irl-events

SOUND VOLTEX EXCEED GEAR Location Test Summary (Part 1)

A summary of information we know about the first SOUND VOLTEX EXCEED GEAR location test from 2020-09-04 to 2020-09-06.

Latchal

• 3 min read
SOUND VOLTEX EXCEED GEAR Location Test Summary (Part 1)

Note: There is no part 2 to this post. Other location tests happened for EXCEED GEAR but summaries were not made for them.

The first location test for the sixth installment of SOUND VOLTEX occurred during 2020-09-04 to 2020-09-06 at GAMEシルクハット川崎ダイス (GAME SILK HAT Kawasaki DICE).

Below is a collection of tweets that summarise the location test experience.

Firstly we have a new cabinet type: Valkyrie model.

  • Similar to IIDX's LIGHTNING MODEL, there's a touch-screen interface and the monitor is 120Hz. The touch screen lets you configure options and search for songs.
  • There's a new S-CRITICAL judgement which is tighter, similar to DDR's Marvelous. This makes it harder to get theoretical maximum scores, likely as a response to Konami's shift to focusing on e-sports.
  • The cabinet uses a quad speaker system.

More detailed feature list:

  • EXCEED START: allows the use of the S-CRITICAL judgement. Other than that, it appears to be like STANDARD START (no level restriction, ARS allowed, guaranteed three songs).
  • When S-CRITICAL is present, an EX score will be displayed, similar to IIDX.
  • MEGAMIX START: lets you use the MEGAMIX BATTLE system between two players. If matching fails it falls back to EXCEED START. See the MEGAMIX BATTLE page for additional details.
  • Song search uses a Japanese kana keyboard and searches for both title and artist.

Here is the touch screen in action. Note that SOUND VOLTEX has some rather unusual official song name pronunciations, which can make search for these songs somewhat tricky...

OTAQUEST notes the amount of Valkyrie theming around the cab.

A comparison of the top-down view between the new and old SDVX models:

Here is a list of new songs and (tentative) difficulties:

Song Artist Difficulties
Air SHIKI 6 / 13 / 16 / 18
*ハロー、プラネット。 sasakure.UK 3 / 9 / 14 / 16
Bad Elixir xi 6 / 13 / 16 / 18
Destr0yer 削除 feat. Nikki Simmons 5 / 12 / 14 / 17
門門しましょ ビートまりお（COOL&CREATE） 4 / 10 / 14 / 17
緋色月下、狂咲ノ絶 EastNewSound 4 / 11 / 15 / 17
キラメキ居残り大戦争 森羅万象 5 / 12 / 15 / 17

You can see the new song select screen above, which is reminiscent of SDVX BOOTH.

Everyone likes to joke about Joyeuse VVD, but its fate is still unclear since reratings happen at launch:

The results display screen is relatively minimal. Here you can see where S-CRITICAL and EX score fit in.

Below is an animation of EXCEED GEAR RASIS (official name unclear):

Here are some play videos. The knobs and left/right warning indicators look a bit different, and FX chips are noticeably red.

There were also some cards available for printing from Card Connect to celebrate the location test:

See also