Talk:In the Groove (video game)

POV
This article is horribly POV. Most of it seems dedicated to explaining why ITG is better than DDR. The rest is random POV trivia nonsense about song authors and stepcharts. Somebody rewrite this page and make it look better than a bunch of forum posts about how great ITG is. Moogy 01:21, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

If you could point out a "good example, bad example" type of thing, I might be able to try to fix some of it. Unfortunately, I'm still kind of new at Wiki editing, and I don't want to goof on such a big undertaking. Wolfman2000 09:35, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it might be best to approach this from a "section by section" vantage point. I may take a section or two and revamp to kill some of the POV. Personally I feel that the whole "comparison" part should be struck completely. People should draw their own comparions or conclusions based on individual articles of DDR and ITG, not one talking about the other. If i'm writing an article on Vic Firth drumsticks, I'm not going to include a section on how they compare to promark drumsticks and why i think they're better or worse, or write an article on Breyer's ice cream and say, "it has technical improvements over Edy's because it uses all natural ingredients." Darknote 20:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Todo
While I'd planned on writing more of it, I don't have much time on my hands at the moment, and thus I'm making a list for myself or others if they wish. Mike Tigas 08:43, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Differences with regard to DDR or other dance games.
 * I concidentally made a comparison table without reading this :) --Headcase 00:29, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Connections to Stepmania simulator. (ITG derived from Stepmania)
 * Song, artist information. (Kyle Ward aka KeeL aka KaW, E-Rotic, etc)

By franchise I meant "part of a series" or a continuing product. While ITG2 is being produced, because it has not been released, I don't really want to put it in that category just yet. Mike Tigas 08:45, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have attempted to clean up some of the technical improvements section--lots of gory details there now. Probably some of it could be stricken out (or moved to another page, if not already present). Feel free to start whacking out sections which got too involved, however I felt having some of the technical information on DDR was important to see why ITG is an improvement, so I do ask if someone starts removing parts, put up a reference to another section like DDR's page in its place. Also, I felt that some of the previous comments about ITG seemed to take an opinion--I've attempted to restore them to a more objective nature without destroying the intent. And yes, that was my edit, but I dunno why it didn't sign it from me... hmm.... Dougk ff7 07:31, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I eliminated some extraneous information and reworded awkward parts in the first "Gameplay" area. I want to create some subsections for Game Modes, but that will be for later. Darknote 05:37, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I eliminated some more extraneous information and reworded a couple of parts. Also: added "Game Modes" section, changed "Technical Improvments" to "Technical Details", and moved ITG3 information to "History" Darknote 07:28, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Inappropriate tone
I added an inappropriate tone tag to this article.

Most of this article looks like a series of Internet forum posts discussing the game. It needs serious cleanup by people with a strong understanding of professional style and tone.

Worst of the faults with this article is that it doesn't make a clear distinction between ITG (the series), ITG (the arcade game), and ITG (the Playstation 2 game.) In addition, it seems to be more caught up in minor facts than more useful descriptions of the game itself. For example, detailed discussion of the grading system is largely irrelevant to a descriptive encyclopedia article and belongs in a FAQ page for the game.

Also, the page needs fewer comparisons to DDR, lest the article appear to judge it to be a derivative work or a knock-off of DDR, which would violate NPOV.

I'd do it myself if I could (see my extensive changes to Beatmania IIDX, but I don't really have the time right now. Maybe when this semester of school is over. -Chardish 21:08, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

My recent edits hopefully help with this tone issue--I tried to minimize some of the comparisons to DDR, while attempting to make the page seem less POV. --Rahzel 06:23, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm removing the inappropriate tone tag from the article, unless anyone else objects. I think that recent edits from me and other contributors have helped make this article significantly more NPOV. --Rahzel 22:49, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Picture

