Pie-Kun!

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), it seems there has been a delay in the 360/PS3 version of the upcoming DanceDanceRevolution game. Several shopping websites have bumped their release dates for the games up to early 2010, ad evidenced here:

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&q=DanceDanceRevolution+Ps3&safe=off&cid=4384098757311452399&sa=title#p

I say "fortunately?", because they might be taking this time to brush up the less-than-spectacular graphics that have been shown off in their beta video of the game. Not to worry though, the PS2/Wii games still appear to be schedule for an October release. And for those PS3 or 360 limited, perhaps you can rest assured in the 150+ songs for DLC (which apparently will include new songs) are exclusive to those systems.

おはよう～

Interestingly, it seems Konami has finally given thought to name a couple of the "DanceDanceRevolution" titles that are coming up. IGN has posted entires for upcoming games: "DanceDanceRevolution X2" and "DanceDanceRevolution: Hottest Party 3", for the Playstation 2 and Wii respectively. NAOKI had also announced at Japan Expo that the Wii edition of this year's DDR game would be entitled "Hottest Party 3".

Here are the links:

http://ps2.ign.com/objects/022/022418.html
http://www.gamestats.com/objects/022/022414/index.html

As for my personal life, I've been lying back as I prefer to transfer to my University. I unofficially have my Associate's degree, the receptionist at CMC told me that it will take several months to get the physical document. Hmph.

My university opened up for class registration on July 21st (my birthday!), but they have yet to send me my PIN so I can access their online system. Sheesh. I called them last week for a new one, so I am hoping that they will be quick in sending it out to me.

Most of my friends that I had out here have moved away, so I've been feeling a little lonely and have had a lot of free time on my hands. I've also been helping BemaniStyle in a small part with their new site, I hope I've proven helpful. Mainly I've been worrying about moving to Los Angeles and going to an actual university. I'd like to just make some friends, get a job, join Japan club (I hope it's active!), and maybe go to Arcade Infinity a bit too! 

Anyways, that's all for today.~

And the neverending conquest of JLPT3 continues...

Today's really easy! After the plain form of a verb, simply add ことにする or its appropriate conjugation to mean that something has been decided. Like:

来週からドイツ語をべんきょうすることにしました。
I decided to study German starting next week (lit: from next week)

後でかいものに行くことにするかもしれませんね。
I may decide to go shopping later.

今朝、朝ごはんを食べられるように早くおきることにしました
I decided to get up early this morning so I could eat breakfast.

I've already began studying for the JLPT3 (see below)! Today, I'm looking over Causative Verb forms. These verb forms are used when you are directing that something was made to be done or let be done.

The conjugation for these verbs are pretty simple.

For type I verbs, simply conjugate the verb as if you were making it into its ない form and add "せる" at the end. For example:

買う->買わせる
死ぬ->死なせる
飲むー＞飲ませる

Type II verbs are simpler still. Simply snap off the る and add させる at the end.
食べる->食べさせる
寝る->寝させる
おきる->おきさせる

As for the two usual irregular verbs:
する->させる
来る->来させる

In sentences, use に to mark the person/object that was made to do something. For example:

子供の時に母がいつも私に野菜を食べさせた.今は野菜をぜんぜん食べません.
When I was a child, my mother always made me eat vegetables. Now I don't eat vegetables at all.

今日,先生がとてもつまらない映画を見させた.
Today, our teacher made us watch a really boring movie.

雨が振っていたのに私が息子に学校へ行かせた.
Even though it was raining, I made my son go to school.

Nyah.

After much consideration, I've decided to take the JLPT3 test this year. Whoo-hoo! I was worried that I wouldn't have the time to study properly, but I think I have enough time to get through all the gory stuff. I actually already have a good chunk of it down, and I figured its best to at least TRY for it right? The sucky thing is that next year they are changing to this whole new FIVE level system and that's going to be tough to adjust to. I'd like to get a JLPT2 certificate (or whatever the equivalent will be) next year so I can get a good job when I graduate.

Anyways, the test isn't for six months, so I've got lots of time to continue to study for it. I think the hardest portion is going to be the listening section because I am really sucky at catching words at a native speed. Besides that, grammar, Kanji, and vocab should be pretty easy for me.

