Another Spiritual Successor to In the Groove by Step Revolution, a studio led by In the Groove alumni, Kyle Ward. As with its predecessor, it is a dance rhythm game, using a 5-panel array resembling DanceDanceRevolution but with a center panel. As with ITG, it is built upon StepMania (the title is pronounced "step maniacs"), but heavily-modified to run on the studio's Android-based microconsole, and with a newly-designed touchscreen cabinet and dance pads using pressure sensors. Its gameplay is patterned off In the Groove, but with a few new mechanics such as lift holds (where you must let go of the hold at the time it ends or be penalized) and mine holds (Exactly What It Says on the Tin).
Its soundtrack is an evolution from In the Groove, adding modern EDM and dubstep alongside other dance game staples such as pop, eurodance, and eurobeat. A large number of its songs are revivals or licenses from In the Groove and their touchscreen game ReRave, as well as licenses previously seen on Pump It Up and Dance Dance Revolution (particularly some of the classic europop and DanceMania-sourced licenses from the pre-SuperNOVA era of the franchise).
The game was formally unveiled in 2017 at MAGFest. Initially, the company primarily targeted sales to venues such as health clubs rather than arcades (as well as personal owners wanting an alternative to the older In the Groove or Dance Dance Revolution cabinets, or lower-quality home pads in general); the pads themselves are USB-based and can run with the normal StepMania just fine, with an SDK available for finer integration with its hardware). The game has been supported by free updates and Downloadable Content since its release. In 2018, an upgraded version of the cabinet (officially referred to as the "dedicated machine", with the existing version now referred to as the "all-in-one" model) was released, with a larger base with lights and support for coin slots (making it usable in arcades), and the current iteration adding a lighted platform between the pads and the cabinet. A larger "DX" cabinet was also launched in 2022, which has a design reminiscent of the Pump it Up "LX" cabinet, and a 65-inch display.
This game provides examples of
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- For a dance game, all operations are done via touch screen.
- ALL songs and charts are available from the start and for 1 credit, even with new songs coming out constantly. Any possible missing charts will be added through constant updates, which automatically updates.
- Passing songs on Full mode. Compared to other modes especially Wild, getting Lates are more lenient on your health bar. While you have a better chance of passing, don't always expect your score to be higher than the Wild counterpart, if charts are similar.
- Announcer Chatter: Primarily in the menus. Frequent viewers of Disney Channel may recognize the voice...
- Button Mashing: The roll features. It looks like a hold, but you have to press the panel a certain amount of times.
- Difficulty Levels: For single play: Beginner, Easy, Hard, and Wild. This is straightforward. For doubles, however, see below.
- Double Play: Three different kinds that uses BOTH pads at once. The level of difficulty varies.
- Dual. This uses all 6-panel that uses only the pairs of left, center, and right panels. The up and down panels are ignored.
- Full. This uses all 10-panels.
- Team. Same as Full, but requires 2 players. Each player gets their own color of arrows to step on note and share the same life bar.
- Exergaming: Prior to the release of the arcade-grade cabinet, Step Revolution primarily targeted sales to venues such as fitness and youth clubs rather than arcades, with a more compact machine and being entirely in "free play".
- Easier Than Easy: Beginner. Not only does this mode have the least amount of notes in each difficulty, but only 3 panels are used: Left, center, and right. With the exception of showing off freestyling, players will never move forward nor backward, thus keeping position stability.
- Easter Egg:
- Various Steps by names not using the actual step authors use name references. See the Shout Out page.
- Zodiac's animation changes based on the current Zodiac.
- Xuxa's animation changes based on the time of day.
- Nori Nori Nori's Full Chart has mine letters that spell out N O R I exactly 3 times.
- Dr.M's Wild, Full, and Team all have mine letters M, as well as a combination of hold and mines spelling M.
- The Call To Wilderness cover jacket will show a Greatest Hits label if you play the song enough times.
- Dark Fenix contains cryptic messages in the BGA that refers to works from previous dance games: "WHY DO YOU NEED SMX ORIGINAL SONGS????? BECOME REBORN, AGAIN, DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR NAME ????????? RISE FROM THE ASHES. CAN WE DESTROY THE PAST????????? YOU THOUGHT US DEAD? WE ARE ONLY BEGINNING!!!!!!!!! EMBRACE DESTINY ... GAZE UPON ... THE MONOLITH"
- Expansion Pack: There have been occasional updates adding additional songs in batches, as well as fixing and re-rating songs.
