3 songs per one credit, which the cost was 8 Round 1 credits on their game cards. You do need to pay for the Round 1 cards but its worth going for a higher value. It sounds a lot but to me its worth it. Four: Round 1 actually knows how to properly do maitenance on their rhythm game cabinets if they got good managers. I have a feeling that the one in the video was either poorly maintained, or they got a defective machine. I did get a dropped input on the second side while doing a hold at one point (resulting in a !), but after that it played perfectly well. Anyways, that's my experience on StepManiaX DX cabs, sorry that yours didn't go well.
i wanna say based on the machines in Melbourne Australia. they were not set up 100% correctly by the technicians. one had the legs/ feet of the stage not put down and locked into palce so aftwr a few songs the mahcibe was moving all about. the other machine i play at the bars are ao loose they move around a lot. i am wondering if the issues seen here are also linked to poorly being set up?
@s34nvideos i thought that too. but the machines i have played on have been OK but only when there is internet lagging does the machine lag (i wonder if the game is server based?) i played at orlando in july and the machine was offline and only had thebase game songs and ran pretty average (it was a standard machine)
@@DREADFALCON13 Yeah haha!, Welcome to the UK arcade factory where Namco churns out the same crap day in day out 🐑🐑🐑 I bet it has Super Bikes and/or Mario kart, down the clown, giant space invaders/pacman
The dx cabinet in my local Hollywood bowl has the same kind of issues with the pads. It’s also only £1 for 1 song and people have tried contacting them about this price, but none of them were listening.
@@OlvHuman The one at Meadowhall? That's the problem. They only seem to reply to anything considered negative (in their eyes). Once you tag the guy Twitter, he'll instantly respond and act like he was too busy to read your 10 emails.
i think the price is set by step revolution in Australia it is 2 songs for aroubd $2.50aud so it feels a little pricey. compared to a 3-4 songs on DDR and Pump machines
@@petersmv1 oh wow! They always say it's up to the owner, but I'm beginning to disbelieve that statement. You can set DDR to one song for credit, but I never ever see that, at least, it's probably super rare. But when I see SMX, 1 song per credit or a stupidly high price seems really common
That's really concerning seeing it lag out slower than a bootleg tablet. I think there's some hardware issues going on, (assuming this is PC-based like og ITG) I get that they wanted to make the cab stand out but maybe I'm old fashioned in saying that a touchscreen interface might hurt these machines in the long run when it comes to cab durability. this cab has so many things that can break for a poor operator/repairman to fix 😭 I'm sure this is a sick game when it works lol, I too agree that 3 songs should be the standard. Heck, I've played on some games that had 4 songs which is sweet. Appreciate the review, not many of these have made the import over where I live yet so I haven't tried SMX
You're welcome! Where are you based? I'm not sure about this cab, but the smaller cab used some sort of mini android board, or something like that... but I do remember it not being a PC... When it booted, you could be the Android buttons at the bottom of the screen for a split second, so im thinking its the same hardware on these DX cabs I remember the original ReRave used a large touchscreen, but it was later ditched in favor of a smaller one due to cost. I'm guessing the price went down now? im not too sure though... but yeah, i think your right in saying that future maintenance would be a bigger problem. There arent many DDR cabs with original screens (granted: different technology), and even a fair few Pump FX CX cabs have had screens replaced, and they are a lot newer. I realised after I shot the video that my friend in London bought two pads, and he's had many issues with them (I think grounding iirc, but maybe i can ask him about it again). It was too expensive to ship back to the US to have it fixed. Im not too sure hes very tech savy, so he's trying to sell them now. Now im thinking maybe the software bug in the video (full mode) might be related to the pad kicking in and out randomly. Not too sure about that lag and crash though!
@@s34nvideos After chatting with another operator friend he mentioned the android parts and how they're troubleshooting similar issues with a cabinet they just got. His theory these cabs might be provided by a third party for export regions which also could be a factor on faulty parts. I guess these machines are too new, it's a real mystery
@@K9arcade One of my friends said perhaps it might be overheating if the cabinet is pressed against a wall. Perhaps the huge touchscreen generates a lot of heat, but im not really sure. I don't remember the reason why the Android parts are used rather than a PC. I was told before, but I forgot lol... It wouldn't be too surprising I guess if it was faulty, but I imagine it would/should have been caught in the testing phase. I'm not sure about the deluxe cabs, but the pads and older models are made in a Chinese warehouse and shipped over. I'm not aware of any regional modifications other than flipping a couple of switches.
