(Note: Please judge the Heavy chart!)

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 M.A.G.I.C speed ball / kenta-v.ez. ft. good-cool
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  Stepped by Xythar for TGL Simfile Tournament (Short Version)

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 Quick Details
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   Song Title: M.A.G.I.C speed ball
  Song Artist: kenta-v.ez. ft. good-cool
  Song Length: 2:19
   Song Genre: Speed Gabba
        Album: teranoid underground edition (2005)

     Steps By: Xythar
  Graphics By: Xythar (speedometer image by rmattoso)

 Author Email: gmmazz@hotmail.com
Other Entries: Gotta Get My Groove On (TM5)
               Collision Chaos (OSC3)
               Born To Be Bone (TM6)
               Taratta Dance (Cheesemix 2)
               Mei (OSC4)
               Snail (World Tour)
               Shake It Down (OSC5 DDR Division)
               Gradation (OSC5 ITG Division)
               Vairocana (OSC5 KB Division)
               Momoiro Kataomoi (Cheesemix 3)

Readme Format: Now I'm no longer centering headings in consideration of people who don't necessarily open Notepad in a maximised window. That being said, in order for this to display properly, you'll need to have word wrap on, considering I can't put in line breaks myself since I have no idea what size your window is.
 
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 Introduction
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So, you wanted interesting songs for TGLST, right? Is this one interesting enough for you? :) Actually, I've wanted the excuse to step this as a 10 footer for a while, but I've generally preferred to play it safe with 7s or 8s in most pad competitions. However, this one sounds welcoming enough of difficult files, so here you are. :)

I'm not sure who kenta-v.ez. is, he pops up generally on each teranoid album (strangely enough, teranoid herself only composes a minority of the tracks on each of her albums, she gets other people to do the rest) and also on a few other Japanese hardcore albums. He generally tends to compose really fast speed gabba songs, this is the fastest one I've got. I assume good-cool is the same one of Bemani fame - he played the guitar for this track.

Syncing this song was quite time consuming. Most of it is a straightforward 300 bpm, but the most memorable bit is in the middle where it drops to 150 for a bit, then gradually speeds back up, right past 300 and eventually reaches over 2000 for a few seconds. In the interests of this file actually being possible, I did not put any steps past about the 300 part or so, once you get to the higher BPMs you're just standing on a freeze while mines whizz past. To work out the BPMs for the parts you play, I analysed the song in CoolEdit's spectral analysis view and worked out how much time each four (and then later each two) beats took, and adjusted the BPM appropriately. As you can imagine, it took a while, but I'm reasonably happy with how it ended up. Once you hit the big freeze the BPMs aren't as accurate but it doesn't matter since you don't have to hit anything there.

There's also a bunch of gimmicky stops and such. It felt like that kind of song, and they hopefully shouldn't be too obtrusive I don't think. Also, the last part of the song is technically 600 bpm I think, but I left it at 300 like the rest because nobody likes it when songs double their BPM at the end (HEY THERE MAX PERIOD AND VERTEX)

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 Steps
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 BEGINNER:  3 feet, 218 steps, 226 combo, 0 freezes
    LIGHT:  6 feet, 319 steps, 340 combo, 11 freezes
 STANDARD:  8 feet, 455 steps, 478 combo, 25 freezes
    HEAVY: 10 feet, 689 steps, 744 combo, 5 freezes

Beginner is fairly standard for beginner steps, but the BPM of the song makes it pretty difficult even for a 3. I don't have much to say about them other than that, tho.

Light kind of sucks. It's hard to make good light steps for this song, and I kept putting this chart off until my heart wasn't really in it. Oh well, it's okay, but I feel I could have done a little better. I don't have time, tho... I'd rather spend that on the chart that will actually be judged.

Standard is fairly standard (ha) quarter note fare. It's a pretty good play for those who can't do 10 foot charts, much like with the Max series. The slow part is much easier than heavy too.

Heavy is the main one I worked on, since it's the judged chart. Steps follow the obvious cues in the song through most of it and then go kind of nuts at the end. I like how it turned out for the most part. The mines during the big freeze kind of go against the DDR focus of the rest of the chart, but they don't affect gameplay in any way and I wanted them to show the player how fast the song was going. :) Gets kind of crazy near the end, but then so does the song.

I also included an edit difficulty - it's got nearly the exact same steps as heavy (hence why it's an edit and not challenge) but it has some ITG stuff thrown in as well, like hands and extra mines. If you like ITG stuff better you might want to check it out, but heavy is my judged chart.

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 Graphics
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The graphics were made by me in Photoshop CS2 (yeah I sold out >_>). The only part I didn't do was the speedometer, which I got from a photo by rmattoso available here:

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/428928

The rest (background, text, editing on the photo, radial blur effects, banner, CD title, etc) are by me.

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 Other Info & End
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The original song was a little over 2:30 so I cut it down slightly in order for it to fit in the short version bracket, using CoolEdit. I originally got the album off Loserbait, I think, so thanks to him.

Thanks also to sanchny for testing, and to the TGL staff for organising this competition.

This line is to make the readme 5.73kb :)

Enjoy, and see you later!

Xythar
