osu!mapping: DS origins

talking with Gens about old maps and how the original DS games were relevant to mapping
full interview: • Gens full interview
Gens's profile: osu.ppy.sh/u/2...
twitter: / pishifat
patreon: / pishifat
other:
first clip is from osu's anime expo panel
genshaze.blogsp...
ds clips are from "Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2"
maps referenced:
Kawano Marina - Sono Koe o Oboeteru (TV Size) by Alexsander: osu.ppy.sh/s/7...
Yoshio Nomura - Lunchtime Blues by Gens: osu.ppy.sh/b/3...
Yamajet feat. Hiura Masako - Sunglow by celerih: osu.ppy.sh/s/7...
Sweet - Hell Raiser by m980: osu.ppy.sh/b/4...
Ai Otsuka - Sakuranbo by Echo: osu.ppy.sh/s/80
Beck - Timebomb by IcePagoda: osu.ppy.sh/s/43
The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony by Gens: osu.ppy.sh/s/3222
The Fray - How to Save a Life by Larto: osu.ppy.sh/s/3223
OK Go - WTF? by m980: osu.ppy.sh/b/7...
Queen - Don't Stop Me Now by m980: osu.ppy.sh/s/5381
My Chemical Romance - The Sharpest Lives by mm201: osu.ppy.sh/b/7...
Suzuki Konomi - My Days by Sonnyc: osu.ppy.sh/s/8...
MINMI - Shiki no Uta (TV Size) by deetz: osu.ppy.sh/s/8...
Susumu Hirasawa - Pacific Rim Imitation Network by Gens: osu.ppy.sh/b/1...
IOSYS - Cirno's Perfect Math Class by James: osu.ppy.sh/b/2...
Brandy - Cross Time by FFFanatic: osu.ppy.sh/s/85
ISHIDA YOKO - COLORFUL BOX (TV Size) by pishifat: osu.ppy.sh/s/6...
Beck - E-Pro by Gens: osu.ppy.sh/s/1...
Sakaue Nachi - End of Daylight by James: osu.ppy.sh/b/6...
FF7 Original Soundtrack - Crazy Motorcycle Chase by James: osu.ppy.sh/s/1961
Hatsune Miku - Rolling Girl by NatsumeRin: osu.ppy.sh/s/1...
Megpoid GUMI - Poker Face by Pokie: osu.ppy.sh/b/8...
Nobuo Uematsu - Fight Against Culex by Gens: osu.ppy.sh/b/3...
Camellia - Exit This Earth's Atomosphere by rrtyui: osu.ppy.sh/b/1...
Pegboard Nerds x MisterWives - Coffins by NeilPerry: osu.ppy.sh/s/8...
Trial & Error - Tokoyami no keiyaku KEGARETA-SHOUJO feat. GUMI by Natsu: osu.ppy.sh/s/7...
Kano - Ama no Jaku by Kalibe & Irohas: osu.ppy.sh/b/1...
OK Go - Crash The Party by m980: osu.ppy.sh/b/6...
Saosin - Collapse by pishifat: osu.ppy.sh/b/7...
JIN ft. Matsuyama Kouta (BYEE the ROUND) - Lost Time Memory by Kalibe & schoolboy: osu.ppy.sh/b/1...

[@DeanHerbertMooCow]

An interesting tidbit: a lot of the iNiS philosophy made it through to osu!stream. if you have an iOS device and haven't yet, check it out. Mappers behind that include many mentioned in this video (mm201, Gens, m980, larto, RandomJibberish and more i've likely forgotten)

[@Sammm30]

Dean Herbert hi ppy

[@mao4219]

D33d

[@Kidblaybee]

Wow, I haven't heard anyone mention osu!stream in years. That was what initially got me into osu!

[@DeanHerbertMooCow]

nice :)

[@dest0nic532]

Oh yeah OSU!stream omg that's right

[@HoundBlueDragon]

Expanding on what was said on the video, around 2009-2011 there was a huge rivalry between iNiS-based mappers (mostly Larto, NotShinta, RandomJibberish and a bunch of others) and Chinese mappers (NatsumeRin, ignorethis, I believe soulfear and a few others as well). It was basically the difference described in the video. While the first group was pretty traditionalist and followed closely iNiS's style when mapping and ranking maps, Chinese mappers wanted more freedom when mapping, breaking free from symmetry and proper structure, on what could be called the first "gimmick" maps. This led to a lot of drama because of such disagreements - think of it as the way gimmick maps get ranked nowadays. They were deemed unacceptable by traditionalists, and there was even a rule set in place where you couldn't have more than 3 different slider velocities in the ranking criteria, so these kinds of maps would be barred from ranking. Eventually, people started to figure out that the Chinese mappers were just prioritizing gameplay instead of purely following aesthetics, structure and basic rhythm, and enjoyed their maps more than they'd enjoy an authentic iNiStyle map. This led to a lot of mappers taking notes from them, especially early russian mappers like La Cataline, I believe. This rivalry was a huge point in osu! mapping, being the breaking point where osu! strayed away from its DS game roots and the maps started taking more of a different identity. Great video as always, good to see Gens around and I hope to see more old map content as well :)

