ITG @ 505: The Guide

If you’re coming from DDR, the short of it is to “unlearn” stepping as wide and as hard. My only other advice might be to play with socks – trust me, once you “get” it, you’ll want to start bringing the habit back to DDR!

Since the cab lockdown in 2025 (and with P2’s recent IO problem), P1 has been tweaked to be suitable for mid-level gameplay, so it hasn’t been as sensitive as it had before.

If the online events and the cab’s song libraries hint at anything, it’s that ITG can get very demanding, so optimal form is a non-negotiable. With the former cab, we had a high-level (25s, 26s) player who claims ↑ requires so much effort to trigger that he had to stop after one credit to prevent injury.

>it’s always form issue

It indeed is!

Outside of having an interesting history and its unique condition that has recently been sorted – both stories for another time – it’s currently unplayable due to needing a significant amount of time that the panel needs to be held down for before the input actually counts.

The tech has told me he plans to look for a replacement IO board to see if that solves the problem, but as of the beginning of March 2026 he’s still sorting that out.

Solution: Try restarting by unplugging the power cable and putting it back in. Staff rarely checks the back rhythm game section for problems, so if you happen to find it acting strange, it’s faster for you to solve the issue yourself.

The game will remember your credits across exiting/power cycles, so you don’t have to worry about losing them. If they are lost for whatever reason, you can ask one of the front staff to get them to reimburse the lost credits.

If you’ve found a way to replicate crashing the game, let me know. Example: one time there was apparently a pack (which nobody really plays) that StepMania didn’t like, so I just moved it out.

If you notice the cab in some weird state for whatever strange reason (say, a command line terminal, or there’s open windows in the operating system) I’d also appreciate a picture because who doesn’t like meme material.

I’ve tried to do a thing (systemd process) where the game will automatically restart if it crashes, but the catch is when that happens there’s no audio. Plug pulling is the easiest and most hassle-free answer as of now, albeit not elegant.

There’s been a sighting of the swipers stuck on a white screen that once affected maimai and ITG, and restarting didn’t seem to do the trick.

Unfortunately, although a given, the swiper’s not under my control.

Solution: Wait a few minutes, if the cabinet’s just booted up. I’ve encountered the swiper just on a blank screen instead of having its usual startup messages, and then after about 3 minutes it worked.

Otherwise, try doing a power cycle for good measure in the event the swiper choked starting up. If that still doesn’t solve the problem, it’s probably a crediting system issue, in which case the best thing you can do is report it to the staff so they can escalate it to the tech. Keep in mind the staff at 505 are CityHeroes people, so they probably have no clue how to fix Koko issues themselves!

Not a problem on my end. The bottleneck to getting content on the cab these days is the fact that the PC is quite heavily locked down, and requests to change anything must now go through the higher-ups.

Solution: Request away using my enquiry form and selecting Content Updates. If a song pack is somewhere publicly available, mentioning the name should suffice, though I’d always appreciate a link.

So long as it’s actually for the pad, and appropriately rated, it should be fine. If it’s obvious that it’s a keyboard chart, or there’s unresolvable low-quality stuff, there isn’t much incentive to put it on as nobody’s going to enjoy it.

However, if it’s your content and you just want it on for pad testing, that’s cool as well. It’ll likely go in the AUS Junk folder for miscellaneous stuff unless you’ve made an entire pack (whoa okay, mad respect). Us regulars here are always happy to playtest and review!

ECS is​ highly unlikely, or not advised:

• For the main individual ​event, the cab’s lockdown means I don’t have easy access to the PC to copy data to/from.
• For both events,​ you will be disadvantaged time-wise​ with Raw Output as you will have to cycle through the menus of the standard 3-stage credit.​​​ Koko would preferably not go through the trouble of figuring out how much hiring out a cab for 4 hours to an individual would cost.​

Otherwise, sure:

• ITL: In the Advanced Modifiers page of the settings menu (accessible by hitting enter twice upon selecting a song), enable all three options under FA+ Options for the best experience. Then, at the results screen, press ◀ or ▶ a few times (left takes less keypresses) until you see a QR code. Scan that, log in to GrooveStats if you haven’t yet, and your score should submit.
• SRPG: Same idea with the QR code feature.

The issue with LEDs is that apparently they depend on the original lights working. P1 ←’s connection looks busted, and P2 ↑’s input strobes when connected to the LIT board.

FSRs aren’t high on my priority list. If you want to crowdfund an FSRio and its sensors, I’m totally down, but then I’d have to consider how to interface the sensitivity controls – which means drilling panels for touch screens, getting them set up with Linux, then developing and testing. At the very least, I’d need a fair bit of help.

Actually, the PC’s set up for it and ready to go, but

• I’d need to drill a hole in the cab, and that’s a very low priority thing for Koko
• Random people can plug in input devices (keyboard, mouse, rubber ducky) and mess around with the system

It’s easier to send me your songs to put onto the machine itself.

Yep. It’s because the screen was replaced with an arcade-purposed one that has an outer steel shell, so HDMI access isn’t available any more. That essentially strips the entire value of live streaming.

That’s also not to mention that, naturally, the 3.5mm audio jack for line out is locked behind the cab as well.

In the early 2010s, there was a DDR SuperNOVA2 cab next to the cinemas at Timezone (today, it’s a Koko, but today today, it’s turned into an extension of CityHeroes). After upgrading to DDR X, it was converted to ITG, and when the PC started to die out I was responsible for organising and setting up the new one. Our crew used to come out frequently to keep the pads working in top condition, and I organised a few competitions back in the day.

