YMMV / Groove Coaster

• Anti-Climax Boss: From the Undertale collaboration, mainly due to expectations if you've played the boss fights where these tracks play:
  • "Battle Against a True Hero" is known amongst Undertale fans for being the boss theme of the first legitimate challenge on a No Mercy run. In Groove Coaster, its most difficult chart is rated 9 out of 15. Unlike "MEGALOVANIA" below, it doesn't even get an Extra chart. The instrumentation of the track gives off the feeling that it had the potential to be That One Boss.
  • "MEGALOVANIA", of all tracks. Given the intensity of the track and the hefty context that it plays in in its source game (namely, an obnoxiously unfair fight with one of the Final Bosses, Sans the Skeleton, where victory means topping off a genocidal run, destroying the world, and permanently tainting all future runs), the Hard chart is not terribly hard by the standards of "boss" tracks, only being rated a 10 with no unique gimmicks to speak of. A December 2018 update did give it an Extra chart rated 12, which is more of a challenge if only by a few notches.
• Awesome Music: Of course, since this is a Rhythm Game:
  • Marry me, Nightmare by t+pazolite, a track that's equal parts spooky and difficult.
  • Link Link Fever!!!, the cheerful theme tune of Link Fever, sung by Linka.
  • The "Got?" / Groove anagram tracks are great boss songs that spit at the concept of consistent, common meter:
    • "Got a pain cover?"^note "Groove captain" starts off sounding like a gentle flamenco piece before descending into ass-kicking madness.
    • "Got hive of Ra"^note "GRoove faith", which was ported to crossbeats REV. as part of a collaboration event.
  • "ouroboros -twin stroke of the end-" by cranky and ZUNTATA's MASAKI, both highly-regarded music game composers. A nonstop assault of synths with some piano parts as the player attempts to drill through its "Super hard difficulty" level 10 Hard chart. Fitting of the track title, the ending of the song replicates the beginning of the track.
  • "conflict" by siromaru and Cranky. This song's notable for being the number one-scoring song in the beatmania fan contest it made its debut in, BMS OF FIGHTERS 2011. Bonus points for this game making use of its Visual Effects of Awesome to recreate parts of the original music video.
• Awesomeness Withdrawal: Degica (the publisher of the Steam Version) quietly stopped announcing new DLC packs bi-weekly as of May 2019, leaving many people who plays mostly the mobile version and without the arcade versions excepting more DLCs.
• Breather Level: In Original Style, "Space Invaders Infinity Gene Medley"'s AC-Hard chart is rated a 13. Those who haven't played the song before may expect it to be That One Boss...but that's actually a severe case of mis-rating the song, as it's about as hard as a level 8 chart. It does feature a very fast track and a tricky ending full of Dual Slides, but nothing that warrants rating it three levels higher than, say, the Hinata Electric Works songs.
• Broken Base: Does Linka sound better in Japanese or in English?
• Camera Screw:
  • Part of the challenge is being able to hit notes as the camera makes all kinds of angle changes.
  • "Good Night, Bad Luck" notoriously uses angles to give the illusion of triple or quad Slide notes (which, due to the two-Booster controller, would be impossible), before panning the camera to reveal them as separate single or Dual Slides in sequence immediately before you have to hit them.
  • The Steam version has multiple aspect ratio options: 16:9 like the arcade version, 4:3, and 1:1. 4:3 and 1:1 are actually done by cropping the screen, meaning that on those screen modes, your avatar may go off the top or bottom of the screen and you might miss notes due to not being able to see them.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: It's not uncommon for players to stick to only songs from one genre and nothing else. In particular, a number of players just play for the Touhou Project arrangements.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Glucose", derived from the game's Portmanteau Series Nickname.
  • "2112410403927243233368" is often shortened to "2112" or "211".