Having played on a couple of the original machines, the game’s great when it works, but there really is a lot that can go wrong. One of the machines in my area has some weird settings applied to the touch screen where if you want to tap something on the edge you need to tap around 2/3rds of the way to the side. It’s also offline, missing a couple years of updates, and the outermost side arrows are rather sticky and drop inputs easily on high levels. At the very least, it still plays miles better than the leased DDR Extreme cabs, which are the only option 70% of the time here when playing arcade rhythm games even is an option. Hopefully a bunch of the issues on the new cab can be fixed with a software update? We got one recently that added the feature to adjust the sensitivity of the pads, I imagine they could optimize the software as well. It’ll still suck for anyone who can only play on cabs that won’t update, though.
@@s34nvideos oh dear, chinese parts don't last too long in a commercial setting 😰 Overheating is definitely a big possibility. Android devices are not known for having much cooling
Hahahah. Crazy that this is my local machine and i play on this every week. 2 player side is almost always broken, only have got to play full once. I hope they can fix it sometime, or else im going to have to buy a dedicab! Edit: I forgot to say, last week i played on this cab and the coin slot didn’t even accept any coins. Had to get a worker around 3 times.
@@s34nvideosReally? That’s a surprise for me because even if it was fully broken they wouldn’t care about it. I can’t confirm, i was away last weekend, which is when i normally play.
It's mad!! In Orlando its $3 for 1 song haha! Weirdly, despite the charge being "the owners decision", it's interesting that you rarely see this with DDR or Pump It Up....
Is it possible that the game's factory settings default to one song per credit? That would be a huge L on SMX's side, since most operators might not even bother or see a reason to change that setting. As an arcade employee, if your arcade has a lot of foot traffic from casual types of players, dance games tend to profit more from those who leave/fail after the first song. Most aren't even aware you can play more than one song, but don't play more than once anyway. I wish more arcades would stock more than just one dance game so pros can gather and play with less wait times, while making it easier for casuals to get games in too.
I’d say more of a bootleg of PIU, but I don’t actually see it as a bootleg, since it doesn’t copy any design, unlike the company’s previous dance game ITG2.
It's really unfair to call it a bootleg when all the hardware is completely different. There was clearly a ton of R&D put into just the pads alone. They are built nothing like DDR pads.
Hi Vincent! StepManiaX does have some problems, but I disagree with you. Unlike the abundance of DDR Extreme bootlegs, SMX is a licensed and legal dance game, and while there can be hardware or software problems from time to time, the arcade machines can work well when properly maintained. There are more SMX than modern DDR in Canada, and Kyle Ward and his team update SMX regularly, whereas DDR A20 Plus (the latest in Canada) is almost 1½ years old. Take care!
What R&D? Source? I remember Brittany Barrett coming up with the APPLICATION of using a Wii balance board design (load cells), and it was then LATER used in SMX pads. There was a lot of public drama about design stealing and whatnot. Then I think V4 of the SMX pad, they switched to FSR sensors, which again, were already being WIDELY used in dance pads at the time. So, what R&D?
This game is pretty pathetic as a whole tbh. It looks cheap, the music is bargain basement cheap, it’s not original at all. It’s a cheap DDR tribute to music that’s been way way deleted (the Dancemania material) with a touch of Kyle Ward’s cringey music. Fight me DDR boomers you guys are dinosaurs with approaching arthritis.
I disagree because I have friends with mild arthritis! Music aside, I just don't think it's good to charge crazy money for a broken game with a severe lack of testing. It's even worse when nobody in a position to make change wants to listen to you when you have this concern. It's bananas 🍌
@@s34nvideos If you even give an ounce of constructive criticism to the developers of this game, they will disregard your opinions completely. They only take praises, nothing else.
@@thebibleisanalternativetot181 Sadly that was something I noticed after I made this video. I just filmed what happened, then narrated it. I watched it back just now. Despite not being able to play, I complimented the original cabinet and said it was a good game. It's like if you watch a David Attenborough documentary and a bear kills and eats a fish, why are people gonna be mad at David Attenborough? H's just saying what he's seeing. I could have mentioned that Pump Pro stole some simfiles from a Mexican simfile website as they had the same mistakes in the charts I could have mentioned that the original ReRave had really bad overheating problems and ReRave Plus still carried over this problem (but not as bad) and then I could have started ranting about why this business NEVER ever seems to test their products properly, but I didn't, but now im kinda pissed at the response to this and wishing I did. So im gonna just make a follow-up video soon.