Oh yeah, the test is going to be held right next to my college this year, so I don't even have to worry about making a big side trip. Nya hahaha~

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It seems the "DDR Volume 1" rumor was only about half true. Indeed there is going to be a multi-release on four major systems, but it does not look like it is a "best hits" game at all. Thanks to bemanistyle's Twitter account, we now know some details about the upcoming game.

Songlist:

Licenses:
Closer / Ne-Yo
Daft Punk Is Playing At My House / LCD Sound System
Disturbia / Rihanna
Dream on Dreamer / Brand New Heavies
Ice Ice Baby / Vanilla Ice

Konami Originals:
A Brighter Day / NAOKI feat. Alisha G
Dynamite Rave / NAOKI
Taking It To The Sky / U1 feat. Tammy S Hansen
What Will Come Of Me / Black Rose Garden

Notes:

-Only Wii and PS2 versions are on display. PS2 version uses an updated X interface while Wii version uses an updated HP2 interface.

-It MIGHT have gone back to the 1-10 scale, but there is no confirmation.

-What Will Come Of Me is a "10", whatever that might mean, and Daft Punk Is Playing At My House had "fun" steps, according to the Twitterer.

-Dynamite Rave is the new vocal version seen in the UK location test of DDR X AC.

Konami has updated their E3 games list, with this being the first listing:

DanceDanceRevolution
Release date: Q4 2009
Platform(s): Xbox 360®, PLAYSTATION®3, Wii™, PlayStation®2

Taking the revolution to another level! DanceDanceRevolution enhances the entire series' across all platforms! DanceDanceRevolution is sure to be the life of the party and get you into shape with outrageous multiplayer fun, huge smash hit soundtrack, entirely new modes and more! There is now a DanceDanceRevolution for everyone! And after more than a decade as one of the most popular franchises in the music genre, DanceDanceRevolution has transcended from a video game into a pop culture icon.

Strangely, it doesn't seem to match up with the reports of "DDR Volume 1", which was supposed to be a best-of game. Konami has not released any information or screenshots of the game yet, so we'll have to wait until tomorrow's press conference to get the meat of the game. However, as I posted before, two songs likely to make it in are "The Way I Are" by Timbaland and "Better Off Alone" by Alice Deejay.

Who knew? One of my favorite shows as a kid, Rocko's Modern Life, was filled with sexual innuendos and downright dirty stuff.


Still, this sort of makes the whole show a little bit more awesome for me. Do kids even watch the lame-ass shows they have on these days? I mean "Total Drama Island" and "6Teen"? Ugh.

The music publishing site "The Royalty Network" has revealed that Knoami has licensed two of their tracks to be on an unnamed DDR game. The two tracks are "Better Off Alone" by Alice Deejay and "The Way I Are" by Timbaland

Some DDR gamers may remember that Konami originally licensed "Better Off Alone" for use in Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Channel, but was later scrapped for an all-Disney license list. Better Off Alone is a dance track plucked straight from the 90s, and you can certainly hear the influence in its music. Listen to it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dBu5X3TvNw

The second song is a more recent song. released in 2007. The Way I Are by Timbaland is a electronic hip-hop dance track that is sure to be a non-hit with hardcore DDR gamers. Still, I think the song fits well and the chorus is really nice. It's certainly an appeal to beginners and casual players, but it gets my thumbs up! Listen to it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWg3IMN_rhU

Of course, the big question is whether or not these are scheduled to be on DDR: Volume 1, or some other, yet unnamed DDR game. I suppose only time will tell!

Some rumors have started to spread since last night about a new Dance Dance Revolution game, titled "DDR Volume 1", which is meant to be a sort of "best hits" DDR game, released on the PS2 (yay!), PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii. There is very little information right now, but we're assured there will be much more at E3 this year.

Here's the quotes from the rumor mill:

"Konami's long-standing Bemani music dancing series, Dance Dance Revolution, is set to return on numerous systems, Wii included, later this year. Dance Dance Revolution: Volume #1 will be somewhat of a "Best of" compilation pacakge that includes many of the popular dance tracks people have got down and boogied to in previous editions in the franchise.

Dance Dance Revolution: Volume #1 is due in early November, alongside Konami's other recently announced title Karaoke Revolution. More details are expected at the upcoming E3 event. "

The timing of this game may make some sense. The Arcade editions of Dance Dance Revolution X have still not been released in America and the UK, and the Japanese Arcade edition will not be finished unlocking for several more months, leaving a big gap for any new Dance Dance Revolution game to be released in the US, at least on the PS2 front.

