CISPA passed the house last night in a surprise rush vote. Now it heads to the senate.

Why is this bill so dangerous? We found an easy way to explain it to most people out there:

Created by: Paralegal.net

Please contact your senators and representitives and tell them to vote NO on this bill.

More information:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57422693-281/how-cispa-would-affect-you-faq/

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120427/08375418687/did-cispa-actually-get-better-before-passing-not-really.shtml

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/04/26/239239/

http://act.demandprogress.org/act/cispa_passes/?referring_akid=.194196.pE4I30&source=typ-tw

This review was written and submitted by a community member of Beatgamer. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of  Beatgamer.com, it’s other community members, it’s staff or it’s sponsors.

SPOILER ALERT! The following review contains spoilers!

Sean M (AKA zrelmar) – Beatgamer Contributor, Chandler, AZ

Here’s my free-form review of the movie “The FP”

SPOILERS! LANGUAGE! I WARNED YOU!

Okay, here we go… I don’t think I’ve ever ranted with so much CAPS RAGE at a movie before. I’m literally exhausted on a physical level from expressing my disappointment. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed all 82 minutes, but not because of the dancing. Oh no, we’re treated to not one, but TWO WHOLE dance scenes in a movie targeted specifically at hardcore DDR players. There’s way more than arrow smashing going on, so let me give a brief  ”plot” synopsis…

NOTE: HERE COME THOSE SPOILERS WE WARNED YOU ABOUT!

There’s a douchebag with an eyepatch who gets all pouty because his brother dies playing a 7-footer (basically, Freckles on heavy). So the Sad Pirate leaves town to go work at a lumber yard, I think. He’s had enough of life in the fast lane and wants to work with his hands or some shit. Anyway, his “ethnic” buddy (the obligatory Asian dude with lots of witty banter) tracks him down and convinces him to come back to Frazier Park because the cyperpunk/trailer trash/gangsta dance posse of the south (or north, don’t remember don’t care) is taking over the town with drugs and mayhem… but if the sad pirate can beat the grill-faced head honcho in a beat-off (yeah, you read that right) then all the drugs will go away and everyone will become alcoholics instead, which is the lesser of two evils…? I realize that’s the dumbest character motivation of all time, but I swear that’s what they actually say. And some crazy talk about seeing “the fucking ducks in the park ‘n shit… do it for the fucking ducks, yo!” Whatever. Okay, moving on.

So the sad pirate comes back and trains really hard so he can beat Grill Face. Or that’s what we’re lead to believe. There’s a terrible Rocky montage rip-off that shows Sad Pirate running up and down a mountain and sculpting his upper body with a Coreblaster to get ready for the big beat-off (we’re lead to believe a six-pack improves feet-eye coordination)… then the filmmakers realize they have nothing to work with, so they take a big-ass turn into major WTFville… you see, the filmmakers lured me into the theater with the fun premise of a hardcore, life-or-death arrow-smashing marathon. But what do I get? A story of domestic violence about an artsy but troubled young woman trying to escape the stronghold of her psycho boyfriend and her abusive transsexual father (hey look, another movie portraying trans folk as demons, what a surprise!) Now what does this have to do with dancing video games? It must connect to the major plot somehow, right? Why else would they stick totally unrelated thematic material in the middle of the movie that accounts for nearly two thirds of the running time… THERE MUST BE A REASON?!?! Yeeeeeeaaano. You see, the filmmakers don’t give a shit about their target audience. They claim to be avid DDR players, yet they get nearly every aspect of the game wrong… you know, the stuff us players cringe at whenever DDR is featured on a TV show): the players don’t dance in sync with the music, they hit totally different arrows than they’re supposed to, they play with GODDAMN SNOW BOOTS! Apparently, when you get exhausted during play, your legs spasm around like jello, then you collapse on the ground, the crowd counts to 10, then you lose. Did I mention they play on fucking Red Octane pads? The filmmakers had ONE MILLION DOLLARS at their disposal. They couldn’t have gotten a hand-me-down DDR machine and loaded it with Stepmania? They’re playing what appears to be a ten-year old build of DWI (Editor’s note: Dance With Intensity, an old DDR simulator for PC) with no music selection and arrows that do whatever the fuck they want… on the plus side, they did get two things right… only two… the nerve-wracking suspense between the end of the song and the score screen declaring who won the match, and the emphasis on getting a high arrow streak (although they neglect to mention the importance of perfect, marvelous, boo, letter ranking, percentages, quad stars, etc.) This is all trivial to 99% of the world, but for those of us who play DDR. You know, THE PEOPLE THE MOVIE WAS MADE FOR, it’s sloppy and boring and borderline offensive. I know I said the movie held my interest, but I mean that in the most contemptuous, “laughing AT you, not WITH you” kind of way. I LOL’d the entire movie, I couldn’t help myself…