UPDATE VIDEO HERE: czcams.com/video/ZkypVduZRHc/video.html
Regarding the pricing: You can blame the owners or distributors for 'setting the price', but I invite you to look at the price of any StepmaniaX machine around the world. It's no coincidence that these machines are poor value for money when compared to Pump it Up or Dance Dance Revolution.
Harassing people won't get you far.
@@jbean3535 Harassing?
Historically "Harassing"(?) got us Pump Pro bars (It was shipped without them) and the Pump Pro Encore patch.
It's interesting that a developer of the game (jbean) watched the video, took nothing from it, but instead started talking about harassment lol
'Harassing' is such a 2023 liberal word.
Can't believe Kevin Spacey got his sexual joke charges acquitted
Usual Suspects was a cracking film@@ErrorDDR
I have a dedicab in my basement that has worked perfectly for 2.5 years of continuous use. The lag is really strange to see, I've never seen anything like that before. The arcade really should fix the pad issue. I've only heard of 1 other occurrence of pads not connecting, or randomly disconnecting, so it's probably something they could solve. But throughout the years the dev team has been super helpful from what I've seen. The arcade should change the price that is pretty steep, although not really a fair criticization of the game.
4 reports of DX cab with lag and pad issues in the UK so far... !
Yeah, the older hardware worked really well, as i mentioned in the video
i feel like the lag might comes from the Screen resolution or something Tanking the PC performence
Frequent visitor of the DX at Seaton Carew here chiming in now that it’s had a few months of thrashing from me and the other local players. Them being put together correctly and being properly maintained seems to definitely correlate with the HW issues described, as this machine locally experienced all of them and they had to be fixed. This one was seemingly thrown together without much care and ran into them even faster.
From what I’ve been told when I asked the developers about it, the lag issue seems to be a rare software bug that they’re trying to hunt down but is extremely difficult to replicate in a dev environment (gotta love game development lmfao). Otherwise the game runs buttery smooth and takes no power to run compared to offerings from other competitors computers which is welcome with the current energy prices here in the UK. The only addition I would make is some more visual cues on screen (or an outright warning box) for any hw issues that may arise as these age.
At the risk of kicking a massive hornets nest, I’m definitely standing on the side of SR regarding the pricing thing. While the option for two songs per credit default is annoying, it’s probably the better option for a decent balance between play time/player satisfaction and the arcade making a decent ROI.
It’s entirely on the arcade ops to set the machine to one song though (and as of a recent patch, the game tries to discourage ops setting it to that in the first place) so if people are unhappy with the pricing of one of these machines, complain to the arcade or chain themselves in as civilised of a manner as possible. Harassing them over it will NOT have the result you want. Other than that, SMX has been a great game from my personal experience and the very frequent content updates are nice for replayability.
That's sad that it was installed that way, but great it's working now. They must be 'installed wrong' up and down the country then. I think I know about 4 or 5 machines with the same issues.
If you look at SMX installs around the world, the 1 song 1 credit is obviously discussed as a distribution deal (Namco/UDC in the UK) 🤝 compare with DDR and pump, you don't see this pattern.
Its no coincidence that you find an SMX in Brazil or Australia or Norway, and the credit system is the same haha! Never in history has this happened with any dance game.
Taking sides is so 2 dimensional. The world is a 3 dimensional place. Be better than that 😮💨
Its great to see that Seaton Carew has a machine again. I used to visit friends here to play on the ITG back in the 2005-2006 era. Its been a long time coming!
For sure! I got into dance games when the scene was pretty much dead around here and then the last DDR gave up the ghost around 2021/2022 when the 573 and tube shat the bed so it's nice to have a little spot. @@s34nvideos
That's one sick puppy, the Android box thing they use was straight up having a stroke there, in fairness i could blame the pad disconnecting on whoever put the machine toghether, which could also be the reason why it didn't let you select Full mode initially as it simply wasn't detecting the second pad lol
I have no idea why they are using Android boxes! I'm guessing it's a lot cheaper to make.
I wrote to the owner, he said the pad connector is very loose and they have to 'keep plugging it back in for it to work'. Some epoxy, for example, is around 1GBP here 🤷♀️
... But my friend who has been playing here (he came daily), he said the pad has never worked. Not once.
