dominickp/itg-guide

ITG Resource Guide & FAQ

There are a lot of great informational resources scattered around the ITG community and I wanted to throw them onto one page.

What is In The Groove (ITG) in 2021?

Originally, In the Groove (ITG) was a 4-panel dance game created by Roxor Games based on the earlier (and much more popular) Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) game by Konami. ITG ran on a modified Stepmania 3.95 engine (an open source clone of DDR) and introduced features such as mines and hands and support for "mod charts". ITG was sold as a PS2 game, an upgrade kit for existing DDR cabinets, and as an ITG dedicated cabinet (dedicab). Shortly after ITG gained popularity, it got into legal trouble with Konami and it went away in an official capacity. At this point in time, people refer to people who play Stepmania on a pad (as opposed to a keyboard) as "ITG".

Few play the original arcade games anymore, and the game has mostly moved to the home audience especially after the pandemic. Modern "ITG" is considered as Stepmania 5 or OpenITG running a theme such as Simply Love, Digital Dance, or Waterfall using ITG's original lifebar and scoring mechanics.

There are several playstyles of ITG:

• FA
• Tech
• Stamina/Footspeed

What pad do I buy?

Dom has made a great video listing off a bunch of pads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEWj2_BNG_0

TL;DR

• L-TEK
  • Affordable hard pads, great for all around play.
  • Do the penny mod for additional sensitivity.
• StepManiaX
  • High-end, arcade-grade pads but are extremely difficult to get due to low supply and high demand.
  • If you play stamina, you might run into issues with triggering accidental decents/way offs ("the boys")
• Purchasing an arcade machine/pads is usually the best option if you can.
  • Search Craigslist, arcade buy/sell Facebook groups, Kijiji, etc.
  • Cabs can be converted to Stepmania fairly easily, see JeffreyATW's Guide here.
• Other pads like Anton's travel pads are good options too.
• DDRGame and Precision Dance Pads suck. Buyer beware.

There are also great DIY pad options available which I will cover in a different section.