• Funny Moments: As part of the Undertale crossover event in Starlight Road, you can unlock Sans as a navigator, with his signature Voice Grunting. Since navigator speech is not subtitled, what exactly he's saying is up to your imagination.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Bird avatar, which multiplies your experience gain by 300%. It's entirely possible to go from empty to level up in one song with it if you choose higher-level songs. On top of that, it also has the "guide" property, adding converging circles to targets to assist you in timing them properly, and pre-fills your Groove Gauge by a modest amount at the start of the song. It does cost 0.99 USD, but if you've been buying song packs, you can easily afford it.
  • Having a Steam Controller or even just a keyboard for GC for Steam trivializes Slide notes. Instead of having to actually drag or slide something, all you have to do is push the correct direction.
• Good Bad Bugs: The arcade version will detect a Slide, Slide Hold, or Dual Slide as a hit as long as the correct direction is pressed. But you don't have to press only the correct directions if the note is in cardinal directions; up Slides can be hit by pressing up-left or up-right, Dual Slides where you hit up and left can be hit by pressing up-right on one Booster and down-left on the other, and so on.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In 2017, the parody Twitter account @GROOVE_TOASTER made a mock promotion for the fictitious song "Got over to sear.", which anagrams to "Groove toaster." Two years later, COSIO/E.G.G. produced "Got OVA store.", which anagrams to "Groove toast."
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The act of standing on the other side of the Boosters to play (meaning that the player is facing away from the screen) is a rather memetic Self-Imposed Challenge amongst players. It helps that the game is relatively friendly to "no looking at the notes" challenges, being one of the few to have only a single lane of notes.
  • Don't try what?^Explanation Due to "cocaine" being awkwardly bleeped out in the Wai Wai Party version of "Brain Power", fans pretend that they have no idea what the lyrics are referring to when it comes to "Don't you try it, don't you try it!" (the line immediately following the "Call me a leader, cocaine" line.)
• Moe: The Navigators come across as very cute and helpful.
• Moment of Awesome: Linka cheerfully congratulates you if you obtain a No Miss ("You didn't make any mistakes!") or a Full Chain ("A Full Chain! Well done!"). But if you obtain a Perfect ("Perfect?! That was incredible!"), her expression changes from joy to surprise.
• Most Wonderful Sound: "Congratulations on unlocking Extra Mode!"
• Obvious Beta: Groove Coaster for Steam has had a pretty difficult ride so far. Backgrounds fail to load correctly for many players, controller support is pretty unreliable, and sound is handled pretty poorly (if you hit a note late or miss, the music will mute until you hit or the note is counted as a miss).
• Older Than They Think: "Music Revolver", thought to be a GC original, actually first appeared in Taito's previous rhythm game Music GunGun!
• Porting Disaster: Right out of the gate, Groove Coaster for Steam is fraught with problems, most notably concerning the default timing offset being quite off and the game having difficulty recognizing controllers, a lot of the game's visuals failing to load correctly on many players' PCs, and sound problems (namely, if you hit a note late, the music drops out until you either hit the note or wait long enough that it becomes a Miss).
  • : Averted with WaiWai Party for Nintendo Switch.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • In the original Groove Coaster and Zero, if you have one finger down on the touchscreen, the game will not register any other inputs until you release that finger. This can make charts with "jackhammer" notes, like "VISIONNERZ" (Hard) and "magnet" (Hard), very diffcult to get No Misses on; you can either use one finger (very tiring) or alternate hands (which risks dropped inputs and therefore Misses). This is not present in the arcade versions, where you can press one Booster and still be able to make inputs with the other Booster. However, Original Style removes this restriction, allowing players to safely tap jackhammers with both hands.
  • The hidden Ad-Lib notes. Playing competitively therefore requires you to know the entirety of the chart by memory. If you're playing at the arcade, you can just watch others play the chart, but if you don't have access to the arcade version, you'll have to watch videos or use the Visible item, which is only available as level-up gifts, log-in bonuses, and purchasable items.
  • Chain-based scoring is present, in all of its rage-restart-inducing glory. The arcade versions and charts try to remedy this by instead using a max chain bonus that's worth 10% of your score, but a player who commits Epic Fail at the beginning of the song will still get a higher score than someone who makes one or two evenly-distributed misses throughout the song; you can easily lose a whopping 50,000 points from one miss at the halfway point, enough to squander you of an S++ and even an S+.
