Hello, my name is Teegarden and although I am not new to FFR, there was a long time where I left the forums and didn't play FFR as much. Although I never completely forgot about this site, a few years have passed since the last time I played, except for a few games here and there at the beginning of this year.
This post is going to be lengthy, so feel free to jump to the bottom.
I learned about FFR fairly close to the beginning, the early months of 2003. At that time, FFR had an orange background and as far as I can remember, only 5 genres, and maybe a total of 15 songs. I was completely new to rhythm games and FFR was actually the first one I had ever played in my life, which got me introduced to DDR. (My memory is fuzzy on that part, but I'm pretty sure I played FFR before I played DDR.) I played nearly every day and became a registered member a few months after. At this time, FFR got a blue background and released a few more songs, but nothing radical was added. There were no characters yet, no credits, and the FFR Radio consisted of random DDR 7th Mix songs.
Like most people, I started with one-hand three-finger style. Since this was my first rhythm game, I struggled just to FC Mario, the easiest song at that time. I played that song until I started getting more Perfects than Goods, and then I moved on to what would become one of my favorite FFR songs, Get On The Move. Eventually I started FCing both songs consistently, and my wrist got used to playing FFR.
The site started changing for the better, bringing in quite a lot of new people after expanding Dance and Arcade. Characters were introduced, and there was a new FFR shop in-game, although was not functional. Multiplayer chat was introduced, but it was much, much different from the one that is here currently. It was more like the video chat here, and had a lot of popping emoticons such as giant
faces and bugs crawling all over the chat. There were quite a few new songs released, one of which became my favorites, Falling Into You, and a new genre, Secret, was added. Emotions was also released around this time, but it was not the FFR theme song yet. It was likely around this time I started becoming quite a lot more active on the forums, from where I learned about StepMania.
StepMania would prove to be the death of FFR for me for awhile. There was a lot of coding work being done on FFR and although I still loved the game, I was more interested in becoming a technical player and SM definitely improved my FFR skills. Around this time, I moved from a Light to a Standard player on DDR, and was actively playing on the DDR machine hosted at my university. The last thing I remember was that there was talk of a Release 2 client for FFR, and that new mods were going to be added to FFR, such as speed mods and a Vivid option, which was to represent the Note mod in SM or the Solo mod in DDR (as in, changing the color of the arrows to match the sync of the notes, as they currently are now).
From time to time, I would stop by, and was hugely impressed on the release of R2, which although in a working beta at this time, operated a lot like SM. I didn't get a chance to play a lot of the songs on there, but it was really fun to have a sort of flash version of SM being implemented. Excitedly, during one of these trips, I achieved my first FPC: Falling Into You! (I actually did not FPC Mario first, because it was only around this time that I started believing I was good enough to be able to FPC songs.)
I became busy with moving, with coursework, and with life in general, and did not intend on staying a regular member of FFR anymore. This was not because I disliked the game, but because I simply didn't have the time to play FFR, and FFR being as addictive as it is, I thought it best to leave the site alone for some time. I moved up to being a Heavy/Oni player in DDR, and even entered a few tournaments, although I could not AAA 9- and 10-footers like most of the competitors. It was still a lot of fun, though. I also learned about Pump It Up and started playing that as well.
I spent some time at some other gaming sites, and eventually after a trip to Kongregate, memories of FFR flooded back to me, and I checked on the site to see if anything had changed... I was in for some huge surprises! The FFR Radio works, and not only that, a new app called Rithum was created. Profile chat, which was only a dream at the time I left, became a reality, and there was now a simfile database for FFR members to post their SM creations. A plethora of new songs had been added in my absence, profiles got a major work-over, there's now a new game called Spin-It-Up. The most surprising of everything was the new Token system. Also to my surprise, all the old files I remember from way-back-when has been faithfully kept in its original condition. It was so much fun playing through Falling Into You and Get On The Move again.
Sadly, there was one feature that I really miss on FFR, and that is the full-screen option. Apparently it has been replaced by the low res option, but I really miss playing FFR in full-screen mode. Sometimes I still emulate this by putting my browser into full-screen mode and then zooming in on the page.
Also to my surprise, there's a lot of really strong players now. Flame wars used to break out if someone even so much as posted a screenshot of an FC of HellBeat, and now there's a Tier System where you not only get a point for FCing it, you get maximum points if you AAA it! I thought I improved quite a bit, but seeing the Tier System gives me large doses of humble pie. Mmm, humble pie.
Now that my nostalgia moment is over, I'd like to talk about my changes in gameplay. Sometimes I still play one-handed, and every once in awhile I play index, but my favorite method of gameplay is using a program called XPadder (or some may prefer the more popular Key2Joy program), which converts the arrow keys on my keyboard to buttons on my USB controller. Thus, I can play FFR with a controller like I often do in SM. (This is similar to how using a dance pad to play FFR works.) I have only tried spread maybe a handful of times, but I am still used to the arrow keys... I wonder if I am the only one that uses a USB controller to play FFR.