It's title "Volume #1" also seems to imply that this will not be the first of these 'best-of' games to be featured. In any event, it is all rumors at the moment, and only time will tell if this bans out to be true.

Some may know that I am currently studying Japanese on my own. I would be taking formal classes, but unfortunately my small little community college out here doesn't offer any Japanese courses. Luckily, I will be taking some when I transfer to the University in the fall! *dances*

Anyways, if you haven't ever tried it before, studying on your own can be really difficult. Especially when you're talking about another language. And sometimes I find myself wondering "Am I even learning anything?". However, if you just keep at it, you'll find that you are in fact learning quite a bit!

I've been watching some old anime that I haven't seen in a while, and also playing some old Japanese games I haven't played in a while. While watching and playing, I've noticed that I understand loads more stuff than I had previously. For example, one game I've been replaying is Kingdom Hearts re: Chain of Memories for the PS2. This game is full-on Japanese, including the speech portions of the game (which is unlike Kingdom Hearts I and II (JP) ). When I first played it, I could really only understand really basic setences such as "リクはここにいるか？" [Riku is here?], but now I find myself understanding about 30% of what is being said. 30% might not seem like a lot, but keep in mind we're talking about informal speech at natural speed, so its not exactly easy :P. I can understand a lot more of the written sections too because of my Kanji study ;).

It's so fun being able to play games or watch anime and have it actually be constructive~


 

al2k4 and the gang over at Zenius-I-Vanisher went to go test out the upgraded DDR X cab that is being tested over in Europe. They obviously weren't expecting much more than an English version of the default DDR X cab, but they ended up finding something very interesting:

http://zenius-i-vanisher.com/v5.2/viewvideo.php?videoid=12

As you'll see in this video, DYNAMITE RAVE's audio has been remade and it has replaced the old DYNAMITE RAVE audio. Perhaps most peculiar is the fact that the latest Japanese e-amusement update does not include this remade DYNAMITE RAVE. Perhaps this is a sign of more to come?

So, I was stressing out today about my statistics test *see post below*, but I was quite surprised when I arrived at class today!

There were a few people missing today and at first my teacher floated around the idea of having a take-home test. That made me happy enough, but then he proposed a sort of "team" test taking challenge in-class. At first we all thought he was joking, but he did indeed split us up into teams and before we knew it, we were split up into teams and preparing for the questions.

The game worked like this: there were three teams, two with four people and one with three. I was on a team with my fellow classmates Marcus, Eriko, and Tanya. The game worked like "Who Wants to be a Millionaire". One person was chosen to be the "leader" (in our case it was Marcus, followed by Eriko) and answer the questions. The leader was given three lifelines: phone a friend (where the leader could ask a team mate for help), poll the audience (poll the class), and 50/50.

All in all, there were 15 questions asked and everyone answered them correctly. Our teacher then said to take the rest home as a take-home test. And since there's only 30 questions on the test, I'm going to at least get 50% (of course I'll get more than that!).

I'm happy.
 

Step 1: Original Claim: The chance of having a boy while using the YSORT system is greater than 50%.

Step 2: Alternative Claim: The chance of having a boy while using the YSORT is less than or equal to 50%.

Step 3: H0: P>0.50

 H1: P<(or equal to) 0.50

Step 4: Significance Level: 0.01. One tail left test.

Step 5: Proportion test statistic formula. P(hat) minus p over the square root of p times q over N.,

Step 6: Calculate formula...answer: 3.511

Step 7. Look up test statistic in Z-Table. Left leaning test, so use the negative side. For numbers 3.5 and higher, we use 0.001. That is less than or equal to the significance level, so we reject the null hypothesis.

OH WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY. I hope I pass my math test tonight.

Today, Konami updated the official Japanese page for Dance Dance Revolution X (AC) and revealed what the Internet Ranking #3 and #4 courses are:

Ranking Course #3
U Can't Touch This / MC Hammer
Put 'Em Up / Edun
Always on my Mind / Pet Shop Boys
Here It Goes Again / OK GO

Ranking Course #4
ポリリズム / Pink Lemonade
スキ＊メロ / Yuko Ogura
旅人 / Satomi Takasugi
世界は踊る / BREAKERZ
Trickster / Nana Mizuki

Notice the pattern? Ranking Course #3 has American/European licenses while Ranking Course #4 has Japanese licenses. Pretty cool, eh? :P

By the way, they updated Queen-Zukin's profile too. Check it out!

