In 2002, DDR Extreme came out in arcades with a promise that "we're starting over." Two years later, DDR Extreme was still the latest release, and the Japanese home version seemed to indicate Extreme was going to be the last one after all. Americans were still playing DDR, and eventually someone decided to step up and make something for those decaying DDR cabinets. Okay, maybe they weren't decaying, but that was what it felt like at the time.
The biggest thing In The Groove had was harder charts than the ones featured in DDR Extreme. Most songs have an Expert difficulty where 9s are the lowest and 13 is the highest. The songlist is okay, mostly focusing towards western indie techno rather than the Europop/J-Pop of DDR with a few oddball choices like the Penny Arcade theme. There are also some pretty unique charts, some more infamous than others (e.g. Utopia Expert). This would all lead to the even better In The Groove 2.
The PS2 port does suffer from some long load times, but is otherwise a near exact port of the arcade game with all the songs with some In The Groove 2 songs as unlockables.
The biggest thing In The Groove had was harder charts than the ones featured in DDR Extreme. Most songs have an Expert difficulty where 9s are the lowest and 13 is the highest. The songlist is okay, mostly focusing towards western indie techno rather than the Europop/J-Pop of DDR with a few oddball choices like the Penny Arcade theme. There are also some pretty unique charts, some more infamous than others (e.g. Utopia Expert). This would all lead to the even better In The Groove 2.
The PS2 port does suffer from some long load times, but is otherwise a near exact port of the arcade game with all the songs with some In The Groove 2 songs as unlockables.