Weirdly, rather than take any feedback from this video onboard, I was shown some posts on Twitter from the makers of the game getting kinda offended and saying: 'The one who wants attention the most will do whatever they can to get it.' and 'they are also easy to ignore'
I know its 2023 and people get easily offended, but mixing that with business and ignoring genuine problems is totally bizarre to me!
Honestly I think their decision of using Android was a mistake, they could have used Windows for Tablets or Linux with like a TB of RAM and Nvidia Gforce, but they chose Android of anything possible.
Just I couple days ago the same lagging problem was happening, I’m glad I knew from looking at the video so I just asked them to restart the cabinet
Yeah, the 1 in 100,000,000 bug the devs keep talking about keeps happening, What a shocker!
I was gonna mention how when i tried it in an arcade in the us recently, i had no issues, but im not sure it was a deluxe cab
truly i would love if this game got more support in arcades, with it being cheaper to get than ddr cabs and not being exclusive, i would love to have an arcade less than an hour away from me with some ddr equivalent cab
It could be the older model that I talked about in the video. This cabinet didn't really have any problems. It kinda looks like a Pump FX cabinet with drink holders in the front.
Where's you local arcade? Video games is a hard sell these days because they don't make as much revenue as a crane game or ticket machine sadly
8:47 when I tried to use full as the difficulty when I put the coin in, the second pad turned off the same way
They said it's a 1 in 100,000 bug. So 1 in 100,000 machines have this bug.
You're the 5th person it's happened to.
I think they have maybe 100 machines out in the wild.
I'm not sure what the devs have been smoking lol
For these to really just roll out this is sad. The computer lagging and the Player 2 pad already messing up really worries me about how this cabinet is gonna hold up. The 1 song is how they set it because most people play one song and walk away but that’s not fair for dedicated players and I agree it should at least be 3 songs per set.
It's weird because it's not the first time it's happened either!
What's weirder is: If you have feedback about problems like this, I've learned more recently that the team get both: offended and defensive over their product, so it's almost impossible to get problems like these addressed and fixed.
Meanwhile, I don't care about politics, I just wanna play a working machine 😆☠️
I'm watching the video right now, and I'm surprised that the Deluxe cabinets have computer problems. In a recent video, I played "Cartoon Heroes" on a regular cabinet, and the video lagged out of sync to the song! I hope this is corrected very soon, because I want more venues to feature dance machines.
Also, yes, one play should include at least two songs. Maybe the timer of 100 songs should be reduced. I would also like to see an option that skips the song select screen, selects random songs, and offers a bonus song play due to the time saved.
† Maybe the timer of *100 seconds* should be reduced.
Tried one at a hollywood bowl in Glasgow, same issues. Had to ask staff to reboot the machine due to the same lag you experienced, still £1 per song. The screen is massive but the refresh rate is poor , can get hard to read using high speed mods.
That's sucks!
The response I saw on Twitter from the dev team was something like: "People will do what they want to get attention" and "These people are easy to ignore"
The response from Hollywood Bowl (before they started ignoring me), was: "We check these machines regularly, and plug the pads back in as they disconnect regularly." But despite their machines being dead (in comparison to other locations), they still won't budge from £1 for 1 song.
But hey, let's find out first hand what happens when you: don't test a product, charge people through the roof and ignore all feedback
Game is broken and a complete ripoff.
4:02 Audjdns also started singing Dino dano tumbadumbadum🩷
I remember playing the one in Stevenage a couple of months ago when it was brand new! It felt great to play but no way I can sustainability play this game over DDR where you can play SIX songs for £1 on Gold Rush ITG/DDR
Weirdly enough, this machine was 3 songs for 1 credit, then it was changed to 1 song per credit.
There is a guy called Steve Smart which pretty much controls all of the pricing for Hollywood bowls across the UK. His twitter handle is @stevesmart236
Sadly, he just cares about revenue and profit
@@s34nvideos That's quite bizarre as surely if it was set to more songs, there would be more SMX regulars tempted to sink credits into the machine - I'd definitely visit and play more if it was set to more reasonable pricing. I've heard Portsmouth has a bit of a SMX scene compared to the rest of the UK as it's set to 3 songs (if I remember right)
@@emmddr I was thinking of making a follow-up video soon.
