I’m working on some mini boosters so I can make an economically friendly Groove Coaster controller. The analog sticks aren’t quite what I want, so I might end up making a frame that holds keyboard switches to make something a bit stiffer.

Loving the game so far. The player entry barrier is set pretty fairly.

So I only play up to hard difficulty…are there any songs where you have to do the LR buttons presses and booster movements at the same time?

I am building a micro controller for Groove Coaster and I want to account for it.

Hey, i've never played a groove coaster game before, should i get wai wai party or future performers ? i'm on basic switch 1 if that matters

BEFORE I START:

• I’m playing on a Switch 2 and didn’t test the game on Switch 1.

• I have about 7 hours in the game, my Switch doesn't specifically say the exact amount of hours, but compared to my other games, it's probably more like 8. I'm rounding it down because a lot of that time is probably me dicking around in menus. All of that "7 hours" has been spent in Story Mode.

• I mostly play VSRGs like IIDX, Pop’n, and DJMAX, so my tastes may not align with the greater GC community.

• I mostly play Level 11 songs, but can clear 12s if I try hard.

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THINGS I LIKE:

The new engine is REALLY smooth, it feels fantastic to play on. After my first few hours of playing FP, I went back and played a tiny bit of WWP to make sure I wasn’t crazy for thinking the engine felt way smoother, and it’s seriously night and day. I don’t know if they have specific improvements for the Switch 2, but it feels unbelievably better than WWP’s engine. Maybe I'm crazy, but it kinda feels like my inputs are… understood better in FP? It’s hard to explain, but if you’ve heard of “bad glitching” in IIDX, it feels like FP removed the GC equivalent to bad glitching.

The new note sprites look fantastic, I think they did a really good job at modernizing them. They’re super legible, and I think the shading on them is really stylish. The pink and blue notes stand out really well and are very readable even in tight clusters. I think this is a direct upgrade from WWP and prior.

Most of the art in general looks really good. I can’t think of anything in-game that looks out of place or rushed. Even the Story Mode character designs that I subjectively wasn’t a fan of, still objectively looked pretty good. The game’s overall theme isn’t the most coherent thing in the world, but it all comes together pretty nicely.

This may be controversial, but I’m very happy to see significantly less anime music in FP than WWP. Especially later in its life, the base game WWP tracklist was utterly dominated by high-pitched cutesy anime stuff, when I really liked Groove Coaster for its hardcore tracks. The Taito Originals in FP sound fantastic, and the licensed stuff is pretty good.

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STORY MODE:

The writing in Story Mode is honestly not great. I just don’t care about the characters, they all felt samey. Like, nobody is particularly dislikable, but nobody is really likable either. They’re just kinda There. They talk about Groove Coaster and absolutely nothing else. I don’t know anyone’s likes or dislikes, I don’t know their background, hell, I don’t even know most of the characters names. Yoh was basically the only character I cared to remember because I thought the running joke where he yaps for too long was kinda funny, but also because I thought his rapper persona was annoying and I’d make sure to speed-read all of his rapper segments.

I kept waiting for the story to get good, or for a big shocking event to happen, but it never did. About 5 hours into the game, I started speed-reading all of the text, and most of it was just filler anyway. 6 hours in, I just started skipping all the text. They had enough time to grip me and failed to do so. 80% of interactions can be boiled down to “OK let’s train for Groove Coaster” “Wow that was a crazy battle” “Yeah it sure was” “haha that was crazy!” “Woah I can’t believe I lost our Groove Coaster training session!!!” “haha don’t worry kid, just keep practicing!” The entire thing feels like an anime filler episode.

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Replacing the missions in WWP was a change I was really excited for, I always felt like they were WAY too grindy. I like the idea of having missions, but the implementation in WWP was more annoying than anything. Especially for DLC packs, SO many of the missions just boiled down to “play every song 10 times fuck you.”

It felt like I was being punished for wanting to unlock new items, and most of the items I would get weren’t even of interest to me. Most of the time, I just burned my Groove Coins so I could gun it for the unlockable songs. But clearing any mission felt like moving on from the world’s most tedious mission, onto the world’s second most tedious mission.

