This section covers a basic history of the dance machine project and how it came into existence.
Great Yarmouth
Great Yarmouth in Norfolk is very much a typical British “summer holidays” town where most of the activity occurs during the year’s summer months and a few of the autumn months.
The most common entertainment avaliable is in the form of amusement arcades that have various machines to play on, such as the more common, from fruit machines to penny pushers, to the more select, such as various arcade versions of video games. Dance machines are reasonably common in Great Yarmouth, along it’s Marine Parade, the options varying from Konami’s Dancing Stage/Dance Dance Revolution franchise to RoXor’s In The Groove upgrade.
From this, a few local dance machine enthusiasts managed to get permission to start setting up a dedicated fan-made dance machine in one of the local arcades in Great Yarmouth – a custom and voluntarily made dance machine aimed at the enthusiasts like ourselves.
arceast’s New Cabinet
Wellian has done so much work towards a previous fan-made dance machine that was owned by the Magic City as well as paid work with Positive Gaming towards their iDance project… this is where his experience comes from for advising potentially good simfilers as well as working on maintaining the dance machine for Gold Rush. Arceast are interested in making an enjoyable game that members of the public can enjoy and maybe even join in our obsession.
Arceast’s dance machine project uses a Japanese 7th mix Konami cabinet owned by the Gold Rush arcade. Elias, the main owner, was more than happy to let us customise his machine, his brother George even helping us pay for the parts required to set it up properly.
Arceast’s key interest is in making a great dance game for fans by fans as strictly part of a voluntary or hobby project. Arceast is interested in encouraging original simfile making, as well as encouraging artists to contribute their free to use music and artwork – it’s all what the project is about. It’s not exactly like when you post your work up on to sites like Bemanistyle and just get a rating from the obsessive fanboys/girls, your work can possibly be played in a public place, on an arcade pad, by anyone who may be interested.
Anyone can potentially play their favourite songs – any works made for the machine is not restricted to only “going on our machine project”. On that note, simfilists (or any other team member) are free to say that they don’t want their work on the machine. Wellian has had more than enough experience of that himself with the other project team so he will respect those wishes.
Shiny New Monitor
After some technical issues relating to the original monitor found in any typical dance machine cabinet while working on the machine, Elias took it upon himself to give the machine’s screen an impressive and custom upgrade. The cabinet now sports a very wide HD television screen attached securely to the front of the machine. It does look very impressive, so much that even now we can’t believe that is has become a reality. Considering how dance machines are being designed these days, this sort of move will keep the project up with the times.