  • To unlock a song's Extra chart (if it's available), you have to get an S or higher on the song's Simple, Normal, and Hard charts. It does not matter if you've gotten a perfect score on the Hard chart, you still must go back to Simple and Normal and get S's on them too. In contrast, most other rhythm games with unlockable difficulties only require meeting requirements on a song's hardest available chart to unlock its more difficult chart(s).
  • The arcade version is infamous at Round1 USA for, due to corporate decisions, charging only two songs per $1.50 credit instead of three, giving the game the worst value of any rhythm game at any given location within the chain.^note Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Arcade also offers only 2 stages per credit at R1 USA locations, but songs use longer cuts. Given that the only arcades in the US that carry the game are Round1's, most other rhythm games at R1 that use 2-minute cuts give the player 3 songs (early Game Overs due to failing a song notwithstanding) for the same price, and that all but the most greedy of arcades in Asia set the game to 3 songs per credit at a cheaper cost (usually 100 yen, which is what one USD roughly equals to most of the time), this can come off as a massive ripoff and effectively a punishment for not playing the game on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. The only way to circumvent it without leaving the country is to play on Event Mode if there is an ongoing event, which locks the player to a small subset of songs.
    
    It can happen that generous managers of individual Round 1 locations may change the number of stages per credit to 3, but this generally doesn't last long since all changes to machine settings have to be approved at the executive level to stick and this change is never done without corporate approval. Basically, unless you work at Round 1 in a position of high leadership: tough shit.
  • While the game does have an English-language setting, Taito neglected to also offer an English translation for the game's My Page website, requiring players who know English but not Japanese to look up a guide that translates page elements into English, or just stumble around until they find what they want. Not helping this is that My Page is the only way to spend your hard-earned GC on songs, avatars, and the like, unlike some other rhythm games that have the shop available within the game itself, and if you don't have a web-enabled portable device with you you'll have to leave the arcade just to use the shop. This was fixed for Starlight Road, which has the shop available in-game.
  • Starting with Groove Coaster 4, difficulties past level 10 are locked until you play with a NESiCA card and clear a chart of the difficulty level below it with an S rank (example: to play a level 13 chart, you need to clear a level 12 chart with an S). This is even more of a hassle than unlocking Extra charts, particularly for those who don't want to use a card and for those who want to play during server maintenance (especially in the US, where maintenance happens around midday to evening depending on what time zone you live in). And if your arcade doesn't even connect the cab to the network? Enjoy being restricted to the lower 2/3 of the difficulty scale!
  • Renewal versions of songs replace the original versions entirely rather than just being added alongside them, which sucks for those who prefer the former.
  • WaiWai Party doesn't let you use the Switch's video capture function, which is fair given that the game features a number of high-profile, high-cost licensed songs. Less forgivable is the fact that the game also prevents you from taking screenshots.
    • The Online Version update partly fixed this; while video capture is still a no-go, the ability to take screenshots is now enabled.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Some items exist solely to make the chart more difficult. The Break item particularly will cause you to fail the song and end it instantly if you miss 10 notes, but you get more GC if you pass in Link Fever.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: A song-specific example: "Bad Apple!! feat. nomico" got a Renewal version in Starlight Road with easier charts than the original version. Normally, a Renewal results in more difficult charts, at least on Hard and Extra.
• That One Attack:
  • In general, what counts as this tends to differ wildly whether you're playing the smartphone version or the arcade version:
    • Rapid-fire Critical targets or even just rapid-fire alternating Critical and Tap targets are harder on an arcade cabinet due to having to mash both buttons at an exhausting pace, but less of a problem on the smartphone version or better yet a tablet since you can just alternate hands, using two fingers per hand.
    • Streams of Slide targets are harder on smartphones and tablets, especially back-and-forth Slides as the game requires you to lift your finger to hit the next Slide; wiggling your finger back and forth on the touchscreen simply will not work. This is less of a problem on the arcade cabinet where you can just shake the Boosters back and forth.