I forgot the end of the story. Sorry, got lost in my own rage. Let’s see, in the middle of the final beat-off (there’s only two in the whole movie, remember), a siren goes off and triggers CAGE MATCH MODE. As in, an absolutely pointless cage comes out of the ceiling and surrounds the two players so they don’t leave the match… as if they were going to leave in the first place. Their whole life is at stake… as in, whoever loses the match gets “futtbucked” by their opponent then shot to death by the rival gang. So yeah, of course they’re going to leave in the middle of the match cause playing some no-name eurobeat 7-footer on “Omega Gangsta Mode” is just “too mofucking scary, yo…” I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s say one of them loses, then runs around town with cum in his beard for a good 15 minutes, then says “okay, you win, bye” and that’s it. Happily ever after. There’s your goddamn movie, DDR community. I could go on for hours (already have) about every single stupid detail in The FP (terrible title, by the way) but I’ll end the review with this.

The FP is damn near impossible to review. From the casual moviegoer to the hardcore arrow smasher, it fails in practically every imaginable way. The car-wreck fascination is a worn cliche but it truly applies in this unfortunate situation. But it still gets my recommendation for one single reason… there is no other DDR movie in the world… so you gotta take what you can get, “be the best nigga you can be, nigga” and always remember, don’t dance with your feet, “dance with your mind.”

Facepalm Sigh Unlimited (Radio Edit). 1.5/10

About the contributor: Sean (zrelmar) started dance-dancing in 2002 on a ghetto home pad he fashioned out of duct tape and household items. He soon became the biggest sensation in the world, winning a Utah and Idaho state tournament, but has since lost his smashing skills due to his refusal to play anything but DDR 4th mix. He’s rarely spotted at local arcades but some Pokemon Masters claim he still exists.

Sean also writes:

 ”I think I was overly harsh in my review, but it was never meant to be a serious criticism. It’s hard to take that movie seriously in the first place. But now I want to help them write a better sequel.“

Whether you’ve been a member of the dance game community for a few years or since the beginning, chances are, you have a story or two regarding a historic battle that you either witnessed, or took part in yourself. While that story may not have involved a winner-takes-all tournament for your life, territory, or the girl of your dreams, it probably felt like it did.

Beatgamer first became aware of The FP a few months back. At first, a few of us thought it was nothing more than a fan made movie trailer. At least it was much much better than the DDR movie trailer that was released a few years back. UGH… now THAT was horrible.

But we’ve come to learn that not only is this a trailer for an actual movie, but that the movie actually premiered TODAY in a bunch of theaters across the country.

The movie itself looks like a parody film of the entire dance game genre as a whole, but judging from the trailer, it comes across as a film that may actually have a fairly good storyline and characters to go along with it.

Unfortunately, the movie won’t be showing here in Salt Lake City, Utah anytime soon (where most of the Beatgamer staff is located). However, I’ve reached out to dance game community members in other areas to see if any of them would like to write a review about this movie. Hopefully, it will be released on DVD sometime this year.

The FP is presented by Drafthouse Films. Directed and written by Brandon Trost and Jason Trost. Starring Jason Trost, Lee Valmassy and Art Hsu.

Drafthouse Films link

IMDB link

Trailer link

 DDR Encore, the community group and collaboration between stepartists and players in Colorado, Wyoming and other areas, was suddenly shut down a few months back with no explanation and as of a few days ago, the website was finally pulled and now displays a blank page.

For a while, many of us didn’t know what the status of the dance and music game community in Wyoming and Colorado was. A few sporadic messages here and there and some posts didn’t reveal many details, and we thought that the scene had completely died. Today, we know that is not the case.

Colorado Dance Gamers (CDG) was created by former DDR Encore members to fill the gap in the Colorado community, which, according to community members does need a boost. Especially after being rocked by the fallout between the family fun center in Colorado Springs that the community was once close to.

On the facebook group, the group mentions that simfiles that were created by the old DDREncore group can be downloaded at ZIV (link below), and that Spork will be creating new simfiles with expert level ITG style charts. The community also notes that  ”The creation of the Colorado Dance Gamers organization is a effort to maintain the “event” and “local community” aspect that DDR Encore was most famously locally for, in paticular the NDK DDR Room.” NDK being Nan Desu Kan. Colorado’s local Anime convention.