Timezone changed to iPlay, and in their final days, that cab was moved to Broadway Happydays (now iPlay), then subsequently went missing for several months. We thought with that was the end of an era for ITG here in Sydney, but thankfully we found it again at an iPlay all the way out in Edmondson Park. Nobody really goes there unless you happen to live near the area, so the pad’s been in a pretty bad condition. The last time I went there was to update the machine with ECS 10.5, but it’s unlikely I’ll ever have the opportunity to mod them given I personally know nobody at that venue.

Wanting to keep ITG in the city alive, I took an opportunity to purchase a DDR 5th Mix cabinet from a private owner who wanted it gone ASAP. As I had no space at all in my lift-less apartment, I decided to keep the cab at Koko and make it the next quality public ITG with the intention to sell it to them – which meant I had to get it in an “arcade ready” condition.

Update: As of 22/8/23, the cabinet is now theirs. We’ve made an agreement that I can continue to work on the pads as I’ve all this time.

What “arcade ready” means depends on how lenient you are. If you’re willing to overlook the lights not functioning properly (the Edmondson Park cab wasn’t either) or the PC occasionally rocking up some cursed states, the cab’s practically working the same as the old one.

By the way, I’ve never worked for any arcade (as floor staff or dedicated technician), and it’s not my intention to. You could call me a “freelance” volunteer who only wants to vibrate on good pads and help enable others to as well. If you insist, you can shout me some fud instead idk 🥣🍻

Software/Hardware:

• Ubuntu 22.04
• ITGmania 1.0.2 (built from source, unsure of commit hash)
• Simply Love 5.6.1 that I’ve slightly modified
• J-PAC, and LIT Board (not in use)

PC Specs:

• Intel i5-4690 6MB 4.10 GHz
• NVIDIA RTX 2060 (yep)
• SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB SATA III SSD (unsure of size and model, currently used for WIP/current tournament packs)
• Seagate 2TB SATA III HDD (for most songs where the pack has been finalised)
• 16GB DDR3-1333
• Logitech Z-2300 2.1 Speakers
• Arcade purposed LG 43” @ 1080p60 (formerly Hisense 43” A7G @ 4K60)

• Betson SN2
• Intel NUC, i5-7260U 4MB 3.40 GHz
• Intel 760p 256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD
• Patriot 4GB DDR4-2133
• Retrofitted Panasonic 40” TH-40FS500A @ 1080p60

In 2025, the SSD started to fail. After a few failed attempts to try to mitigate the issue, Koko has decided in May to start afresh with a new installation of Ubuntu 22.04. Whilst I have managed to replicate most of the things from the previous installation, there are some issues left to address:

• Missing song packs from whatever was on the old SSD​. Generally, these are the ​newer (e.g. current events) or WIP packs
• USB polling not forced to 1 ms/1000 Hz, which may affect your scores in-game
• ​No score tracker for stream setups (requires .NET runtime, nginx, ufw, and other hosting packages). However, this doesn’t matter any more since the cab now isn’t in a suitable state to stream from
• Hotspot functionality not set up yet (e.g. SSH access to the cab if the screen doesn’t work, etc)
• No ​FSR configuration software for BYO pads, etc

The pads have undergone various tweaks since I last worked on them in August 2024. I’ve gone through and done a major re-tape, getting P1 back to a pretty decent condition, P2 less so due to the input lag issue.

P2 ↑ has been completely re-taped, removing our unique card raiser setup. Preliminary testing for sensitivity shows it is just as good, if not slightly even better. No more quick sensitivity tweaking via screw micro-adjustments, unfortunately.

Pad issues can be found in the section below.

Content

• A fair amount of more recent folders are missing due to the busted SSD from last year. I have consolidated the missing stuff, and am now just waiting for a suitable time from Koko to copy them back on.
• The most recent DDR content (as specified in the New Content section below) hasn’t been recached. It’s on there, though.

Pads

• The P2 ↑ input issue, as mentioned at the top of the guide and in various sections.
• P1 ↓ may stick, especially during song select, but with a bit of kicking the panel around it should work fine whilst playing.
• P1 ← and ↑ appear to be comparatively insensitive, more so with ↑.

Updates

• DDR SuperNOVA (RED ZONE CSP, etc)
• DDR 2014
• DDR A
• DDR A3 (Concertino in Blue)
• DDR WORLD (Roll the Dice)

I also relinked the HDD to ITGmania, so a lot of packs that were missing are now back. Despite that, you’ll notice there’s a fair few obvious packs (Sharpnel, SMASH! etc) still not there yet due to the loss of the old SSD’s contents.

I’ve already consolidated the missing content from my personal backups; just need to wait for a suitable time on Koko’s end to update it.

• [23 Jan 24] 5.1 converts of OG mod charts
• [31 Jan 24] Shpadoinkle’s new tech pack series, whenever it shows up on the sheet
• [31 Jan 24] Reinstate missing songs from Dingoshi Ramen 2
• [ 9 Jun 24] ITL 2024’s Polybius to be put in “Pass 6” folder, and renamed to “Pass 6+”
• [20 Mar 25] kpoop
• [ May 25] All unlocks of ITL 2025. This involves me participating and unlocking them all myself, so it’ll take a while.