I didn't think this review would be a big deal, but so many people have approached me thanking me for making the video and saying the SMX community has a bit of a mob mentality and cannot handle criticism. I had no idea about this, but after some digging around, I see this a lot.
It's totally bizarre to me. Products and services are improved based on feedback. I've read Twitter responses saying that 'its easy to ignore', but this logic doesn't make any sense to me. It's like selling on Amazon and disabling the reviews.
We are lucky that somebody has good relations with the manager of the Portsmouth machine.
When ReRave, Pump Pro and SMX were created, the mission statement was pretty much 'a game for the community'. Somewhere along the line, it's turned into a money hungry machine, inanely protected by a small subset of the wider dance game community.
These big corporations that fill their arcades full of redemption games aren't gonna be in the market for videos games UNLESS it's shown to be very profitable for the floor space it uses. Obviously, this is where the 1 song for £1 comes into play. But they wouldn't have purchased this machine unless they had proof (by the seller) its profitable.
The mission statement is now something like: The world's most accessible dance game.
I just wanna be able to regularly play a game, that works and that isn't a rip off. Then I'm happy. It turns out that many other people think the same way. Somewhere along the line, these original core values were lost.
That's the danger is hanging out in bubbles with the same people and a bunch of 'yes men' with the same mindset; smelling each other's farts... It doesn't matter if it's: videos games, politics, anything really. You slowly lose touch with reality. Nobody is there to offer any constructive criticism or disagree with the most popular opinion.
It is BEAUTIFUL 😍❤️❤️❤️❤️
True beauty comes from within!
Played the older version today and it plays pretty well. The default of one dollar/pound for 2 songs is *okay*, but I agree it should be 3, that’s still only like 6 minutes of play time. One song is ridiculous.
Some of the music is nostalgic, but in my humble opinion, playing a lot of songs that have already been around for like 20 years gets old fast. Don’t know if it will ever happen, but I think the ability to create and play customs would add a lot to the game, just like it did for ITG.
Thank you for the video!
Customs would be a great addition! (if they can get the game and hardware to work normally first).
It would be interesting to to see that. Normally I would say it would kill off an original release, but I think the high scores for official songs only would keep people interested in the officials
The whole thing is kinda weird for me. When this project started out, the devs were saying its a game for the players! So the song list represented that! You can see some of the old posts if you scroll back on socials, and then talks were made with returning artists from DDR/ITG etc to make similar content for SMX.
Then somewhere along the line, it turned into 'the most accessible dance game', but that's because the big corps are sold on the pricing strategy. So you have this song list that appeals to old school players, but pricing that is geared to casual play. None of it makes sense (to me) haha!
The reality is: NONE of these money hungry UK businesses would remotely touch this game if they were not promised a good return on their investment, and by default, dance games dont do that, unless you jack up the price.
So yeah, I don't deny it was a passion project at first, but nobody is addressing this insane pricing strategy in (at least) the UK market.... and the game on the new cab doesn't even work!
I'm on the side that revived songs are a good thing. Having 45 songs (not including "Eternus" and "Megalovania") from _DDR_ available in _SMX_ means there will be less fighting over which dance game to get, and if a venue only gets one game, _SMX_ has a great variety of content.
I agree that the game should include at least two songs per play. It means less time wasted navigating menus or logging in, and people can better enjoy the game.
At my area it is 1.50 for two songs so not bad but also not good also people leave free credits on it some times so that’s a plus lol
haha always a winner!!
Wow, everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong. "The cab was a paid actor"
As for the lag, I couldn't help but notice that during the reboot sequence at 5:50, a "home bar" pops up at the bottom as if the entire touch screen is a massive Android tablet. I wonder what the actual hardware specs are, and if there could possibly be some overhead from the underlying OS. A game like this shouldn't need anything north of a smart toaster's worth of computing power...
Yeah, that's even more weird is that: they are fighting me over getting it fixed.
I tried for a while, but in the end, I gave up.
They obviously don't want a community of players there and they (the owners and the devs) are more interested in milking casuals. It's sad really
This is why the arcade shall using portable one like Windows LTSC or Windows 10 IOT, because if driver have issue in mid game they will automatically throw an abort signal (error triggers) until owner diagnosed and reboot it, windows arcade if programmed have a self test. Android are not prepared to deal this disconnections.
If it was on the software side as you describe, it doesn't explain the pad working for 1-3 seconds after the disconnection.