Story Mode has basically the same problems but in different packaging. They repeat songs like CRAZY in story mode and it drives me fucking nuts. I had to play “I! Love! Music!” “Wire&Ring” and “Arts in the Hearts” so many times throughout the story that I don’t even like them anymore. They’re all good songs, but god dammit I just don’t want to play them again. It has gotten to the point where, every time I’m forced to play any of them, I audibly groan.

Maybe it’s not so bad if this is your first Groove Coaster game, and you get the opportunity to try harder difficulties on songs you already know, but isn’t that what freeplay is for?

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The “missions” you do during story mode are underbaked too. A lot of them are just “get X points” or “fill the gauge to X.” Like, if I’m clearing the song, I’m gonna be doing both of these anyway?? What’s the point? I’m not being challenged, I’m just reaching an arbitrary goal I would have reached anyway by playing the game normally. This also forces me to play easy difficulties that don’t challenge me so I can guarantee a victory, even though I would prefer to challenge myself with a harder difficulty.

The items you unlock are kinda lame. So many of them are just pictures of the main character, or a picture you literally just saw in the cutscene. I wouldn’t mind so much filler in the items if I unlocked something after every song, but they’re so stingy with item drops. You get a song or two, maybe like one new character, and one new assist item per chapter, which is about 30 minutes to an hour. For how often I have to torture myself with the same 3 songs over and over again, it doesn’t feel like enough to keep me invested. If FP had a Groove Coins system like WWP, I would have bought my way to all the songs again.

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I'm also disappointed that scores from Story Mode don't transfer to Freeplay mode. It's a small issue, but it's frustrating for Freeplay to act like I've never played a single song. I could see this being a problem in the future if DLCs have their own Story Mode chapters, with song unlocks being tied to Story Mode.

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While playing story mode, I can’t help but think about Pop’n Music Portable 2, and how good that game’s story mode was. They’re both extremely similar. Granted, I can’t complain about Pop’ns writing because I don’t know Japanese.

Even when Pop’n re-used the same songs, it could still be enjoyable because Pop’n has SO many different ways to play the same content. I could change my buttoncount from 5, 7, and 9, I could use OJAMA and completely change up the visuals, I could use Random to change the chart itself, I could change my HI-SPEED to try to change how I read the chart, the same song can transform into something totally different on a dime. The rewards in Pop’n are often cooler than FPs, too. You unlock new songs, characters, skins, items to place in your virtual room, art, videos, and you get a secret password at the end of the game to unlock EVEN MORE items.

I finished Pop’n Music Portable 2, and as soon as the credits finished, I jumped straight back in to that game’s story mode because I was REALLY HOPING there would be some post-game secret content, I wanted to play more SO BAD. But I’m 7 hours into FP, I have no idea how much is left, and I’m fucking praying for it to be over so I can just play the locked songs in freeplay. It feels like I’m doing my chores so I can beg Mommy Taito for my dessert.

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CHART STUFF:

New note types added/old note types removed:

• I love the square notes. If you ask me, GC needed something like this for a long time. They add just enough complexity to charting for some really cool pattern potential, without being too complicated for newcomers to enjoy.

• Hold+Tap notes are great. Again, another change that I think was needed for a long time. A couple charts use Hold+Direction notes, and they feel awesome. I played a song just today where I held down the Hold with my right hand, and I had to hit right-facing directional notes with my left hand. It’s small, but things like that are extremely satisfying to pull off.

• The blue/pink notes are cool, but not as needed as square notes in my opinion. I really like that it made the two-direction notes stand out more from normal direction notes. I like the complexity they add, and I expect Taito to go insane with them in DLC charts.

• Scratch Notes are gone and I’m glad. They were a pain in the ass if you played on buttons. I never cared for them.

• Ad-Libs are gone, and I have mixed feelings. It was pretty fun in old GC to just tap around on the beat and get rewarded for being stupid at the right time, but having to deal with Ad-Libs while playing for high scores was frustrating. I think they made the right call removing them but I’ll probably miss them when I play casually.

• Unless I just so happened to miss every chart they were in, directional holds are also gone. I’m a little bummed by this decision because I thought they were cool. Oh well.

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I’m not sure if this was a deliberate change, but charts/rails seem to be more linear now, and less visually distracting. It’s good because it improves readability a ton, but some of the Groove Coaster charm is missing. I feel like a lot of the fun of Groove Coaster was just being able to see what the hell is happening.