  • "Play merrily NEO" on AC-Hard as an eighth-note LRLRLR[...] slide stream at 180 BPM at the very end that doesn't translate well to a touchscreen. It's possible to go from zero misses to stage failure if you don't know the correct technique.
  • "OMAKENO Stroke" on AC-Hard is nigh-impossible to No Miss, let alone Full Chain, on any device other than an arcade controller or a gamepad due to a rapid stream of L+R Dual Sliides around 2/3 into the song.
  • The only reason "Bad Apple!! feat.nomico"'s Extra chart is a 9 is because of the ending Slide barrage that can easily kill you even from a full Groove meter.
  • "Music Revolver" on Hard has several strings of Slide notes near the end that pop onto the track at the last second and will cause sight-readers to fail. There is a section consisting only of Tap notes that are already on the track afterwards, but you'll likely have bled out so much of your Groove meter that it won't be enough to bring you back into passing the song. The same pattern shows up on Extra as well, but if you're good enough to get an S on the Hard chart, it's not a huge issue on Extra.
  • "Good Night, Bad Luck." on Normal and Hard. Oh, that multi-Slide note? It's Actually Multiple Notes.
  • "Messiah no Kaikou" has several sudden turns at the start of the track that give you barely any visual indicator at all that they're there, and on Hard they have Slide notes that are virtually impossible to sightread.
  • "CYBER Sparks" on Hard will kill anybody who can't keep up with a 192 BPM sixteenth-note stream (that's 768 notes per minute or 12.8 notes per second) that lasts for 15 seconds.
• That One Level:
  • "Good bye my earth" is rated an 8 on the iOS version and while it's not particularly note-dense, the chart scrolls very fast and due to the odd camera angles, many of the notes are only visible for brief moments, often for even less time than needed to be able to react. The charts practically require Trial-and-Error Gameplay.
  • "Spring to mind". While it's not remarkably difficult to clear on any level, it stands out for those trying to aim for a Full Chain, which requires hitting every note in the chart, including the hidden Ad-Lib notes. You could "cheat" and use the Visible item, but if you're trying to Full Chain the "honest" way, most of the Ad-Libs seem to have no audio cues in the music whatsoever, forcing you to tap everywhere to find Ad-Libs you haven't uncovered yet. Its AC-Hard chart propels into TOL territory even if you aren't playing for a Full Chain, as now notes will wiggle, shake, and zoom onto the track just before you have to hit them.
  • All of the songs in the Hinata Electric Works pack combine fast tempos, rapid streams of Tap and Slide targets, and a Deliberately Monochrome theme to create some pretty vicious AC-Hard charts.
  • "It's a pit world" on AC-Hard isn't particularly crazy with streams, but it does feature many technical sections with Slide, Dual Slide, Slide Hold, and Critical targets designed to trip up players who are not used to mixtures of notes.
  • The Xeami vs. Tatsh Pack is basically That One Music Pack; all four of its AC-Hard charts are, on the Original Style scale, rated a 15, and feature very technical patterns. When the pack's description refers to them as charts notorious amongst arcade version players, it wasn't kidding.
  • "Got more raves?" on AC-Hard, especially in Original Style. 266 BPM with an extremely fast scroll speed, and very weird rhythms and time signature, a killer ending with eighth-note slides, and worst of all, if you don't have access to the arcade version, there is nothing in the game that can prepare you for it because it's such a huge Difficulty Spike from the next hardest songs; GMR? AC-H is rated a 20, but the Tatsh songs on AC-H are only 15's.
  • "Marry me, Nightmare" gives E.G.G.'s "anagram" songs a run for their money, featuring Interface Screws, rapid patterns up the ass, and an inconsistent time signature that makes it so difficult to stay in rhythm. Like with the E.G.G. songs, its Hard chart is rated a 20 on Original Style.