 * Well, one of the major issues with the article was distingusihing this from DDR, but I belive the article needs some work. What's with the ITG2 cabinet in the ITG1 article? I moved it to the ITG2 article and replaced it with Image:Itgbox.jpg. Also, I agree. We should split the article into each port, hence the split template I'll put up. --LBMixPro&lt;Sp e ak 09:27, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
 * In response to your comment about the ITG2 cabinet, the image was originally the same one you posted. My reasons for switching it to the ITG2 cabinet: 1) In The Groove is an arcade series that has been ported to the Playstation2, thus the "defining image" for the article should be an arcade cabinet, not a PS2 box. 2) The article is about the series, not about any individual game. The PS2 box is an individual game. 3) The image should be of an In The Groove cabinet, not a DDR cabinet converted to run In The Groove. 4) Every ITG dedicated cabinet in existance runs ITG2. Thus the reason why there's an ITG2 cabinet. I'm going to be bold here and change it back. Perhaps there should be a separate In The Groove (PlayStation 2) article.-Chardish 22:19, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I think the ITG1 logo be a good replacement, since ITG1 and ITG2 are two separate products with two separate articles. It just seems weird to have an image of a separate product on the article. If we're to split the article into different parts, we need to take the time to break down what goes into what. Most of the content in ITG arcade is the same as ITG home version, other than the system and peripherals. If there was an article about ITG home, would it grow above stub status? Should there be a comparison article (if there isn't already one) which compares features of arrow-based dancing games? (This post was met with an edit conflict, so I didn't read the below section yet.)--LBMixPro&lt;Sp e ak 22:48, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

My point is that the ITG cabinet is the "product", and it's certainly a better represenation of what ITG is than either a logo or a PlayStation 2 game box. The fact that the marquee says "In The Groove 2" is largely irrelevant - the Beatmania IIDX article shows a 5th Style machine, and the Pop'n Music article shows a Pop'n 7 cabinet. In The Groove is the name of the series - the fact that the first release in the series shares the same name is largely irrelevant. Since we're talking about the series, who cares what version of the game the cabinet is? -Chardish 15:57, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree, I think much of the article is just trying to prove why ITG is better than DDR. I think that kind of subjective discussion should be sidestepped. Also, the information in the grading should be better placed.

Article split?
I wholeheartedly support the disambiguation of this article. In my edits I've tried to focus mainly on the ITG series in general, leaving the specifics of individual games and their lists to various other pages. The following ITG-related pages currently exist:


 * In The Groove song list
 * Pump It Up: In The Groove 2
 * Pump It Up: In The Groove 2 song list

I propose the following pages:


 * In The Groove (game series) - what this article should be renamed to. Discusses the whole series and game mechanics, with specific respect to the original arcade releases
 * List of songs in In The Groove games (in keeping with naming convention, this singular list could cover both ITG1 and ITG2 in separate sections, denoting special ITG2 songs that appear only in the home version of ITG1)
 * In The Groove 2 - the game's name is "ITG2" according to Roxor [] []. "Pump It Up" is a brand name that appears on cabinets manufactured by Andamiro, and is not the title of the game itself.
 * In The Groove (game) - article to discuss ITG1, with emphasis placed on the original arcade release
 * In The Groove (PlayStation 2) - article to mainly discuss differences between arcade and PS2 versions