Anyway, I hope to be a welcomed part of the FFR community (again), and it makes me happy to come back after all this time.
This post is going to be lengthy, so feel free to jump to the bottom.
I learned about FFR fairly close to the beginning, the early months of 2003. At that time, FFR had an orange background and as far as I can remember, only 5 genres, and maybe a total of 15 songs. I was completely new to rhythm games and FFR was actually the first one I had ever played in my life, which got me introduced to DDR. (My memory is fuzzy on that part, but I'm pretty sure I played FFR before I played DDR.) I played nearly every day and became a registered member a few months after. At this time, FFR got a blue background and released a few more songs, but nothing radical was added. There were no characters yet, no credits, and the FFR Radio consisted of random DDR 7th Mix songs.
Like most people, I started with one-hand three-finger style. Since this was my first rhythm game, I struggled just to FC Mario, the easiest song at that time. I played that song until I started getting more Perfects than Goods, and then I moved on to what would become one of my favorite FFR songs, Get On The Move. Eventually I started FCing both songs consistently, and my wrist got used to playing FFR.
The site started changing for the better, bringing in quite a lot of new people after expanding Dance and Arcade. Characters were introduced, and there was a new FFR shop in-game, although was not functional. Multiplayer chat was introduced, but it was much, much different from the one that is here currently. It was more like the video chat here, and had a lot of popping emoticons such as giant
faces and bugs crawling all over the chat. There were quite a few new songs released, one of which became my favorites, Falling Into You, and a new genre, Secret, was added. Emotions was also released around this time, but it was not the FFR theme song yet. It was likely around this time I started becoming quite a lot more active on the forums, from where I learned about StepMania.StepMania would prove to be the death of FFR for me for awhile. There was a lot of coding work being done on FFR and although I still loved the game, I was more interested in becoming a technical player and SM definitely improved my FFR skills. Around this time, I moved from a Light to a Standard player on DDR, and was actively playing on the DDR machine hosted at my university. The last thing I remember was that there was talk of a Release 2 client for FFR, and that new mods were going to be added to FFR, such as speed mods and a Vivid option, which was to represent the Note mod in SM or the Solo mod in DDR (as in, changing the color of the arrows to match the sync of the notes, as they currently are now).
From time to time, I would stop by, and was hugely impressed on the release of R2, which although in a working beta at this time, operated a lot like SM. I didn't get a chance to play a lot of the songs on there, but it was really fun to have a sort of flash version of SM being implemented. Excitedly, during one of these trips, I achieved my first FPC: Falling Into You! (I actually did not FPC Mario first, because it was only around this time that I started believing I was good enough to be able to FPC songs.)
I became busy with moving, with coursework, and with life in general, and did not intend on staying a regular member of FFR anymore. This was not because I disliked the game, but because I simply didn't have the time to play FFR, and FFR being as addictive as it is, I thought it best to leave the site alone for some time. I moved up to being a Heavy/Oni player in DDR, and even entered a few tournaments, although I could not AAA 9- and 10-footers like most of the competitors. It was still a lot of fun, though. I also learned about Pump It Up and started playing that as well.
I spent some time at some other gaming sites, and eventually after a trip to Kongregate, memories of FFR flooded back to me, and I checked on the site to see if anything had changed... I was in for some huge surprises! The FFR Radio works, and not only that, a new app called Rithum was created. Profile chat, which was only a dream at the time I left, became a reality, and there was now a simfile database for FFR members to post their SM creations. A plethora of new songs had been added in my absence, profiles got a major work-over, there's now a new game called Spin-It-Up. The most surprising of everything was the new Token system. Also to my surprise, all the old files I remember from way-back-when has been faithfully kept in its original condition. It was so much fun playing through Falling Into You and Get On The Move again.
Sadly, there was one feature that I really miss on FFR, and that is the full-screen option. Apparently it has been replaced by the low res option, but I really miss playing FFR in full-screen mode. Sometimes I still emulate this by putting my browser into full-screen mode and then zooming in on the page.
Also to my surprise, there's a lot of really strong players now. Flame wars used to break out if someone even so much as posted a screenshot of an FC of HellBeat, and now there's a Tier System where you not only get a point for FCing it, you get maximum points if you AAA it! I thought I improved quite a bit, but seeing the Tier System gives me large doses of humble pie. Mmm, humble pie.
Now that my nostalgia moment is over, I'd like to talk about my changes in gameplay. Sometimes I still play one-handed, and every once in awhile I play index, but my favorite method of gameplay is using a program called XPadder (or some may prefer the more popular Key2Joy program), which converts the arrow keys on my keyboard to buttons on my USB controller. Thus, I can play FFR with a controller like I often do in SM. (This is similar to how using a dance pad to play FFR works.) I have only tried spread maybe a handful of times, but I am still used to the arrow keys... I wonder if I am the only one that uses a USB controller to play FFR.
Anyway, I hope to be a welcomed part of the FFR community (again), and it makes me happy to come back after all this time.
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