Thunderbolt / 雷龍

Summer Contest 2019 - Lost 1st place by 4 points
Battle Royale 2020 - Lost 2nd place (= SC hosting rights) by 3 points
Battle Royale 2021 - Lost 2nd place (= SC hosting rights) by 3 points
Summer Contest 2021 - Lost 1st place by one point.


After winning Round 5 with my Prim file (which was somewhat more old-school than my previous two files before that) and then winning the next Round even more convincingly with Several Words (which was VERY old-school, X2 style) I completely switched my plans for this final file.
Originally, this would have been Binary Black Hole / BEMANI Sound Team "D.J.Amuro" from IIDX CastHour's unlock system - one of his finest songs under this alias yet in my opinion, a hard hitting, evil sounding boss song which would have received something along a 17 as my Expert chart. As well as an animated banner (my first).
But as I have been having a lot more success with charts that are more relaxed, less dense in terms of 16ths and most imporantly: much more attentive to a noticeable difficulty curve, I am instead going with this rather underrated entry of Ryu's famous DANCE SPEED archetype from IIDX Lincle - yet another Lincie song. It's been my favorite OST to listen to for the past few weeks.
It's actually rather funny and interesting how usually the songs that I step (more specifically the artists) rather closely reflect who I am currently listening to, yet I have not stepped a song by Ryu in almost an entire year, even though he is easily one of my favorite artists.

Even though this file is more relaxed than my original plan, it is by no means easy - this still is a fast paced 16 with a very steep difficulty curve that will absolutely burn through your stamina, especially towards the ending.
It's a fine line to walk between "this should not be a stream-fest" as well as "it's still the final round", you know?
The way that I tried to do this is by having the main "feature" of the Expert chart be the steep difficulty curve. If every part of the song was charted like the last part was, this would be a boring 17 with almost 900 notes, but I want it to be "X2 DDR style". If that makes sense.

Going back to the beginning, this file is going to decide whether the increased effort I have been putting into my files throughout this contest will all have been worth it. Because if I don't win now, I don't know if I want to tryhard like this again.
I talked about the ending of Summer Contest 2021 a lot already so I won't say too much but as much as I truly was happy for the person who did end up winning, it was very heartbreaking to go out like that after trying so hard and just failing again and again. As silly as that sounds talking like this about a simfile contest, it's truly how I felt because I put so much effort into it.
And I tried even harder this time after all! I just want a win in one of the major contests. After more than 3 years.
I feel pretty worn out in terms of "trying hard". Summer Contest can't come quick enough - but I hope I get to choose themes!

To end this on a positive note, I do want to note how much joy this contest has brought to myself, not just as a competitor or a host, but also just having fun with all of you guys.
The "sense of a community" (don't exactly know how to describe this) has never been stronger. Just talking about it all is so fun in the Discord that I really just enjoyed this all. I know that I will have more to say about this after the contest itself is done (and I am going to) but just for now, I just wanted to say how great this all has been. <3 you all