  • "]-[|/34＜#!" on Extra, as befitting of a track originally used for a True Final Boss from a CAVE game, features very fast waves of Tap and Critical targets at 200 BPM. Unless you have the arm stamina of an athlete, well, in the Arc Words of the DonPachi series: shinu ga yoi.
  • "Good Night, Bad Luck." is the Sequel Song to "Marry me, Nightmare", and it lives up to its name, featuring far worse patterns, and an infamous Event-Obscuring Camera in which game tricks you into thinking you're about to encounter a triple or even a quadruple slide before panning the camera to reveal that they're actually a sequence of single or dual Slide targets, right before you need to hit them. Its one saving grace is that the song is in the common 4/4 meter unlike its Mind Screw of a predecessor.
  • Do you want to destroy your arms? Look no further than "ouroboros -twin stroke of the end-", which features lightning-fast Tap rolls at 188 BPM throughout the chart! Even by level 10 standards, it's regarded by many players as one of the hardest charts in the entire series.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Not many players are pleased with the Renewal vrsion of "Bad Apple!! feat. nomico" that was introduced in Starlight Road and then brought over to GC for Steam. While the background is closer to the music video than the original, the track itself and the camerawork are a lot less dynamic. The charts are also easier, which is a source of ire for advanced players.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • The arcade version uses a 1-10 rating scale, while Original Style uses a 1-20 scale with OS 15 being roughly equivalent to arcade 10. The OS scale has yet to be adapted by arcade GC, despite obviously allowing for a wider range of difficulty to be represented. The most that's been done in the arcade versions to deal with the somewhat wide range of difficulty present in level 10 charts is to slap on a "Super-high difficulty" warning sticker to songs with exceptionally hard level 10 charts starting in Dream Party, basically making them "level 11" charts.
  • For the 2018 Tenkaichi Otogesai tournament, an alternate scoring system was used that eliminated Chain Bonus and Clear Bonus and simply made Play Score out of 1 million, thus making scoring based strictly on accuracy. Despite removing the Fake Difficulty that comes with combo-based scoring systems^note among other things, penalizing a few evenly-distributed mistakes far more than a run where a lot of mistakes are made at the start or the end and nowhere else, it is only available as an operator toggle for a special "tournament mode", rather than player-selectable.
  • Waiwai Party features an Active Controls mode that lets you shake the Joy-Cons to hit Slide Notes. Surprisingly, it's pretty reliable. However, it can't be used on Master charts, and since some charts are modified to remove Slide Holds (as there isn't a reliable way to tell when a Slide is being held in this mode), scores are saved separately. Playing in Active Controls mode also prevents you from making progress on some missions.
  • Waiwai Party does not support the use of the Switch's touchscreen, which is a bit baffling given that Groove Coaster started as a game for capactive touchscreens (smartphones in particular).
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The song graphics are entirely vector-like similar to Space Invaders Infinity Gene, and a lot of clever effects are achieved with them. Even simple things like recreations of iconic images in crossover songs are cool to see.
  • The visual effects for "B.B.K.K.B.K.K." are praised for being a faithful recreation of the original music video, and at 60 FPS no less!
• Waggle: The mic mode in Original Style. In theory, it sounds like fun: Doing anything that makes noise to hit notes, whether it be tapping on your desk, clapping your hands, singing, playing an instrument, or whatever else will count as a hit. The game even touts that you can play it with friends. In practice, you have to be practically in a soundproofed room for it to work reliably, as any sufficiently loud background noise will count as a hit too, and you need to be using headphones or have the volume turned way down, otherwise the game audio will feed back into the mic as input; this means you kind of can't play with friends unless you have a headphone cord splitter and everyone participating has their own set of headphones. You also can't save scores since the game will convert non-Tap targets to Taps in order to accomodate this mode, so it's a novelty more than anything. Thankfully, the game will still give you EXP, so you can still level up while screwing around in mic mode.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: One can't help but wonder if "No more labor" was written in response to Japan's infamous excessive-working culture^note To put it in perspective, there are enough cases of people literally dying of overwork that there's a word for it.

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