I'm thinking it's either a connection issue or a grounding issue (on the pad side). Definitely a problem in the manufacturer process as I've counted 6 StepmaniaX DX Deluxe cabinets with the same exact issue. I'm sure there are more
But all of that aside, the Android hardware was a terrible idea
The fact that this is only £1 pound per song (here in the USA that would be $1.26 USD) for this is ridiculous. For pro players that's just unfair, it should be like three songs per play. Not to mention here in the USA, DDR A3 finally got released on Round 1 White cabs, so this DX version of StepmaniaX failing prematurely is just unacceptable. Even DDR A3 has some songs locked behind a paywall via it's PC only port DDR Grand Prix, DDR A3 is at least nice enough to give players three songs and Extra Stage if you're doing premium play with e-Amusement. I hope this gets fixed, because this shouldn't be happening especially for a game like StepManiaX which has some of the best dance pads out there.
I agree! Sadly they don't care about pro players (but say they do). All they see is 💰💰💰
Correction:
Even though DDR A3 has certain songs locked behind a paywall via it's PC only port DDR Grand Prix (you need a Japanese account, have an active subscription for Grand Prix, and purchase the pack required. Edit: As of 2024 most of the packs i mentioned are now available to all players), DDR A3 is at least mostly nice enough to have players play 3 songs plus Extra Stage if playing premium mode with e-Amusement and fill up all 9 stars. For this reason I prefer DDR A3 over this version of StepManiaX.
Edit: As for SMX you're better off playing the current standard size cabinet, even the older standard cabinets with loadcell sensors (current standard models and DX models use FSR (force sensitive resistors) sensors) played better than this crappy DX cabinet.
@@jasonmartinez5116 also if it’s any consolation, most of the GP required songs are the terrible songs being ported from the 😑 Wii era of DDR. They got new steps which makes them a little more terrible but the songs are still 😣
@@thebibleisanalternativetot181
Most of the Wii songs that were ported to Grand Prix are now available to all players in A3
Update: My local Round 1 in San Antonio Texas recently got a StepManiaX DX cabinet, and it played a whole lot better than this one on the video, almost as good as the current standard cab.
One, you got to play 3 stages like this should have.
Two, the pads functioned a whole lot better, and I got some Full Combos out of them.
Three: Cost. Each play was 3 songs per one credit, which the cost was 8 Round 1 credits on their game cards. You do need to pay for the Round 1 cards but its worth going for a higher value. It sounds a lot but to me its worth it.
Four: Round 1 actually knows how to properly do maitenance on their rhythm game cabinets if they got good managers. I have a feeling that the one in the video was either poorly maintained, or they got a defective machine. I did get a dropped input on the second side while doing a hold at one point (resulting in a !), but after that it played perfectly well.
Anyways, that's my experience on StepManiaX DX cabs, sorry that yours didn't go well.
The cabinet looks like a combination of the Andamiro's LX cabinet and Konami Dancerush stardom cabinet
haha! Geess which machine was released last =]
i wanna say based on the machines in Melbourne Australia. they were not set up 100% correctly by the technicians.
one had the legs/ feet of the stage not put down and locked into palce so aftwr a few songs the mahcibe was moving all about.
the other machine i play at the bars are ao loose they move around a lot.
i am wondering if the issues seen here are also linked to poorly being set up?
Maybe the hardware side of things sure. Not so sure about the lagging and game issues though
@s34nvideos i thought that too. but the machines i have played on have been OK but only when there is internet lagging does the machine lag (i wonder if the game is server based?) i played at orlando in july and the machine was offline and only had thebase game songs and ran pretty average (it was a standard machine)
idk if kward helped install it, or did anything all, whoever installed it doesnt know what they're doing
It seems like this problem is all over the country for these new cabinets. My friend also had the pad problem with a pair of pads he bought
This is in Sheffield!
I really expected better from the staff here...
It's in Leicester, but it's funny you say that because i made a video recently about all Namco-sourced arcades looking exactly the same
@@s34nvideosOh, the layout of the place was all too similar to Sheffield's 😅
@@DREADFALCON13 Yeah haha!, Welcome to the UK arcade factory where Namco churns out the same crap day in day out 🐑🐑🐑 I bet it has Super Bikes and/or Mario kart, down the clown, giant space invaders/pacman
The dx cabinet in my local Hollywood bowl has the same kind of issues with the pads.
