ERICth the 3rd debuted the weekend of February 14th at Katsucon!
ERICth the 3rd is a custom work by co-creators Eric Ruth (of GER fame) and Eric Yockey (Pop'nKO) based on the Stepmania game engine. It contains a mix of 80 original, remixed, and (un)licensed songs, from sources including (but not limited to) Beatmania, Pump It Up, and popular dance tracks. All songs contain original stepfiles, artwork, and animation, and are set in a custom-themed environment that is in some ways a throwback to the 'old days' of Dance Dance Revolution.
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05-09-04 Pop'nKO - The benevolent Chris Danford finally got around to linking to us, so for those of you just showing up here, here's a brief summary of what we and the project are about. We're huge fans of the Bemani series, and 'known' DDR players on the east coast. Well, especially GER, who used to go up and down the 13 colonies winning freestyle tournaments and eventually moving on to be a legend at tech. Back in 2001, Eric Ruth released his first DDR clone mix, 'ERICth Mix,' which was based on the DWI engine, had steps written in Notepad, and had backgrounds and a theme lovingly rendered in Microsoft Paint. After I saw the potential in the project, I came on board for the 2nd mix to do song art, which debuted at Katsucon in '03. For this third project, we ended up getting a sizeable team together for production, and our roles began to blur - GER did character art and most of the stepfiles and music edits, I did all the theming work and tons of backgrounds and animations, but we also collaborated with other artists for some song media. The mix was finished this year at Katsucon again, where we had a metal pad and a neat lil setup ;D
We might be doing a Plus mix later, but have yet to start on it. Plans for future ERICth mixes are up in the air, because while doing things for free is fun and all, there are only so many times you can make the landlord go away by defeating him in "This Is My Super Euro Beat Song."
02-16-04 Pop'nKO - Katsucon went very well for us. Emily's pad got the holy hell beaten out of it and we'll need to replace all of the arrows, but it's lasted through its second con with colors of the non-flying-fowl variety. Some people wanted to take a copy home but were unable to get back in the building after the T-Virus was unleashed on the second floor of the Hyatt Regency. I'm not sure if seeing people enjoy the mix we've worked on for a year necessarily warmed the 'cockles' of my 'heart' - partly because I was mentally dead from some 40+ hours of straight work to get a releasable project by the con, but also on account of me not knowing what cockles are. It was fun as usual, though. And we only got asked if we had 'Max Period' on 'this thing' about twice. Christopher M Christopher M got some live video of the event, which we hope to have up on this site in the near future. Somewhere along the line, my ridiculously large subwoofer murdered the small monitor and both keyboards we were using in their sleep. Oh, and some asshat stole the sheet of 33 ERICth The 3rd stickers we made to put on the CDs. I hope whomever did it really enjoys the fruits of their efforts. I mean, those things will be worth MONEY some day. Fucker. I took down some of the errors we saw in the demo and they'll be fixed in an upcoming patch (hopefully in the next week or two). We'll also feature some graphic upgrades in that patch and include it with all subsequent copies of the game. Thanks to the guys Emily knows that let us stay in their room for the night, thanks to X-Strike studios for helping us carry our tons of crap to the parking bay after the hotel crushed the dolly privledges with an iron fist. (As an aside, the Katsucon hotel has consistantly been the most uptight and unaccomodating in recent memory. Or maybe they just have bad luck, with record turnouts, snowfalls, and biohazard outbreaks.) Oh, and thanks to all the people that enjoyed ERICth The 3rd. We do it for you guys. Seriously.
10-31-04 Pop'nKO - Let's pretend I wrote this back in October, okay? Okay. MAGFEST was probably the coolest to us out of every place we've been - we were hooked up with a widescreen television even though we brought our own (less-widescreen) one, were given free room and badge, and were generally not treated like a couple of assholes who just happened to be a draw for the con. Anotherwards, we'd like to thank you for being either very nice or very naive. But, I kid. I kid because I love. Turnout was pretty good. The theme wasn't done by then. We have some pictures in the media section. Uh, I don't remember much else. Frowny emoticon.
KATSUCON PICTURES
If any y'all have pictures from Katsucon, PLEASE e-mail them to popn@popnko.com - I wasn't able to take any myself because my camera was broken.
MAGFEST PICTURES
 GER AAAs 'Get Off' |
 Free freestyling lessons! |
 The dance floor crowds |
 Show me your performance? |
 Us on stage at con opening |
 You put your left foot in... |
 More of opening ceremonies |
 Eric 'raps' with 'Chris' |
 I am the king of dance |
 Just look at that form |
 GER performs live |
 Jeff Goldblum doesn't arrive |
 More of GER's 8th Mile |
GAMEPLAY PICTURES
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MAGFEST AUDIO (DJ POTATOE/GER IN CONCERT)
DJ Potatoe - Oh C'mon (Live)
DJ Potatoe - Era Of Nintendo (Live)
VIDEO (COMING SOON)
Purchasing ERICth The 3rd isn't an option. We're looking into other ways to distribute the project, including the possibility of a download by way of BitTorrent. We'll be sure to keep you all posted on the proceedings.
Our contact information is below. I (Pop'nKO) managed the artwork and software portion of the package (as well as some song-cutting/stepfile-writing), and DJ Potatoe is responsible for the bulk of the cuts, original songs, and stepfiles. Oh, and the 2D character art.
| Pop'nKO | DJ Potatoe/GER |
| Real name: Eric Yockey | Real name: Eric Ruth |
| AOL: Popnko | AOL: DJ Potatoe |
| E-mail: popn@popnko.com | E-mail: DJ_Potatoe@hotmail.com |
| Blood type: O+ | Blood type: O- |
| Favorite food: Sushi | Favorite food: Lobster ravioli |
| Pet Peeves: Biographies, Livejournal users, counter-culture | Pet Peeves: Immature people, heavy metal music, cole slaw |
| Favorite chinese dish: Peking duck | Favorite chinese dish: Sesame chicken |
| Birthday: January 4, 1984 | Birthday: June 13, 1981 |
| Finishing maneuver: TKO from Tokyo | Finishing maneuver: Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Slam |
Stepmania - With special thanks to Chris Danford and Frieza
Katsucon - Thanks to Christian & Staff (Malcolm, David, Pernell, and more)
MAGfest - Many thanks to Brandon & Staff for recognition and general niceties
X-Strike studios - Lifting prowess, Name-dropping, and Create-A-Wrestler talents
Kazecon - For inviting us as guests. We like that.
Download the ERICth Mix Demo
Hosted at Stepmania, but link removed for the time being.
Download the ERICth Mix 1.0.5 Patch
Uploaded 05/18/04
1.0.5 : Single player metric fixed. Scores showing. Kind Lady FTM and Let Me Play heavy steps fixed.
1.0.4 : Metrics changed to work with new installer.
1.0.3 : "I Turn To You" Heavy steps fixed. SM Alpha 14 included. Version history included.
1.0.2 : BGChange errors in a few songs fixed. Still had corrupt installer.
1.0.1 : Same version number, but the Stepmania installer got corrupted when burned. Only the
guest artists received this copy.
1.0.1 : Version of game released at Katsucon '04.
1.0.0 : First copy of game. Unreleased.