-Chardish 22:46, 5 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The integrated ITG songlist a good idea, since ITG2 incorporates the entire ITG1 songlist. IMO, the title for the list should be better. Although I'll concur with the naming convention. But what about the comparisons between ITG and DDR? Do we have any sources which would support the PIU:ITG2 title? What about a category:In The Groove game series?--LBMixPro&lt;Sp e ak 22:57, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
 * We don't need the word "game" in the category name: there is now a Category:In the Groove series that has the same name style as Category:Dance Dance Revolution series. &mdash;Lowellian (reply) 12:03, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I thought "songs in In The Groove" sounds awkward to the ear, too: however, the only alternative I can think of without being wordy is "songs from In The Groove." This wouldn't really be an accurate list due to the licensed music in the game that wasn't written specifically for the game - that can't be considered "from In The Groove" because ITG isn't its origin. As for the DDR/ITG thing, there's already an article Comparison of panel-based music video games which should cover the differences on neutral ground - listing the differences in either the DDR or ITG article only is POV; listing them in both is redundant. The category is definitely a sound idea if we're going to have a structured group of pages about this topic. -Chardish 14:41, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I think there should really be a lot more consistency among dancing game articles. Usually, the authors of the articles know a fair bit about other dancing games, so it makes sense to have them styled in the same way.  The DDR articles seem to be far more structured for the most part and, I think it would take a giant step toward reducing confusion about dancing games.  This would also reduce the need for a description of differences and similarities between ITG and DDR because a viewer could just look at the other dancing game pages and figure out the differences for him/herself from a more objective standpoint.  As messy as the situation is now, think about what it will be like as more dancing games hit the market, most notably neon fm. I also think a better idea for the song list would be to have an article called List of songs in dancing games or Soundtracks of dancing games or even List of soundtracks of dancing games.  This page could in turn have links to "List of songs in" or "Soundtrack of" articles for each dancing game series with the sections for each game.  Also, do we really need separate sections for the PS2 version?  What if Roxor decides that a future version will be released on all console platforms, and maybe even a computer platform.  I'm all for disambiguation, but if articles are split too much, then it becomes much harder to search for information because it is scattered.  Anyway, just a few thoughts.  I am not too familiar with all of wiki's special naming and style conventions, but I have a couple friends who are, and I could probably help reshape these articles--Emuboxer 18:33, 19 December 2005 (UTC)Emuboxer
 * I also think the articles should be split, seeing as how In The Groove shows an overview of the game while In The Groove 2 is based off the 2nd version of the series. ITG1 should have its own page--216.26.203.232 23:53, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Is "The" capitalized or not?
The article says "In The Groove" but it was moved to this title for some reason. Should it be moved back? ··gracefool |&#9786; 23:27, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

The official name for the game is In The Groove with "The" capitalized. It may seem different, but that's how it is supposed to be presented. I've done my best to revert situations where people decapitalize all of the "In The Groove" statements before, but I'm not well-versed enough in Wiki editing to trust myself to change the title. :) Plaguefox 01:56, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Moved. ··gracefool |&#9786; 06:16, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, it is actually "in the Groove" if you look at the box and banner.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.226.224.166 (talk • contribs) 16:36, May 17, 2006


 * The logo clearly says "in the groove", all lowercase, so contrary to the above claim, the official name clearly does not have "The" capitalized. Also, according to Manual of Style (trademarks), "Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules even if the trademark owner encourages special treatment". Therefore, I am moving this page back to "In the Groove (game)". &mdash;Lowellian (reply) 11:53, 5 June 2006 (UTC)


 * To quote Manual of Style (trademarks), "but, don't invent new formats: MCI is standard, not "Mci"." It was mainly specifying that a title that is completely capitalized (the example being REALTOR) shouldn't be, since that's grating on the eyes.  In The Groove is not grating on the eyes, makes perfect sense, and is endorsed by the creators and fans of the game.  Plus, in the Groove is frustrating as it doesn't look like a proper noun with the first word being entirely lower-case.  Yes, the banner has lower-case, but look ANYWHERE where somebody says "In The Groove" and you'll find it in no-caps or all-caps (due to laziness and stupidity) or it'll appear like I said it. Edit: I won't change it since I'm horribly inexperienced and not even using an account, and I suppose the idea should be kicked around.24.21.71.123 06:36, 13 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The official website capitalizes it. Why don't we just go with that? —Keenan Pepper 03:40, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Law Suit
I may be wrong but the lawsuite is over? -NekoD

As far as I know, nothing has happened as of late with the lawsuit. It shouldn't be changed just yet until there is an official announcement. Wolfman2000 05:10, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

It's scheduled for February 2007, IIRC. -129.241.93.32 21:08, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd rather not be referred to as "videogame fan" in the external links; although my article is based upon some legal knowledge I know the analysis isn't fully rigid. I'm happy for the article to be linked to but not with an implication it's done by a videogame "fan". Wellian 01:55, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

It is. I'm about to go update the article. UOSSReiska 02:08, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I think there should be a citation provided for the reference to Konami's Japanese arcade games being illegal. 69.158.7.86 06:12, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The arcade machine itself says that use outside of Japan is prohibited. No citation needed. Telepheedian 20:09, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't that be a primary source? -- w L &lt;speak&middot;check&middot;chill&gt; 00:23, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Sync
The article claims:


 * ITG also has very good synchronisation between the step charts and the background music; a perfectly executed play of any chart in ITG will have steps precisely on a beat within the song. DDR tends to have an early bias in its steps, so a player would have to step a few tens of milliseconds ahead of the beat to obtain a perfect score.

