History VideoGame / InTheGroove

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

* BlackSheep: Changes Double Expert with its difficulty rating of 8. Every other Expert chart in the game is rated 9 or higher.

In The Groove was based on the open source rhythm game engine VideoGame/StepMania; people quickly figured out how to essentially jailbreak the machines to add custom content in (including songs much longer and intensely difficult than the "official" game). Even after the official death of the franchise, the game has remained a popular competitive standard for SM on pad; intrepid players forked a [=StepMania=] build milestone (usually referred to as 3.95) used for [=ITG2=] to make "[=OpenITG=]" (a "drop-in" [[GameMod replacement]] for the ''In the Groove 2'' executable that adds quality-of-life improvements, and is also usable as a standalone build), while a community member's PolishedPort of Simply Love (a distinctive, flat and customizable interface theme for OITG that has become a ''de facto'' standard within the community in place of the standard ''In the Groove 2'' interface) for the current [=StepMania=] 5 has also been used as an alternative. After development of [=StepMania=] itself stagnated, there have been several forks of [=SM5=]: Project OutFox has included ITG timing presets as part of its multi-game approach, while a more focused fork known as "[=ITGMania=]" is more razor-focused on being specific to the "post-ITG" community.

The game was developed by Roxor Games (and [=ITG2=] was co-published with Andamiro), however due to a lawsuit {{Creator/Konami}} acquired the rights to the series and killed it off. Most of the original team went on to form a new team to create a SpiritualSuccessor as a ''VideoGame/PumpItUp'' spinoff. After 2 versions of Pro (the latter having fewer ITG staff on board), lead musician and/or developers {{Creator/Kyle Ward}} and Chris Foy went on to create a new studio, Step Revolution. Its first product was the touchscreen rhythm game ''VideoGame/ReRave''.

In The Groove was based on the open source rhythm game engine VideoGame/StepMania; people quickly figured out how to essentially jailbreak the machines to add custom content in (including songs much longer and intensely difficult than the "official" game). Even after the official death of the franchise, the game has remained a popular competitive standard for SM on pad; intrepid players forked a [=StepMania=] build milestone used for [=ITG2=] to make a GameMod called "[=OpenITG=]" (a "drop-in" replacement for the ''In the Groove 2'' executable that adds quality-of-life improvements), while a community member's PolishedPort of Simply Love (a distinctive, flat and customizable interface theme for OITG that has become a ''de facto'' standard within the community in place of the standard ''In the Groove 2'' interface) for the current [=StepMania=] 5 has also been used as an alternative.

!!Tropes:

The game was developed by Roxor Games (and [=ITG2=] was co-published with Andamiro), however due to a lawsuit {{Creator/Konami}} acquired the rights to the series and killed it off. Most of the original team went on to form a new team to create a SpiritualSuccessor as a ''VideoGame/PumpItUp'' spinoff. After 2 versions of Pro (the latter having fewer ITG staff on board), lead musician and/or developers Kyle Ward and Chris Foy went on to create a new studio, Step Revolution. Its first product was the touchscreen rhythm game ''VideoGame/ReRave''.

* DifficultySpike:
** A lot of people find "Fly With Me"'s Expert chart more annoying than hard. Does a 9 footer really need all those jumps?
** Disconnected Disco. The Expert Double chart is just a contortionist's dream.

** Once people started figuring out how to jailbreak ITG machines, custom Marathon courses started going around like wildfire. But ''especially'' the works of [=WinDEU=], which kept on becoming more insane, story-based, and fourth-wall breaking as they went on (see the ''[=WinDEU Hates You=]'' series, which primarily involves ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' crossovers in its later installments, ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' and ''Franchise/{{Persona}}'', and [=TaroNuke=]'s ''VideoGame/UKSightreadingTournament'' series and its associated "[=NotITG=]" fork, an even further fork of [=OpenITG=] designed specifically for such courses).

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: "High" on Expert Double has 420 steps, '420' being a reference to marijuana and weed culture.

In December 2015, while on a trip to Japan, Kyle Ward visited Konami offices for negotiations regarding the series, and later that month, posted a teaser on Facebook for a new game featuring a 3X3 panel dance pad similar to Technomotion with the In The Groove arrow design. In 2017, Kyle Ward unveiled ''Step [=ManiaX=]'', a SpiritualSuccessor to ''In The Groove'' with a fifth center panel (think ''VideoGame/PumpItUp'', but with cardinal directions instead of diagonal ones) and a touchscreen for navigating menus.

** Once people started figuring out how to jailbreak ITG machines, custom Marathon courses started going around like wildfire. But ''especially'' the works of [=WinDEU=], which kept on becoming more insane, story-based, and fourth-wall breaking as they went on (see the ''[=WinDEU Hates You=]'' series, which primarily involves ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' crossovers in its later installments, ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' and ''[[Franchise/ShinMegamiTenseiPersona Persona]]'', and [=TaroNuke=]'s ''VideoGame/UKSightreadingTournament'' series and its associated "[=NotITG=]" fork, an even further fork of [=OpenITG=] designed specifically for such courses).