[@Siearben]

As an official Larto, I take a little bit of offense if you imply my mapping was traditionalist and didn't try to break rules :D

[@Siearben]

Also, from my perspective, the rivalry never really was about the mapping styles. At least I always had a huge amount of respect for the mapping styles of ignorethis, v2b, darrihuka, James and all those freestyle mappers. And whenever there was a push to gain more creative possibilities in mapping, like the usage of more slider speeds, I believe the "English mappers" if that's what you wanna call them, were always fairly supportive. I would've killed for more slider speeds back then :D I guess it is also important how other people perceived that time, so I'm not saying that you're wrong, but that is how I remember it. If there was one thing we were adamant in hating, it was those fucking anime intro, low-effort TV size maps, and all the bullshit people who jumped on popular song trains. That's where my "Awesome Apple" map found inspiration, because at one point in time, the five most played maps were five bad apple maps. That is one thing we sincerely despised, but I'm not sure whether these famous figures in the Chinese mapping community took part in that.

[@ATjfds]

@@Siearben I don't really know about that period of time, but in 13-15 the mapping community was really against the Chinese style (I still remember the drama when they ranked the first Hollow Wings map lmao) which is considered nowadays as a normal or slightly gimmicky map.

[@HoundBlueDragon]

hey, Larto! I included you in the group because I recall you being around in #modhelp with these other mappers. You were probably the only one there who managed to clash both kinds of mapping styles in a nice way, but I really can't forget all the drama over Still Doll (don't kill mappers' spirits). Maybe it was just my perception, but I really remember this being a heated discussion over the differences in mapping styles between eastern and western mappers.

[@GensHaze]

omg Larto

[@lCharles445l]

yooo it's Gens Can't add much after Mismagius in here, but if you're looking for some underrated iNiS style stuff, go check out DiamondCrash's maps, they're pretty good

[@mjzpeanut]

lCharles445l why tf u here lol

[@l1mi13]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/a2SznHmCp7BrjdU I remember this.. ^^ Ancient mapping tutorials, maybe Pishi can learn something from it... it goes red white red white and its very simple. You need to remap that Liquid map by the way, the rhythm is terrible.

[@M4TTYN]

*DL's some to remembers playing the girls generation map back in 2012 before.... dropping osu! till mid 2018 to i'm hooked* on my old account

[@crikhard]

this interview was a lot better paced than the others. good work.

[@Flux3on]

I messaged Gens a couple of months ago asking him what he thought of my map and he said he loved it and it just about made me cry 🥺 Gens has been one of my biggest inspirations honestly

[@shinkopls6120]

I feel like inis mapping style was more suitable for rhythm games as it was clear to read and simple to concentrate on rhythm. But as we separated further from that style we made osu less about rhythm and more about aiming. This is actually pretty cool as the first formula was pretty easy to abuse with just memorizing every map, but now you actually need more experience to play them. I am now really interested in how future maps will look like because popularity of technical maps is growing and maybe someday farm maps will be played less often and *even* dead for the most part of the community

[@Bobbias]

Having played EBA, I can say that I feel like inis mapping is good as an introduction to mapping and playing, but I feel that the style begins to fall flat when you head towards higher difficulties. I'm sure there are ways to retain the simplicity on very hard maps, but it seems like it would be overly limiting. I feel like nearly every rhythm game that was based on an existing commercial game but spawned its own community, such as osu, lr2, o2jam, ddr, itg, etc. have gone through similar changes in style as people stop trying to imitate the original official charts and experiment with new techniques and approaches.

[@xXSpikeMLPXx]

ouendan 1 and 2 i think have more dynamic mapping for higher difficulties bc i enjoy those far more than elite beat agents

[@Bobbias]

@@xXSpikeMLPXx I actually never got a chance to play ouendan. I would have liked to see how they compare but somehow never checked them out.

[@fluxie31_old]

@@Bobbias ouendan 2 is certainly that way for many songs. Ouendan 1 has Shanghai Honey which probably has the best top difficulty in the entire series.

