O'Reilly O'Riginals

VOULEZ-VOUS DANSER
//ACE OF BASE

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Voulez-Vous Danser is my first and original O'Riginal. (I had other files, most of which remain on the hard drive, but this is the first released one. It's also my DDRei TournaMix 5 entry; it made it into the wildcard, then got destroyed along with everything else because of the Kick Your A incident. The graphics are based heavily on the cover art for the source album, The Sign, with the banner being a direct copy with text added. (Still a damn sight better than most quickie graphics rips.) The steps are still the same as the first update, after I made some easier Standard steps and moved the originals to Edit.

SPEAKING FROM THE HEART
//MACHO MAN Randy Savage

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Speaking From the Heart was my entry into Bemanistyle's Original Step Contest: Psychopath Edition. For those unfamiliar, the gimmick to OSC PsyEd was that half of your score as an entrant was earned by the humor of your entry. All the joke entries and novelty songs were fair game here. Unfortunately, PsyEd was run in a bit of Bemanistyle turmoil, when Sevenpointzero (the latest BMS incarnation) was only about half done and everyone thought it wasn't worth it to bother until then. As it were, only 8 people entered. And I still came in 5th of 8.

As for the song - a song from Wrestlemania: The Album, this is your typical cheesy late-80s/early-90s pop rap, and arguably the predecessor to Randy Savage's Be a Man album. The original mp3 was skippy in a lot of areas outside the middle verse, which is lucky since that verse was the only one with enough to even come close to providing decent energy for the steps. Admittedly, as they are, the steps are bland, and the download is a behemoth because of all the video files (two clips from the WWF/WWE and a handful of DDR videos), but I'm still pretty happy that I didn't get last place. A future update will probably have improved steps.

SMILE
//ORLANDO

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Smile (Speedy Mix) was my first bid to join the now defunct nDDRo simfiling syndicate, during their King of Iron Feet Tournament. Unfortunately, it did terribly there, as I was in a weird point in my simfiling "career", where I was just starting to (a) form some decent heuristics for making fun steps, (b) get good ideas for graphics and (c) find some decent music to step to. Apparently, this song, a cover of a classic Charlie Chaplin tune, was the one song on Dancemania Speed G that nobody else liked but me. I got a few compliments later on about the "gimmicks" (a.k.a. obvious patterns) I put in, but I believe I came in nearly last.

Anywho, the steps are pretty fun, although they kind of fall apart in the middle, and the graphics are okay, although this was before I discovered GIMP so they're not perfect (not that my GIMP-bedecked files are much better. Titiln's graphics (the banner is seen here) are included as extras. If you can find a download of the official final KoIFT pack, I believe his are the only ones included.

Shake That!
//SCOOTER

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I first heard Shake That! thanks to DDRei's TournaMix 6 The Final. One of the entries was a lively Super Eurobeat song entered by jammitch! entitled "Not For Sale" by Go2. Looking for information about the song, I came across the custom audio mixes page at Paraparastage.com. There, I found not only a megamix by Jayveemon containing Not For Sale, but a longer, dance-oriented megamix also by Jayveemon entitled "Dance the Megamax". Shake That! was the first track thereon, and I fell in love with it right away. Figuring it was my song choice that was killing me in these contests, I tried something that I knew sounded good amongst other songs, so I tracked down this song and went to work.

The song itself is a cover of the classic "Shake Your Booty," and has a decidedly more flowing, less intimidating beat compared to other Scooter songs. The graphics were at the end of my use of Paint Shop Pro (i.e. just before Smile), so I was just learning the tricks to make PSP graphics not suck. Unfortunately, they ended up still quite blurry, a lot of people didn't like the irony of the graphics (using 20's flappers for a late-century house take on a 70's disco classic), and the song itself was muddy-sounding, since I couldn't figure out how to tool around with it in Audacity to make it better. Pokecapn got me a good clear version of the audio to work with at some point, and I ended up finding the original source picture and making some better graphics.

OUR HOUSE
//MADNESS

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Our House was my DDRei TournaMix 6 the Final entry. It's also the 3rd song (4th track by my standards) on Pokecapn's TM6 Dance Megamix. It took me a while to find a suitable cut for the song, first asking for help from friends unrelated to the DDR scene before asking for help from Tepples, who supplied a suitable cut in time for the competition. The song's pretty much what you'd expect - the 80s collection staple song that later became the Maxwell House jingle.

Oh yeah, and it's my only song with Couples steps.

Oh yeah, and despite what the readme inexplicably says, there are solo steps.

LET THE BEAT CONTROL YOUR BODY
//ACE OF BASE

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This song is one of my early, pre-competition files, and it's pretty good for its time. The original song wasn't all that good, although it did have a nugget of decency since it was 2 Unlimited after all. And it's a B4 Za Beat remix, so this version seems to have turned out pretty good. Like Smile (speedy mix), this is from Speed G; unlike Smile, people like this song. The graphics are simple but good for an early attempt.

Hatten Carnival!
//DJ SHARPNEL

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I found Hatten Carnival off of the Sharpnel Sounds website, before they took down all their samples, and I haven't seen anything from this album (p2p. peer to peer!) since. This could have made for an interesting Psychopath Edition entry, with its history and all. It's a speed/gabber rearrangement of "Habbeetik" by Azar Habib, the song that later became Hatten är Din thanks to some nutty Swedes and their proto-Animutation flash skills. I chose an Arabic-inspired typeface for this second take on the graphics, despite the song's rise to fame by way of Sweden. The challenge steps approach ITG-difficulty, before ITG even came out.

FREEDOM
//globe

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Freedom was my second bid to join nDDRo, during their Di Gi Jared Invitational. The catch to this one is that Di Gi Jared, one of two winners of the King of Iron Feet, was under-representing his office, and had to defend his spot on the website Ben Stein's Money style, by competing anonymously against any and all comers. (The joke was twofold - first, he never entered, and second, nDDRo died shortly thereafter.) I found this song while looking for Parapara routines, having found the first part of a J-Euro video rip that included such songs as Deluxe, Gamble Rumble and way too much Ayumi. I considered this the best song and routine, and entered it. Unfortunately, the graphics were kind of bland and the sound quiet. After the competition, Di Gi Jared himself was nice enough to supply a better CDTitle and a full copy of the song.

Can I Tico Tico You
//LOU BEGA

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Hard to believe, but Lou Bega did songs other than "Mambo #5". This is song 3, track 4 off of the same album (A Little Bit of Mambo), and meant as a kick-off song. The steps haven't aged too well in my opinion, but hey, they're still getting good reviews so why not give this a try? I consider these graphics dated in their effect, but in terms of clarity some of the best Paint Shop Pro work I've done.

GASOLINA
//DANNY RAY

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Figures, the one time I make it to the top 3 and I have to share the credit. XP

Anyway. My newest file! A collaboration! And an OSC 5 award winner to boot! (hey, bronze medals are awards too shut up) Anyone who has enough nDDRo files will recognize the graphic style (of the banner at least) - Pokecapn and I asked Titiln for his fonts for his Gasolina (The Speedo Revenge) file, and he complied. The song itself (Delaction, not Speedo Revenge) is a hard, driving trance version of the reggaeton hit. It was compared at one point in the reviews to Wild Rush and Saints Go Marching, and with good reason - watch out for the relatively abrupt slowdown in the middle, and try to keep up with the speedup!

Random TRIVIA: Johansen Cruz's "Brugal Mix Remix" TM4 entry was my first exposure to both Reggaeton and Daddy Yankee in particular.