It’s also only £1 for 1 song and people have tried contacting them about this price, but none of them were listening.
Which location is that?
This guy is your puppetmaster:
Send an email to:
ssmart hollywoodbowl co uk
@@s34nvideosThe location is the Hollywood Bowl in Sheffield.
Someone else has been trying but still, no response.
@@OlvHuman The one at Meadowhall?
That's the problem. They only seem to reply to anything considered negative (in their eyes).
Once you tag the guy Twitter, he'll instantly respond and act like he was too busy to read your 10 emails.
i think the price is set by step revolution in Australia it is 2 songs for aroubd $2.50aud so it feels a little pricey. compared to a 3-4 songs on DDR and Pump machines
@@petersmv1 oh wow!
They always say it's up to the owner, but I'm beginning to disbelieve that statement.
You can set DDR to one song for credit, but I never ever see that, at least, it's probably super rare.
But when I see SMX, 1 song per credit or a stupidly high price seems really common
That's really concerning seeing it lag out slower than a bootleg tablet. I think there's some hardware issues going on, (assuming this is PC-based like og ITG)
I get that they wanted to make the cab stand out but maybe I'm old fashioned in saying that a touchscreen interface might hurt these machines in the long run when it comes to cab durability. this cab has so many things that can break for a poor operator/repairman to fix 😭
I'm sure this is a sick game when it works lol, I too agree that 3 songs should be the standard. Heck, I've played on some games that had 4 songs which is sweet.
Appreciate the review, not many of these have made the import over where I live yet so I haven't tried SMX
You're welcome! Where are you based?
I'm not sure about this cab, but the smaller cab used some sort of mini android board, or something like that... but I do remember it not being a PC... When it booted, you could be the Android buttons at the bottom of the screen for a split second, so im thinking its the same hardware on these DX cabs
I remember the original ReRave used a large touchscreen, but it was later ditched in favor of a smaller one due to cost. I'm guessing the price went down now? im not too sure though... but yeah, i think your right in saying that future maintenance would be a bigger problem. There arent many DDR cabs with original screens (granted: different technology), and even a fair few Pump FX CX cabs have had screens replaced, and they are a lot newer.
I realised after I shot the video that my friend in London bought two pads, and he's had many issues with them (I think grounding iirc, but maybe i can ask him about it again). It was too expensive to ship back to the US to have it fixed. Im not too sure hes very tech savy, so he's trying to sell them now. Now im thinking maybe the software bug in the video (full mode) might be related to the pad kicking in and out randomly. Not too sure about that lag and crash though!
@@s34nvideos After chatting with another operator friend he mentioned the android parts and how they're troubleshooting similar issues with a cabinet they just got. His theory these cabs might be provided by a third party for export regions which also could be a factor on faulty parts. I guess these machines are too new, it's a real mystery
@@K9arcade One of my friends said perhaps it might be overheating if the cabinet is pressed against a wall. Perhaps the huge touchscreen generates a lot of heat, but im not really sure. I don't remember the reason why the Android parts are used rather than a PC. I was told before, but I forgot lol... It wouldn't be too surprising I guess if it was faulty, but I imagine it would/should have been caught in the testing phase.
I'm not sure about the deluxe cabs, but the pads and older models are made in a Chinese warehouse and shipped over. I'm not aware of any regional modifications other than flipping a couple of switches.
Having played on a couple of the original machines, the game’s great when it works, but there really is a lot that can go wrong. One of the machines in my area has some weird settings applied to the touch screen where if you want to tap something on the edge you need to tap around 2/3rds of the way to the side. It’s also offline, missing a couple years of updates, and the outermost side arrows are rather sticky and drop inputs easily on high levels. At the very least, it still plays miles better than the leased DDR Extreme cabs, which are the only option 70% of the time here when playing arcade rhythm games even is an option.
Hopefully a bunch of the issues on the new cab can be fixed with a software update? We got one recently that added the feature to adjust the sensitivity of the pads, I imagine they could optimize the software as well. It’ll still suck for anyone who can only play on cabs that won’t update, though.
@@s34nvideos oh dear, chinese parts don't last too long in a commercial setting 😰
Overheating is definitely a big possibility. Android devices are not known for having much cooling
Hahahah. Crazy that this is my local machine and i play on this every week. 2 player side is almost always broken, only have got to play full once. I hope they can fix it sometime, or else im going to have to buy a dedicab!