[@hypercyte]

r-r-t-y-u-i : )

[@SCRedstone]

u-y-g-h-t-i

[@opposite342]

q-w-q

[@AbileWiratmaka]

ruruchi

[@s0m3guy]

:(

[@ZeldaMstr109]

THIS VIDEO MAKES ME HAPPY. THANK YOU PISHI AND GENS.

[@asmylia9880]

Nacht 100 origins when?

[@gdash6925]

Already done

[@nullset2]

Something that I think should be mentioned is that iNiS mapping style is meant to evoke the movements and/or feelings of an ouendan band (or a group of cheerleaders/secret agents in the EBA case I guess). The whole theme of you acting as a group of cheerleaders forms an emotional connection with the player towards the characters you're trying to help, which is a big part of the charm of the original games. The quirky visuals plus meaningful mapping is what sets the Ouendan games apart from anything else in the rhythm game market. Sad that it's been lost to time and that it's more of a byproduct of the fact the original games were meant for touch devices such as the DS instead of PC with mouse movements. I appreciate that both of you recorded this because I wish more people embraced the iNiS style!

[@BusterBeachside]

I'm surprised none of the top comments are mocking the way he pronounces "OH-SOO", TBH. :p Honestly, I stopped playing the game years ago because I seemed to hit a plateau where I just couldn't seem to get better at the game, and seeing replays from amazing players like Cookiezi easily FCing maps that I would have thought were stupidly impossible ("How does this crap even get ranked!?") really made me feel inadequate as a player. It also didn't help when we switched from the "Ranked Score" system to PP. I would always go up a little bit when I made a new PB on a song, and that felt good. It kept me playing. But with PP, sometimes (In fact, most of the time, it felt like) I would apparently get nothing at all from it. To keep on-topic, I was a HUGE fan of EBA when it came out, and actually found osu! by doing a Google search for an EBA fan game one day. I even used a flash card to play the two Japan-only releases, and I played all three games TO DEATH. So I think the overall more complicated style of maps in osu! really threw me off at times. It's one of those situations where I THOUGHT I was good at this game, but then I go online, and for some reason all of these songs I just downloaded are apparently "humanly impossible". But lo and behold, there is the list of top scores, and thousands of people have cleared it, and with mods that increase the difficulty to boot. Many times, I've broken a combo just because the map was confusing, or the objects overlapped, so I didn't quite see it hiding underneath that slider, etc. And obviously, a lot of my screw-ups were completely on me. But on MANY occasions, I felt like the map was out to get me. Having complicated patterns and unintuitive timings with the song in an attempt to just throw me off and make me have to start over if I want a halfway decent score on the map. And don't get me started on maps with high drain rate and really long, slow sliders. I used to call those "fail-bait" (Get it, like jail-bait, hahahaha) because if your HP was low enough when they occured, it didn't matter if you hit the slider perfectly, it wouldn't restore enough health to keep up with the drain rate, so you'de fail the map when you weren't even making a mistake. I always found that incredibly frustrating. But of course, the community didn't listen to me when I complained about the issue, because all the big mappers were gods who could not be touches, and questioning their decisions was tantamount to heresy, and what would I know, I've never even gotten a single map approved. Yeah, hopefully that part of the community is less toxic and more welcoming to new mappers than it was back in 2010. I remember the degenerate cycle of well-known mappers getting ranked within a few days of submitting a new map, while new mappers (Like me) had to go out of their way to find an open modding queue in the forum or advertising their maps in the Bancho chat room just to get anyone to look at their maps, lest they sit there dormant until the system decided to put them in Graveyard. It wasn't all bad memories with the game obviously, but I feel like the perfect storm of things occured that drove me away. I still open up the game from time to time just for nostalgia, or to test out a new mouse I just got, and I still follow Peppy on Twitter to keep up with the game and Lazer's development, but I dunno. I just became disenchanted with the game at some point. Felt like I was getting nothing out of playing. I mean, it's one thing to play the game itself just for the fun of it. But the reason I got HOOKED was for the feeling of progress with every new best score, every new height that I reached. When I lost that, I tried my hand at mapping and got ignored (You ever notice how people will tell you to "Get better at (insert thing here) before trying again, but not tell you what you did wrong, or WHY they are sayign what you did was wrong?) Yeesh. Apologies for the rant. I guess I shoudl organize my thoughts on this and at least make my own video or something, just to put this to bed for myself. xD LOL

[@celestewa9410]

pishi is the goat

[@ehsan_kia]

Fantastic videos. Underrated content, such a shame these videos get so little attention.

[@JayKayVe]

This is one of the videos that I've wanted to see for a while :)

[@leinad6080]

Who else played ouendan before osu when osu was out already?

