Man dances on metal pad; onlookers astonished
April 20, 2020 1:54 PM   Subscribe

Seth Sanchez a.k.a. happyf333tz showcases the arcade dance game Pump It Up for Games Done Quick's COVID-19 relief event.
posted by Tau Wedel (14 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
New high score, is that bad? What does that mean? Did I break it?
posted by shminta at 2:13 PM on April 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


i'm scanning through it and i LOVE this, he's so encouraging and able to share fun things about the game and the community (love that there's a community) while clearly working off of some wild muscle memory for these charts(?), compared to the fact that he says his chat normally roasts him for making small mistakes lol. how fucking fun, i miss this kind of game
posted by gaybobbie at 2:18 PM on April 20, 2020


So interesting to see how stay-at-home is affecting so many communities, providing both challenges and opportunities. Like happyf33tz implied, I don't know if a rhythm/dance game has ever been on a Games Done Quick (which is normally about showcasing speedruns). On the other hand, typically showcasers would have a "couch" of friends/colleagues who could fill time and provide commentary so one guy doesn't have to, say, dance his ass off and explain the game at the same time :)
posted by muddgirl at 2:46 PM on April 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


> typically showcasers would have a "couch" of friends/colleagues who could fill time and provide commentary so one guy doesn't have to, say, dance his ass off and explain the game at the same time

It kind of sounded like he was hoping the announcer offsite could fill that role, but the announcer stuck to thanking people for donations.
posted by ardgedee at 2:57 PM on April 20, 2020


Holy crap. I mean, I just watched him get started and then skipped ahead to the end, but damn! For a freakin' hour?

I'd love to see him in tap shoes.
posted by straw at 3:50 PM on April 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


It kind of sounded like he was hoping the announcer offsite could fill that role, but the announcer stuck to thanking people for donations.

Introducing the next speedrunner and reading donations/rewards is typically the job of the "host" aka the announcer - it's a 24-hr multi-day event so they rotate through hosts during different blocks so the hosts aren't necessarily experts, just folks who sound professional on mike.
posted by muddgirl at 3:56 PM on April 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


Paranoia180 FOR LYFE
posted by grumpybear69 at 4:41 PM on April 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


Oh I should add that there's usually not so much cross talk between the host and the player - they're usually all in the same room so it's easier to coordinate & no lag (you can see a speedrunner, his couch, the host with blue hair, and the audience all in this picture from 2019).
posted by muddgirl at 4:47 PM on April 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


That was ... uh ... holy shit ... wow. Like, how? Wow. Holy shit. I don't even... I mean, daaaaamn. You know?
posted by jacquilynne at 5:51 PM on April 20, 2020 [3 favorites]


For an encore, check out happyf33tz (the subject of the post) and Fefemz (perhaps the world #1) playing co-op doubles charts, where both players play simultaneously and the chart is designed so that they can stay out of each other's way. One player plays the blue notes, and one plays the red notes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjKRbMo1hw4

posted by value of information at 7:14 PM on April 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


We caught this live, and on the one hand, it’s more of an exhibition than a speedrun, but on the other hand, did you SEE him just sort of cartoonishly gliding back and forth as his feet are just furiously scrambling beneath him

We were both amazed at the way that he was doing commentary while playing, without even getting winded at all for the first half or so

Anyway this was an extremely impressive thing and I’m glad I got to see it

and I really appreciated the way that they were playing the song Butterfly when they cut back to the interstitial
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:11 PM on April 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


That was crazy and fun to watch. Forwarded to the kids.

By the way, I'm really happy we have Ring Fit Adventure for the Switch in the house these days. Beat Saber for the PS4 was in the running, but the HW (VR googles) is so much more expensive. But I see now that a full dance game arcade machine would be both more expensive and fill half the living room.
posted by Harald74 at 10:31 PM on April 20, 2020


So here is something I am now curious about but couldn't find on YouTube. I assume he practices a lot to get those perfects. What does this guy look like the first time he tries a new song? Is he anyway mostly there? Did he have to stop and figure out how best to approach sections of the song or is there really only one right way to work the patterns? Does he start with simpler versions of the patterns for the song and then work up or does one song = one set of patterns? Or maybe there can be more than one set of Lauren's but they don't relate closely enough that learning an easier one helps with the harder ones?
posted by jacquilynne at 1:38 PM on April 21, 2020 [1 favorite]


From playing a ton of DDR back in high school, you sort of learn to read certain sets of steps in chunks — a lot of the time, at least on DDR, stepcharts would be designed with a sort of implicit "just alternate feet" principle at play, and over time you'd just sort of learn to recognize "oh okay so here I kind of twist my body 90° to the left" or "this set of arrows means I spin around" or whatever. Usually there's an intended "optimal pattern," although clearly in PIU it seems like a fair bit of that is also just a matter of, like, sometimes some things just look nice onscreen (like the "M-walks," which look like just a line going from one side to the other of the onscreen display, but which require you to step on all five panels in a pattern that strongly resembles a capital M).

But yeah, broadly speaking, at higher levels it's like 80% "have learned to see the Matrix" and 20% just getting a feel for the rhythm of the song (especially for extremely gimmicky stepcharts like PIU loves).
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:17 PM on April 22, 2020 [1 favorite]


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