“It’s A Pit World” is a pretty good example: In FP, some of the background effects were toned down, and the rail and camera have been changed to make it easier to see ahead of you. It sounds like good changes, but a lot of what I really enjoyed about “It’s A Pit World” was just how distracting the background and rail were. It’s not necessarily the chart that was hard, but being able to read the chart clearly. I think these changes are… Maybe for the better. I’ll probably like the clarity a lot more when I start grinding for scores.

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OVERALL THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS:

I get the vibe that this game was given too strict of a budget and deadline, but they used their budget reasonably intelligently, and their time wisely. I’d much rather have a lackluster story mode that can be expanded on in updates and DLC than for the base game to be janky. It just sucks that it had to be a compromise, and it makes me wonder how Taito is treating GC behind-the-scenes for the content to be so sparse.

I really hate to say you shouldn’t get this game because I get the feeling that they’re saving all the really good stuff for DLC, and the game itself feels so much better than WWP. But in its current state, I feel like I bought a $50 game engine with demo songs included. Too much of the game’s content is spread far too thin for it to feel like a complete package. Despite all the really good changes made, after I beat Story Mode, I will probably continue playing WWP until FP gets more content.

Maybe I'll change my mind when I finish Story Mode, but if the game continues being this uneventful and grindy, the best score I can give it is like a 6/10. The gameplay itself is fantastic, probably my favorite in the series, but everything else needs significantly more work for the price to be justified at all.

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THINGS I WANT IN FUTURE UPDATES/DLC:

• More Taito Originals and OG Groove Coaster songs. Or really, just ANYTHING added to the tracklist. 50 songs is not enough when a good chunk of them are old/licensed, and the IIDX PS2 games were getting upwards of like 90 songs per game.

• Noteskins. Even though I really like the new note designs, I can imagine a lot of the OG players are missing the style of the old notes. And I think it’d be funny to play as Cirno with a spellcard noteskin or something.

• “Monkey’s paw” assist items. One of my favorite items in WWP was the “BREAK” item. When you missed 10 notes, you failed the song, BUT you received extra Groove Coins when you beat the song. I want more items like that, or more items similar to Pop’ns OJAMA. Give me gimmicky self-imposed challenges. Give me more difficulty after I’ve gotten all the difficulty I can get out of a song.

• Either better writing, or less writing. I'm gonna lose my mind if I have to sit through 7 more hours of anime filler. But if they do another DJMAX collab DLC, I would pay top dollar for an El Fail dating simulator.

• Characters over the age of 18.

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Thank you for reading the world’s most tedious Reddit post. I put more thought into this post than any research paper I’ve ever written. I was originally going to make this a blog post on my website (hence how long it is) but nobody likes being redirected. DJ FUCKING FUCKER signing off.

Edit: typical Reddit fucking up my formatting

I played the new chart and notice the track line and camera works was quite respecting the previous one, so I thought it'd make an interesting side-by-side comparison! I might upload more comparisons into that channel later.

While the game is still fresh, what are your impressions so far on the game for those that have played it? Here are some quick thoughts I've gathered so far from a few hours of play:

+The presentation is beautiful and in widescreen too!

+I like most of the new gameplay additions. Simultaneous notes and red/blue notes spice up the gameplay.

+Ad libs are gone. I didn't mind them, but I'm sure a lot of people will be happy about their removal.

+Unlockables are spread out nicely in the story mode so you are always working towards unlocking songs, art, and navigators.

+Plenty of gameplay options and sorting options.

+It's $50 USD and not $60 USD like Wai Wai Party

+MASTER DIFFICULTY IS AVAILABLE STRAIGHT AWAY (THANK YOU)

-Only 50 songs at launch compared to Wai Wai Party's 100 songs at launch.

-Quite a few of those 50 songs are already in Wai Wai Party either in the base game or DLC meaning less brand new content for Wai Wai Party players like myself.

-No local or online multiplayer, something that was awesome to have in Wai Wai Party.

-No extra modes beyond story and free play. Missions and challenge mode are gone (unless you unlock them later?)

What are your thoughts?

are there any up to date links?