[@purrplaysLE]

Daniel Lee Me...

[@asleftdown]

i feel so educated

[@seancascone]

OUENDON IS MY FAVORITE WAIFU

[@BocuD]

Idk of its just me but i’m really loving this guys cursor dancing

[@remixtheidiot5771]

Can't wait for cytoid to reach this stage of the creators. In the meantime this has actually invigorated me to finally start making osu! maps as well. Can't wait to see how it will turn out. Or spin...

[@KungFuPanda1223]

oh FUCK ELITE BEAT AGENT - MY GATEWAY DRUG INTO OSU

[@p3pgamingofficial]

Still have my ds and my cartridge of EBA in my closet (:

[@MrAlexsfs]

Ooh, this should be interesting! Edit: It was!

[@nel2670]

Don't stop me now was the first map I ever downloaded

[@Fynbi]

do you remember the 21st night of september

[@crotin-hd4dk]

My master, the Holy Gens, finally spoke :D

[@mtimes02]

Yeet old maps are objectively good

[@KatouMegumiosu]

someone make an eba romback with osu mapping meta

[@CharmanteEstPris]

Yea pls

[@KungFuPanda1223]

double stylus streaming

[@ChorusKids]

NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. DON'T MAKE SUCH A AMAZING GAME SUFFER LIKE THAT.

[@texnonik]

its 2 weeks :thinking:

[@can-sg6fi]

i actually plyed eba on my black ds when it first came out :))

[@endsu]

okay. this is epic

[@Krix08]

huh, one day ago

[@dragonfang7833]

Take a sip everytime he says OSU wrong

[@nullset2]

the intro itself says "WELCOME TO OZZ!" and that's how it's actually pronounced in Japanese!

[@nfqs]

this was made 2 days ago

[@nathanchocomint]

7:27 All of those map tho

[@normalhumanbeing6066]

How does youtube allow you to have that profile pic smh

[@nathanchocomint]

Probably because of the fact that there is more than 1 billion youtube users and youtube does not have the time to check one by one

[@normalhumanbeing6066]

@@nathanchocomint lmao nice

[@Flux3on]

@@nathanchocomint wysi

[@madeyoulook5689]

Does anyone who watches these videos actually map?

[@Yuriko69]

yes, pishi does

[@xXTheZ3R0Xx]

i do :o

[@relicer01]

Yes

[@MarcoBrolo727]

Yes

[@memememegaming]

nice ds

[@wozza_dev]

i get flamed so hard in multi because I put on old school maps I appreciate .-.

[@災厄-b9o]

Because it's not fun to play map you fail.

[@Flux3on]

@@災厄-b9o skill issue

[@AncientGod]

How do you get bo1 zombies working for dolphin emulator?

[@toniopurp]

Where’s the nacht 100 vid

[@gir0853]

skin link plz

[@user-kw8rw2yk4t]

yay

[@smokeman2645]

Y'all need to learn how to make lower diffs more engaging

[@Gibbysaurio]

Oh Smokeman, your honor, best mapper to ever exist, the man, the myth, the legend, the circle clicker, please enlighten us plebians on how to map to satisfy your righteous needs.

[@Daster131]

I have no idea what your saying

[@gmnmd]

old maps are the best maps confirmed

[@CharmanteEstPris]

Old maps kudosu farm maps confirmed

[@mikeymladi9279]

old maps pp maps confirmed O_O

[@takemegravity]

What is his skin?

[@wrongwayscout]

!!!

[@rainrunya]

oh wow im early

[@mystith]

bro same

[@sneakitriki]

orininal games

[@emrep98]

110 like 0 dislikes niceeee

[@TheKevinGDX]

727 Likes :)

[@Khora]

000

[@bananya6020]

lol osu

[@thatyummytofu]

Wow. iNiS to me is a terrible beatmapper and dev. Here are the reasons: 1. Low approach rate. I wanted to be in a high approach rate to make beatmaps more fun and harder. 2. Only following vocals. Normal osu!mappers do only like putting circles wherever they are. Like (e.g. The Big Black)

[@Flux3on]

You missed the whole point of this video. The whole purpose of iNiS and iNiS style is, in the words of m980, to "create a neat presentable map accessible to as many players as possible (i.e. being 'fair' for newbies), which unfortunately means you'll be restricted in terms of making hard maps." It's not something that's flexible. Despite this, iNiS managed to create three really sick games, which are literally the reason osu even exists. If it weren't for iNiS, peppy wouldn't have created osu.

[@woobyy]

orihinal

[@maplelilysofia9329]

roblox is worse

[@solitaire836]

aaaaa another 2 week gap looking forward to the video tho