Leaving the DDR issue aside (even though I've never seen this claim anywhere except in this article), isn't it a bit odd to claim this near-perfect sync when Roxor is still changing the sync between patchlevels? (See .) -Sesse 15:52, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I just finished editing this section of the article to make it more factual and accurate. ITGheaven 05:35, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Pointless linking
Why the hell would one link to foot in the gameplay section? Can we assume for a moment that someone speaking sufficient English to read the article up to that point will also know what feet are?

I'll remove the link unless someone can give me a good reason why it should stay. --Bringa 13:14, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Please be civil, no need getting fired up over something like this. If you feel it's wrong, remove it. If someone disagrees they will either revert it or start a discussion on it. Havok (T/C/c) 14:35, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry about sounding angry; I guess useless linkage one of my pet peeves. I just find it horrible and unprofessional, and it often makes my veins bulge while reading WP articles. I removed it. Still, I wonder what whoever linked "feet" was thinking...

Grading
- I'd like to question the inclusion of the "how many songs on expert have been quad-starred" portion of this article. While i think it's interesting, i feel it falls under the category of "trivia" that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia-style entry. If people are interested in that sort of statistic, they can just go to groovestats and look themselves. i don't think it serves a real purpose here. Darknote 01:56, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Current event
I added the current event tag due to Konami's acquisition of ITG. --Typobox43 02:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

exploits
On a personal note, watching the videos on the exploit site shows they seem to have a load of songs I've failed to find on my sources for stepfiles for Stepmania, such as Elysium by Scott Brown, one I was actually working on myself until I saw this video and learned it's been done. If anyone knows how to contact the makers of the videos or can provide sources for any of the custom songs in the videos, let me know. Coolgamer 23:56, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Adding songs to ITG
Shouldnt their be a section on how to upload songs from your pendrive to the itg machine?

No. While this is legal to do to your own machine, it would encourage others to add songs to public machines, which is illegal.

No, but now that r21 allows you to legally bring in songs (even if you can't put them directly on the machine), maybe there should be a section on that?

See Also/External Links
In the See Also and External Links section are links to a DDR SuperNOVA ranking website. Is this appropriate? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.60.87.126 (talk) 16:37, 14 February 2007 (UTC).

No, but now that r21 allows you to legally bring in songs (even if you can't put them directly on the machine), maybe there should be a section on that?