As a community which was created from the fall of another community ourselves, we’re excited to see Colorado Dance Gamers rise from the ashes of DDR Encore. We can’t wait to see what you have planned, and are happy to see active community representation continue to exist in the world of dance and music games, when many communities have already disappeared or called it quits.

Colorado Dance Gamers (Formally DDR Encore) on facebook

Word from Travis Houk, who shattered the previously set DDR world record back in November 2011, saying that Guinness has rejected the evidence that he submitted.

From Travis’s twitter:

“Guinness reject claim: “The video evidence you have submitted shows sections of up to 60 seconds without human input.” Am asking for proof.” -@travishouk on twitter

We’ll stay on top of this and report any updates as they come in.

For more information on the attempt, including links where you can watch the whole thing go down, visit the following link:

http://beatgamer.com/?p=373

Although we are not the most visited music gaming website on the internet, we still have a voice here, and as long as we have that voice, we’re going to exercise our right to speak out against SOPA and PIPA, 2 dangerous bills making their way through the system which threaten the freedom of the internet.

At 12:00 Midnight on 18 January 2012, we will join countless other websites across the internet which are taking place in an online protest, to bring attention to SOPA and PIPA.

Our main website at beatgamer.com, .net and .org, as well as our message board at forums.beatgamer.com will be unavailable all day.  In it’s place, a message regarding the blackout protest, along with links to articles and resources regarding SOPA and PIPA.

The passing of SOPA or PIPA would have a substantial impact on the music gaming community here in the United States. For example, custom songs and fan generated themes, videos of players achieving high scores,  and community websites could essentially all be shut down. Understandably, the vast majority of music gamers in the United States is strongly opposed to SOPA and PIPA.

We hope that you will take this opportunity to help educate others about these attacks on freedom. Together, we can end this threat. Make your voice heard! Stand with the rest of the internet against SOPA and PIPA. Fight for a free and open internet.

This year I’ll start posting some videos that I’ve uploaded to youtube. I don’t want to spam the entire front page with a bunch of my older videos, so I’ll just pick a couple of videos from my archives and slowly work my way to current and newer videos. 

Salt Lake Beatgamer Kyzentun loves doubles. He’s probably one of the last remaining serious doubles players that we have here in Salt Lake, possibly in the entire region.

While he definitely plays for score most of the time, he also likes to have a little fun every now and then. He  made this edit of The 7 Jump and as far as I can remember, is the only one locally who’s ever been able to pass it.

When not using his head to hit one of the arrows, you can usually find him floating around the ziv message boards.

Yeah it’s the Holiday season, and I’ve been a little busy with stuff. Also, the recent database problem I had kind of threw me off a little bit. I had posted a few other stories when all of that happened ><

But we’re still here. Mostly active on Facebook, so when you don’t see an update from us in a while and want to know what’s up, check out the facebook link on the right.

I hope to maybe post an update before the end of the year.

We’ve been having some issues with wordpress not playing nice with our database this last week. I found the problems but had to restore the database from previous backups. As a result, 2 of the stories I wrote in the last couple of weeks were lost. I’ll try to rewrite them, but we’re back up and running just fine! Stay tuned.

From Knoxville, TN, Travis Houk a.k.a. Daiz has set the world record for playing on a dance game (DDR World Record) by playing for just over 40 hours. This time does also include breaks which are guaranteed by the guidelines set for achieving this record.

Daiz started his attempt at Zuma’s Family Fun Center in Knoxville, TN shortly after 5:00AM (Eastern) the morning of Saturday, 19 November 2011. He broke the previous record of 15.5 hours, held by Carrie Swidecki of Bakersfield, CA around 8:30PM Eastern on Saturday, 19 November 2011. He hit the 24 hour mark this morning, Sunday, the 20th of November 2011 at 5:12AM Eastern, and his goal of 40 hours was reached at approx 9:12PM Eastern that evening.

DDR players from all over the world tuned into the livestream at twitch.tv to watch Daiz make this attempt.

The last song that he passed was Max 300, and he failed the next song Valkyrie Dimension Oni at the 40:02:12 mark, officially ending the event.

UPDATE: We made Travis a quick video congratulating him on his achievement. We are kind of scary looking, ne?

UPDATE: If you want to relive the entire experience, it looks like twitch.tv has archived all of the streaming video on Travis’s twitch.tv page.

UPDATE: Fixed errors with the time reporting. We’re in the Mountain time zone (-7h GMT) and I forgot to account for those extra 2 hours when I posted the stopping time… Oops. Sorry!