Queen-Zukin

Height: Unknown.
Hometown: Your Dreams.
Age: Unknown.
Hobby: Peeping.
Favorite Things: Once again, peeping.
Least Favorite Things: People who point out that her face is white.

Hehe, isn't that just the cutest?

By the way, before I forget, a few of us over at Zenius have been trying to start a sort of DDR Wiki thing.

http://bemani.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

I've been helping out mostly by submitting pages for certain songs. I've only gotten through about half of the DDR X licenses, but I hope to get some more done later :P.

Woof! After a long night of sleeping, I have successfully recovered from my Accounting tests. I probably bombed the second one, but that's neither here nor there~

Why did I say woof? I dunno really...

Anyways, some big BEMANI news today! EMPRESS CS has been announced by Konami. This really isn't all too shocking seeing as how they pump out the IIDX CS releases pretty darn quickly. What IS surprising is the revival list. Check it out here:

http://www.konami.jp/bemani/bm2dx/gs/15djt/score/index.html

If you count up all the songs (including the EMPRESS ones), you get a total of 180 songs total. Yes, on a CS game. Yes, on the PS2. How will this be possible? There's a lot of speculation out there at this point, but it looks like they may want to use a dual-layer disc. This is kind of bad news for those who import, because Swap Magic (My personal choice for modding my PS2) does not support Dual-Layer and only a handful of modchips do. So, either get a Japanese PS2 or mod your PS2 better...those are my options anyways. This is incredibly good news and bad news at the same time *sob*. Well, perhaps I should wait to recieve the full details first before I jump to conclusions.

In DDR related news, on e-amuse connected DDR X machines, Konami has put out an announcement regarding Internet Ranking #2. It will run from April 30th to May 28th. So, by using the formula Konami seems to be using for these Internet Rankings (Each IR is 4 weeks, with a two week break in between each), you get a schedule like this:

#1: 3/19~4/16
#2: 4/30~5/28
#3: 6/11~7/9
#4: 7/23~8/20

On DDR SuperNOVA2, the day the final internet ranking ended was the day they unlocked everything for normal play. So you can probably expect DDR X to act in the same way, a fully unlocked machine (in Japan) by August. So, you can probably expect the next AC DDR to be announced sometime this fall. I'm particularly excited about the next AC DDR, because Konami has promised 1.5x the new songs that DDR X had! This probably means a mass import of Wii (and possibly Xbox 360?) Konami originals in this game, plus the usual 50-60 brand-spanking-new songs.

But if you can't wait that long for some new DDR news, E3 is only about a month away, and Konami will probably be unveiling some new DDR games there! If they follow last year's lead, they'll be announcing the games a few weeks before E3 on their website, but we'll just have to wait and see.

キミはボクの手を離さないで～
-Pie

This semester I'm taking two accounting classes (Business Accounting II and Managerial Accounting) and they both happen to be on Mondays. As if Monday didn't already suck enough, right?

Well both classes happen to have a test today, SUPER-FUN! I've already done by Accounting II one, which I'm guessing will come out as a B-ish grade, and now I have to study for my Managerial Accounting test. Blah, blah, blah... Luckily, my last classes will be on the 18th of May, so there's hardly much time left in any of my classes.

On more pleasant news, House Nation has opened up their official YouTube channel here:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=housenation

You may remember that Konami paired up with avex's House Nation albums for beatmania IIDX EMPRESS and Dance Dance Revolution フルフルパーティ which included songs like "Our Song", "House Nation", and "Bigger Than Big".

The YouTube channel is filled with mostly short interviews and some footage from the various parties they hold, but my personal favorites are the TV spots they have.



I really like the House Nation albums, so I hope Konami continues to collaborate with them.

I was a little surprised to learn that the new anime "07-GHOST" not only features an ending song by Noria, former member of BeForU, but its opening theme was produced by famed Bemani artist Naoki Maeda! Check it out here:




Interestingly enough, it doesn't seem Konami is affilited with this anime at all. I can't help but wonder if Konami would be interested in licensing this song for one of its music games? The opening movie itself is pretty mild, with little, if any, censoring required. I imagine they would want to get rid of the smoking guy at the end, and perhaps the grim reaper guy if it were put in DDR.

The song itself is pretty good, so I wouldn't mind seeing it in a Bemani game at all.

By the way, here's the ending theme by Noria. I find it rather *yawn*.