Edit: I forgot to say, last week i played on this cab and the coin slot didn’t even accept any coins. Had to get a worker around 3 times.
Wow you managed to play full once?! That's amazing! 😆 I heard it's finally been fixed as of last week, unless it's broken again
@@s34nvideosReally? That’s a surprise for me because even if it was fully broken they wouldn’t care about it. I can’t confirm, i was away last weekend, which is when i normally play.
@@jaxonsplanet ohh damn! It might be broken again then! haha!
Is it still at 2 songs for £1?
I've been arguing with the venue for ages about this!
I know a place that does the one dollar per song thing in the USA... its like they dont want people to keep playing it
It's mad!! In Orlando its $3 for 1 song haha!
Weirdly, despite the charge being "the owners decision", it's interesting that you rarely see this with DDR or Pump It Up....
One of the people who worked there said "its a new game, we're testing the prices"@@s34nvideos
Is it possible that the game's factory settings default to one song per credit? That would be a huge L on SMX's side, since most operators might not even bother or see a reason to change that setting. As an arcade employee, if your arcade has a lot of foot traffic from casual types of players, dance games tend to profit more from those who leave/fail after the first song. Most aren't even aware you can play more than one song, but don't play more than once anyway. I wish more arcades would stock more than just one dance game so pros can gather and play with less wait times, while making it easier for casuals to get games in too.
This reminds me the itg crapo cab 😂
Con un itg simply love se repara 😅
It would be a lot better too!
That is one giant android tablet
Yeah, pretty much nailed it
@@s34nvideosyeah
SMX = The bootleg version of DDR
I’d say more of a bootleg of PIU, but I don’t actually see it as a bootleg, since it doesn’t copy any design, unlike the company’s previous dance game ITG2.
Nah, more like a pathetic tribute catering to old farts who can’t stand modern DDR. I’ll give you a thumbs up tho.
It's really unfair to call it a bootleg when all the hardware is completely different. There was clearly a ton of R&D put into just the pads alone. They are built nothing like DDR pads.
Hi Vincent! StepManiaX does have some problems, but I disagree with you.
Unlike the abundance of DDR Extreme bootlegs, SMX is a licensed and legal dance game, and while there can be hardware or software problems from time to time, the arcade machines can work well when properly maintained.
There are more SMX than modern DDR in Canada, and Kyle Ward and his team update SMX regularly, whereas DDR A20 Plus (the latest in Canada) is almost 1½ years old.
Take care!
What R&D? Source?
I remember Brittany Barrett coming up with the APPLICATION of using a Wii balance board design (load cells), and it was then LATER used in SMX pads. There was a lot of public drama about design stealing and whatnot.
Then I think V4 of the SMX pad, they switched to FSR sensors, which again, were already being WIDELY used in dance pads at the time.
So, what R&D?
This game is pretty pathetic as a whole tbh. It looks cheap, the music is bargain basement cheap, it’s not original at all. It’s a cheap DDR tribute to music that’s been way way deleted (the Dancemania material) with a touch of Kyle Ward’s cringey music. Fight me DDR boomers you guys are dinosaurs with approaching arthritis.
Holy shit approaching arthritis 💀
I disagree because I have friends with mild arthritis!
Music aside, I just don't think it's good to charge crazy money for a broken game with a severe lack of testing. It's even worse when nobody in a position to make change wants to listen to you when you have this concern. It's bananas 🍌
@@s34nvideos If you even give an ounce of constructive criticism to the developers of this game, they will disregard your opinions completely. They only take praises, nothing else.
@@thebibleisanalternativetot181 Sadly that was something I noticed after I made this video. I just filmed what happened, then narrated it. I watched it back just now. Despite not being able to play, I complimented the original cabinet and said it was a good game.
It's like if you watch a David Attenborough documentary and a bear kills and eats a fish, why are people gonna be mad at David Attenborough? H's just saying what he's seeing.
I could have mentioned that Pump Pro stole some simfiles from a Mexican simfile website as they had the same mistakes in the charts
I could have mentioned that the original ReRave had really bad overheating problems and ReRave Plus still carried over this problem (but not as bad)
and then I could have started ranting about why this business NEVER ever seems to test their products properly, but I didn't, but now im kinda pissed at the response to this and wishing I did. So im gonna just make a follow-up video soon.
@@s34nvideos Do it, don’t let Kyle Ward and his yes men silence your opinions. Give it to them we got your back.