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 上海ハニー (Shanghai Honey) / ORANGE RANGE
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  Stepped by Xythar for ROCK OUT with DDRExtreme.co.uk

  PLEASE NOTE: If you are using Stepmania 4, please see the "Graphics & Video"
  section for important information about the banner!

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 Quick Details
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   Song Title: 上海ハニー (Shanghai Honey)
  Song Artist: ORANGE RANGE
  Song Length: 1:59
   Song Genre: Hip Rock
        Album: 1st Contact

     Steps By: Xythar
  Graphics By: Xythar (Source images taken from official PV to "Shanghai Honey", (c) Sony Music)
     Video By: Sony Music / ORANGE RANGE

 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)
               Freestyler (90's Mix)
               Coco Jamboo (90's Mix)
               LOVE TROPICANA DELUXE (OSC BoNG)
               LOVE Namida Iro (Late Night Love)
               Passion Girl (Late Night Love)

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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Well, I'd been planning to do this one for a while, ever since first hearing the cover in Guitarfreaks/Drummania V2, and then the cover in Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and then (when I got around to it) the actual version. With its video :D I had pretty much decided to enter this song in this competition since "Rock Mix" was first announced something like 6 months ago, and so here it is.

I know there's going to be a lot of fast, difficult entries in this competition (some of which are mine :D) but for this I wanted to step a song that was not too fast or difficult. Just fun. Did I succeed? Well, I personally think so, but in the end it's up to you!

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 Song
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Orange Range should need no introduction, so here it is.

Formed originally in Okinawa in 2001, Orange Range operated as an indie band for couple of years before signing onto the Sony label in 2003. Their debut single was "Kirikirimai" which only sold moderately well (#50 on the Oricon charts) - however, following it was Shanghai Honey, this very song which served to shoot Orange Range into the limelight (no pun intended) with an amazing #5 place on the charts. Shanghai Honey plus several later singles (all selling about as well) formed their first album, "1st Contact" which peaked at #2 and was overall the #15 album of 2004.

Their real success came after this however - not only did their following single "Michishirube" become their first #1 single, but every single they released after that shared the same success - culminating in their most famous song "Hana" which sold over a million copies. Their second album "musiQ" was the #1 album of the year, selling over 2.6 million copies, and the rest is history.

The band itself consisted of six (now five) members. Three vocalists (HIROKI, YAMATO and RYO), a guitarist/frontman (NAOTO), bassist (YOH) and drummer (KATCHAN, left July 2005). Apparently KATCHAN left because he wasn't happy with how much the band's focus had shifted from rock to hip-hop over the years, but if you watch the end of this song's video you'll see what I think is probably the real reason :) They've been using a session drummer since. (Thanks to wiki.theppn.org for most of this info)

Anyway, back to this song. Yes I know it sounds like the Spice Girls in parts :P They've practically admitted that they base a lot of their songs on other songs so whatever. Either way it's really catchy and I felt the combination of hip-hop hooks and rhythmic guitar chords make the song a lot of fun to DDR along to. :)

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 Steps
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Made in Stepmania's editor, AS ALWAYS :)

 BEGINNER: 1 foot, 95 steps,  95 combo
    LIGHT: 2 feet, 150 steps, 150 combo
 STANDARD: 5 feet, 295 steps, 303 combo
    HEAVY: 7 feet, 387 steps, 419 combo

Step counts will be a little high on average since the song is 2 minutes long.

Beginner: What, do I really need to go into detail on my beginner steps? They're very easy and don't really do anything too interesting.

Light: I kept these quite simple, even for light steps. They follow mostly the slower elements of the guitar, although there are a few short 4th streams as well, but with lots of taps on the same arrow to make it easier for the novice player.

Standard: Again, these follow mostly the background guitar (and occasionally the vocals or drums). They use 8ths nice and tastefully, I think - overall, I'm pretty pleased with how the easier difficulties turned out on this one. Air also makes its first appearance :)

Heavy: Now here's the real deal! Steps kind of alternate between following guitar and vocals, as well as between following vocals more closely (the freeze blue yellow red thing) and just following the beat. Variety is the spice of life, as they say. Air is much more prominent in this chart than the others with lots of stepjumps on the emphasised beats. 8th streams have some fun crossovers and "broken crossovers" as well that you should hopefully enjoy. Despite the high step count I rated this a 7 because there's nothing much in it that's overly difficult.

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 Graphics
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Graphics were made in Photoshop CS2 using screencaps from the video. Hey, I had the DVD, might as well make use of it :) The BG is meant to transition into the video and the still banner is meant to be a substitute for the video banner so neither are overly flashy. But I like the text I came up with for the banner.

There is also a second background that it should transition to at the end of the video. However, I would like to ask the judges to please treat this background as part of the background movie script (e.g. an extra) and not part of the graphics, or otherwise that's holding me to a different standard than all the other people who only have one background image, which wouldn't be fair.

This file also contains a video banner which is set to show by default. Caveats:

* If you use SM4 it will play way way too fast. Solution: don't use SM4. It works fine in 3.9 and I think 3.95.

* If the song is the initially selected one as the wheel loads up (either for the first time or as you come back after playing it) it will be off sync. Simply move to another song for a couple of seconds and then back.

If you don't want to use the video banner (e.g. if SM4 is your only option) then change to still by changing this line in the SM file:

#BANNER:Shanghai Honey-bn.avi;

to this:

#BANNER:Shanghai Honey.png;

That should do it.

The video and video banner were both ripped from the DVD, edited and encoded in VirtualDub by me. Honestly it didn't come out as well as I was hoping it might :/ But it's still easily good enough for booty-shaking of an acceptable definition ;)

I also put in lyrics which I found somewhere. I don't remember where, sorry :( I probably cross-checked on several sites. Also, this song has a LOT of lyrics and they took a damn long time to put in :P Hope you appreciate them. The middle is kind of weird and I'm not sure it's correct but it's what the sites said, so whatever.

Finally, the CD title is Orange Range's official logo. I got it from wiki.theppn.org, I think. I thought it looked nicer there than the album name, anyway :)

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 End
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Yep, no doubles steps :( In the end I didn't have time. Hopefully I can pull through on quality alone to get above 7th-9th place? Yeah right :P Oh well, it was certainly fun to make and I look forward to playing all of your entries (and to you playing all of mine ;) )

See you next competition (Cheesemix 4! Yay!),

Xythar