- Fake-Out Fade-Out: Overlapping with The Stinger during the sneak peek updates:
- The October 2020 update trailer
seems to end after introducing the song "Warrior", showing the "Available Now" splash screen...except that cuts out abruptly to introduce one more song: "MAX428" by NAOKI. Players wanting a serious challenge got one. - The 27th update does the same thing. It seems to end after We Got The Moves... and later cuts to debut one more song from Naoki (as De-Sire): Dark Fenix.
- The October 2020 update trailer
- Insistent Terminology: Official promotional material for the game largely avoids referring to the game as a "dance" game, but "step" fitness.
- Mythology Gag: Some of the licenses from past games have callbacks to their original artwork from the game. "Ignition Starts" (as on ReRave), the menu music from Pump it Up Pro, has album art resembling the game's title screen, and a recreation of it in its background video.
- Nerf: Max 428's original chart to the newly edited charts. The end was now toned from 1/16th notes to 1/12th notes.
- Rank Inflation:
- The ranking scale goes from 1 to 6 stars.
- In addition to the "Perfect" step judgement, there is also "Perfect!".
- Sampling: Some songs take sample clips from various songs:
- Hard Fast Disco from Pink's Get The Party Started.
- Everybody 2 The Sun from both Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby and Depeche Mode's Just Can't Get Enough.
- Rock Me, Amadeus!: It wouldn't be a music game without taking classic songs:
- Flight of the Bumblebee is of the same name by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
- Hurry Up! is from "Sabre Dance" by Aram Khachaturian. Unfortunately, it is no longer available. However, see below.
- Csikos Post is of the same name by Hermann Necke. Yahpp remixed his previous work from a game he previously worked on.
- Beethoven Virus is from Pathétique" 3rd Movement by Ludwig van Beethoven. Again, by Yahpp.
- Winter is from "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi. Again, by Yahpp.
- Dr. M is from "Symphony No. 40" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
- Step Up Amadeus almost defines the trope name, word-by-word. Again, by Yahpp.
- Canon-D.2 is of the same name by Johann Pachelbel. Again, by Yahpp.
- Sabre Dance returns, but from a different music artist.
- Scenery Porn: Each panel on the pad has a set of RGB LED lights under it (including panels not in use, via holes machined into their covers), and each song has unique choreography and effects for these lights. In addition, a more recent iteration of the pads ("Gen4") has a finer array of 25 lights per-panel, allowing them to display more complex animations and effects.
- Shout-Out: Has its own page.
- Some Dexterity Required: Certain spots requiring 3 or more panels either held, hit simultaneously, or both combined. You are either going to use your hands to hit the arrows or bracket (1 foot using heel and toe to hit 2 arrows at once).
- Spikes of Doom: The mines and mine holds. Make sure your feet are not present when a mine passes by.
- A Taste of Power: When selecting a scrolling speed modification, you get a small glimpse of the song preview's stepcharts before playing the song.
- Take That!:
- No matter what updates you have, making everything available from the start is a shoot to most modern arcade games, which have dependencies on online profile systems, internal game points earned by spending multiple credits to unlock songs, meet gameplay conditions to unlock songs which has chances of failure, randomly selected by loot boxing, use an unlock code, and/or has region-exclusive songs due to licensing issues either. StepManiaX? Nope. Enjoy.
- The song Hypnosis - Colin Kiddy, labeled as Hypnosis (Banya Buzz Edit) - Colin Kiddy, was a shot at the licensing department at Andamiro's Pump It Up. The original song was called Buzz. Andamiro at the time labeled the song as simply Banya - Hypnosis. StepManiaX managed to license this properly, using both references.
- The 2 mines near the end of Beethoven's Virus 2021 Wild was a shot at the original Crazy chart having the wrong rhythms.
- Temple of Love's Full Chart has end mines that spell FNF. The 69 mines and 3"69" combo was a response to the creators of game encouraging Rule 34.
- The official Twitter literally said the initials NFT: New Featured Tracks. This is a shot at companies trying to utilize Non-Fungible Tokens.
- Writing Around Trademarks:
- Between the location test build and final release, the arrow target zone was changed to be a pair of brackets rather than the arrow-shaped receptors that the dance game genre is known for. Kyle Ward himself explains that the arrow-shaped receptors are in fact a patented feature that can't be used in any game besides DDR or Pump It Up without paying a license for the feature.
- Step Up Amadeus is a renamed remix of Pump Me Amadeus. The first word of the song is self-explanatory.
- The remade CJ Crew songs have different titles to avoid running afoul of trademark issues: "Rhythm & Police" is now "Music & Police" and "Ninzaburo"/"Furuhata's Theme" is now "Crime Time".
- Between the location test build and final release, the arrow target zone was changed to be a pair of brackets rather than the arrow-shaped receptors that the dance game genre is known for. Kyle Ward himself