** Also, [=DDR=] games started ramping up their speed to similar levels a couple years after In The Groove came out. Unfortunately, this only applied to a select few songs, making it really hard to get up to that level in [=DDR=] without also playing [=ITG=], which has many, many more "stepping stone" charts. Official ITG expert charts would be rated within the 13-18 range on the DDR X rating scale.

** Examples: Double steps, Ambigious steps, Tell jumps, awkward mines usage. In most expert's eyes, crossovers on single charts are even regarded as fake difficulty nowadays.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: "High" on Expert Double has 420 steps, with "420" being a reference to a number commonly associated with marijuana and weed culture.

* HundredPercentCompletion: Getting a score of 100% on a song by getting all Fantastics, which awards the highest grade of 4 stars. The game also tracks percent completion rate for each difficulty level on the player's USB drive, displayed at the end of a set of game.

* IKnowMortalKombat: Playing a keyboard chart on pad hardly constitutes "dancing", but rather "stomping like crazy and hoping you get a good score". Playing a pad chart on a pad is much the same, except at least it's possible to keep the rhythm unlike with hard keyboard charts.

** Once people started figuring out how to jailbreak ITG machines, custom Marathon courses started going around like wildfire. But ''especially'' the works of [=WinDEU=], which kept on becoming more insane, story-based, and fourth-wall breaking as they went on (see the ''[=WinDEU Hates You=]'' series, which primarily involves ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' crossovers in its later installments, ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' and ''[[Franchise/ShinMegamiTenseiPersona Persona]]'', and [=TaroNuke=]'s "VideoGame/UKSightreadingTournament'' series and its associated "[=NotITG=]" fork, an even further fork of [=OpenITG=] designed specifically for such courses).

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIaOZ5fFQX0 This simfile]] is longer yet easier, with 4 hours of 140bpm streams. That's 8.3k measures, and it's the longest known custom song in the game.
* NintendoHard: The reason the series got a fanbase is because of its very hard step charts. While there are easy difficulty settings for casual players who come across an ''ITG'' machine in arcades, the hardcore fanbase is all about the HarderThanHard Expert difficulty charts included with almost every song. You will be performing passages containing continuous 16th note streams at significantly fast tempos using your feet, so speed mods are essentially mandatory by this point, and holding onto the safety bar behind the pad is the norm. This completely killed off the "speed mod = cheating" and "bar use = cheating" debates back in the ''DDR Extreme'' days.

* SerialEscalation: How many steps can be crammed into a chart? How fast can people move their feet? Just how many gimmicks can be thrown at people? DDR Extreme, the immediate 4-panel dancing game predecessor, had a difficulty scale that went to 10. Those charts already are pretty difficult to veteran players and NintendoHard to others. ITG's very similar rating scale goes up to ''13''. Custom charts as high as '''''22''''' on singles and '''''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNzwxZQdu9c&t=0m21s 16]]''''' on doubles have been passed (note this difference between singles and double).

* AntiFrustrationFeatures: In the PC version, Expert charts are only playable after passing the respective Hard chart for any song. But, should you want to skip this, you can just enter a code that unlocks the Expert charts immediately. The arcade versions subvert this, as everything's unlocked right out of the box.

* EasierThanEasy: Novice Mode, which provides similar assists to DDR's Beginner Mode (but with no 3D characters promoting improper foot placement, forced consistent speed for all songs)

* ExpectingSomeoneTaller: But not for the normal reasons: some of the harder Double charts of all manner of absurd patterns that require moving all around the two pads. The second game introduced "stretch jumps", which meant hitting the same direction arrow on both pads at the same time, which is pretty far apart, and even zanier stetch jumps were planned for the third game. This may feel unfair for shorter players, but the creator of these charts, M. Emirizan, is fairly short himself.

** Marathon mode, which is essentially like DDR's Nonstop modes, except that they use scripted distortions and other effects assembled from the game's normal modifiers to make it harder.

* LevelEditor: This is VideoGame/StepMania, some people have hacked [=ITG2=] arcade machines and installed additional songs into their arcade machine's hard drives. With [=ITG2=] version r21 or later, VideoGame/StepMania songs can be loaded from USB flash drives, provided the arcade owner has enabled custom songs support.

* NintendoHard: The whole point of the series, and is all about the [[HarderThanHard expert difficulty]] charts included in almost every song, with a MINIMUM difficulty 9 blocks, a rating labelled as "Catastrophic" in the early DDR mixes. You will be performing passages containing continuous 16th note streams at significantly fast tempos using your feet, so speed mods are essentially mandatory by this point, and holding on the safety bar behind the pad is the norm. Thus, this completely killed off the "speed mod = cheating" and "bar use = cheating" debates back in the DDR Extreme days.