Dead
I used to love In The Groove, but we need to face reality now, guys. It's dead. Konami killed it, let them all die a painful death, but we now need to mention that it has ceased to exist. Maybe we can get a leak of what ITG 3 would have been from the stepmania devs. Telepheedian 18:02, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Konami hasn't said anything either way, and neither have the ITG devs. I doubt it's dead.  Moogy   ( talk )  19:15, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It's effectively dead, as Konami's injunction against Roxor Gaming more or less guarantees that they'd be sued into a molten puddle if they tried to create another four-panel dance game. Kyle Ward has moved on to a project with Andamiro, making it appear very unlikely that ITG will be returning in any form.
 * Not quite sure what any of this has to do with the article, though. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 19:48, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Main image
The original free-use image was badly taken and outdated. However, it is a free-to-edit picture, so I am able to legally modify it. I've tried my best to come up with a better look to it and uploaded it to the Wikimedia Commons, and put it to the article. If the Non-free content didn't apply, I would agree and use the pic Roxor made of the cabinet. The policy says "Always use a more free alternative if one of acceptable quality is available. "Acceptable quality" means quality sufficient to serve the necessary encyclopedic purpose" [emphasis mine]. Unless I'm mistaken, the main image is meant to identify an In The Groove game. When there's free use, there's no use for fair use. The best way to fix the image edit war is to take a picture of an ITG2 cabinet at an arcade and submit it to the Commons, so we can have it. I would have done it myself if there was an ITG machine within reach. -- w L &lt;speak&middot;check&gt; 06:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Wouldn't a picture of an ITG cabinet be more appropriate to this article? A good free picture of a ITG2 dedicab would be good for In The Groove 2, though. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 07:17, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It is the upper half of an ITG cabinet at an arcade in California. The original photo only shot the top half of it. w L &lt;speak&middot;check&gt; 09:26, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I've added a new, FREE USE picture that IMO is better than the previous Free Use picture that was uploaded previously. Let me know what you think.  Rahzel 08:03, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Excellent! One small problem, though: That's an ITG2 machine. What'd be really nice would be a picture of an ITG1 machine to go here - I've put your new image on In The Groove 2, which had been using a fair-use image. It's still a massive improvement over what had been here, though. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 22:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, that's a good point (re: ITG1 vs. ITG2 cabinet). Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of an ITG1 cabinet, so if anyone else has any (of comparable quality to the current picture), by all means replace the current image with yours!  Until then, let's leave this one up (I'd rather have a good picture of an ITG2 cabinet than a less good picture of an ITG1 marquee).  Thanks, Rahzel 02:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I like the ITG dedicab as is. It's more indicative of what ITG machines look like - ITG1 cabinets look like DDR machines with different marquees and stickers. - Chardish 02:10, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * It's indicative of what an ITG2 dedicab looks like. But that's not what this article is about - while ITG1 cabinets do look a lot like DDR machines (mostly because they are!), that doesn't mean it wouldn't be nice to have a picture that showed what that looks like. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 08:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Inaccurate Song List
I know for a fact that ITG1 (Arcade) displayed "I Think I Like That Sound" as simply "That Sound". Is there anything else inaccurate in the given song list? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.125.214.39 (talk) 22:36, 24 April 2007 (UTC).

That's not inaccurate; although that was how the song was displayed on the song wheel on ITG1, internally (proof of which is via xml output) the song was known as I Think I Like That Sound, and moreover the artwork displayed it as such and the song wheel agreed; thus it was changed on the wheel for ITG2 to reflect the full title. The different between the song and Breaking Point is that Breaking Point was only known as Pure Hell internally; during testing its name was changed on the wheel and artwork to Breaking Point but not within the machine. Wellian 16:25, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Aerobic Digital?
Somebody added a link to this site to a bunch of dancing-game-related articles. Of all the articles it was added to, this one seems the most relevant, but based on the other pages it was added to I'm considering it an attempt at advertising. As a person in the dancing game community, I've never heard of this system, which leads me to question its notability, along with the fact that it doesn't have its own wiki article. I reverted it, but if anybody disagrees feel free to discuss it. アンジェリーク ★ Angelique 02:41, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism
There is vandalism on two sections of this page, one near the top (you can't miss it), and another in the song difficulties section. I tried to remove it, but it's not even in the edit page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.176.169.81 (talk) 21:53, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Rolls
I see nothing about Rolls in the game machnices of IN the groove and i was wondering if you think it would be a good idea to include it —Preceding unsigned comment added by Linkmaster 6 (talk • contribs) 16:43, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It's already written, just in a separate article. See In the Groove (series). Zetawoof(&zeta;) 20:25, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

This is also for Mac!
I just got the game and it says right on the case PC/Mac! I am playing it on PC right now, but I plan on buying a Mac soon. Please some add Mac to the platform list, I would, but I'm not sure how. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Djaikou (talk • contribs) 08:44, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I'm not sure how we ended up with In the Groove (video game) and In the Groove (series), but clearly we only need one article for the game. Sadly, there will be no more official video games in the ITG series, so the articles should be combined. --Robertb-dc (talk) 22:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That in of itself isn't a reason to merge. I would agree with you though if I didn't believe that there would be enough information regarding the series as a whole and the first game that the article would get so big someone else would come in and call for a split. And I don't think looking at the size of the articles as they stand now should be the merit for a merge, there's enough potential. æron  phone  home   15:50, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * This proposal is officially dead.  æron  phone  home   18:43, 7 July 2010 (UTC)