DDR, the 9th year

A 680k on Glitch Angel CSP.

A 674k on Deep Tendon Reflex CSP (yes but the sliders...it's easy to get better scores in subsequent tries).

A 717k on Bitter Chocolate Strike CSP.

A 680k on Cyberconnect CSP.

What happened?

Konami it clearly the one to blame so FYK! The trend of charts assuming the use of gold cabs is so concerning and basically a f u to those with access to the old cabs only. Those bracket jumps and crazy crossovers are getting out of control. Those jumps in Bitter Chocolate Strike as a level 17 or the vertical streams in The World Ends Now as a level 18 (another 18 that I can't pass right now, after Avengers) is unimaginable in the past. 

You may say well you still passed those at the end. A low score at first or second attempt is common as you reserve energy or got hit by surprises. And you get 700k-ish scores at those levels occasionally anyway, so what's the deal?

Well, I am stuck with a second generation cab. I had some experience with the same cab ~8 years ago and I thought it was broken enough, but now when I am stuck with it again in 2023 this is even tougher.

The problem with these old cabs is their CRT monitor that loses luminosity and color over time. Darker screens always make things harder no doubt, but if it's dark to the point you can't read at all then there is no point of talking about these. Colors however is a bigger problem when you are standing there thinking play or not to play. In my case, the screen is particularly bad in blue color.

There are a few notes options out there, but the two more common ones are "rainbow" and "note" where colors are assigned to the type of ticks it's on. For "rainbow" the color of the arrows slightly differs but they will all be bluish in part of the flashing cycle. "Note" however is another story. All 8th(1/2) notes are flat blue meaning that all 8th notes are almost gone, or at least very hard to read.

I found myself playing up to level 15 without any problem. On one hand you can read those hard-to-read notes with enough time to spare, but on the other hand you can simply skip those just like how you skip unwanted stuffs during your warm up. It clearly fails at higher level with much narrower time frame and less room for error.

When I was first stuck with this cab I thought "note" to be the better option. The blue arrows in "note" being damn hard to read, still leave  shadows on the screen and you can fill the rest with your common sense. That's how I completed a bunch of new level 17s: Bitter Chocolate Strike, Deep Tendon Reflex...

But then I feel like 8ths being an essential part of the chart and being unable to read them properly is really a big disadvantage so I switched to "rainbow". Here I passed Gltich Angle and Cyberconnect but at a much lower score.

Is "rainbow" really a better option? After trying it out yesterday my conclusion is that your condition is more important than the settings. Both renders some notes unreadable but at a good condition you can read better in both options. And when you are feeling well you can easily go for the optimal speed, otherwise at a lower speed chart reading is even harder.

Speaking of chart speed, it's clear that the gold cabs works entirely different than the white (4th gen) ones. On the white I am using BPM450 boost (~=BPM 650-700), but on gold I have to use BPM400 boost (the aimed speed when I did 9-dan). Now with the crappy 2nd gen cab I can only do BPM 350 boost. But they won't adjust anything particular for the old cabs right? Are they adjusting the speed for all generation (got to admit I haven't played 4th gen cab for a while)? The chart should look the same if it's an universal adjustment (i.e. if the arrows flows 1.1x faster then the old BPM450 would look like the new BPM400, but the distance between arrows are actually the same). I can feel that on gold cab (otherwise no way for me to pass 9-dan), but not on the crappy cab.

Still, fitness is more important and I really should play more, even when I can't pass lv18s with bad cabs...

(Interestingly I just realized I complained the same thing half years ago, in Chinese. But I didn't even bother to do 17 or 18s at the time.)