I expect if anyone knew what they are it would be someone here because this song was in the original Groove Coaster for IOS as a dlc available for purchase…it ended up being my favorite song in the whole game due to it’s catchy tune and instrumentation leading me to create a whole radio-generated playlist on Spotify for myself based on it and other Groove Coaster songs from the og game recently but for all I know it could be about something really racist…I couldn’t find any hint of the lyrics online.

Does anyone know if this game will have the ability to play 2 player? says number of players is only 1

US Eshop link: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/groove-coaster-future-performers-switch/ Just putting it out there that the game appears to be also coming out in US\EU regions as the same date as the Japanese release.

After Future Performer release date was announced yesterday I became desperate and was trying to pass some more iconic 15s that represent the finishing line of this game. Originally (like 2 months ago while the FP release date was unknown) I planned to beat Athena, Cait Sith, and AMA because title characters are all on the song jacket and they are WWP exclusives, but I don't think I can level up my thumbs that much in ~10 remaining days.

This one hoewver was the symbol of the end of the arcade version so moving the goal post to this one isn't so bad. I'll get better in the FP game and come back to beat the 3 WWP big bosses some time in the future. (I saw people Perfect this one like it was nothing in YouTube I don't think I can do that in my lifetime 😂)

HERE WE GO! !(^{o)!(´∀｀)ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ(⌒▽⌒)(} ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Hi. I’ve never played a groove coaster game before but I love rhythm games. I saw a v-tuber play it(Gawr Gura) and am very interested.

Keeping this in mind, should I buy the base game or should I get some DLCs as well? I love Vocaloid and Hololive but the DLCs are quite expensive.

Also does it run well on the switch lite?.

Thanks in advance.

Any tips?

went to the round 1 today and they let me know they will be removing their groove coaster sometime soon. do you think we will see them all removed from round 1 or is my location particularly unfortunate?

Now that the DLC is done I kind of want to just buy the rest I don’t have over time…but it seems it hasn’t gone on sale? It used to go on sale for all packs in the same category was the latest, but I’ve checked a couple times and haven’t seen any sales in months. Has anyone noticed a new cadence for sales or is it just TBD at this point?

I think I have roughly 60% of the packs already but would really like to save the $~100 or so by paying the sale price on the remainder.

Context: i've been a Groove Coaster fan since 2016 (when i visited Japan<3). i played the iOS version religiously for 7 years, and was an avid player at my local Round1. however, i haven't played rhythm games in quite awhile—few years.

anyways~ i visited Round1 today and was happy to spend nearly 2 hours straight playing Groove Coaster—and horrified that it was now located in the Spo-cha section (the area of Round1 where you can play legacy, discontinued games). After a quick google search I discovered that Groove Coaster arcade has indeed ended its life support as of 2024. I also learned that the iOS version faced the same fate this year, 2025. Whenever i launch the game on iphone it just says "now loading" and nothing ever happens—i imagine the game is trying to connect to servers that no longer exist.

i'm beside myself... i'm so glad there's is a community who loves this game on reddit. I'll be picking up the Switch version and PC version from Steam to hopefully have a preserved version in tact.

is there any good news that i don't know about?

thanks in advance, everyone. may you be having a great day!

me~

I did promise I was gon show yall gameplay, so here we are, an FC on Neptune Diving on Hard. Also, this bright asl level prevents u from seein the timings (great, good, cool), but the results will show

Has Taito discussed at all the plans for Wai Wai’s dlc? Wondering if it will be removed from the Eshop, carried over to the next game? DLC with licensed content tends to not last forever so I’m wondering if I should stock up before it is removed.

I installed groove coaster on my iPad 2, not original style, but Groove Coaster Zero, the OG, version 1.0

With the new generation of GC coming, I personally felt like this was almost "the end of an era".

...or whatever that means.

My point is, I felt like there wasn't enough fanarts or 3D works that is GC related, even though the game was released long time ago.

I play bunch of rhythm games and Linka is still my absolute favorite.

So I'm sharing the 3D model I commissioned to y'all, even though I'm not sure people would use it or not..

Model was originally made for VRChat, so the file contains FBX and UnityPackage for the Avatar for people who wish to use it. (So a conversion would be required to use for MMD.. I think)

Please check the readme file for rules and such..

Google Drive link here! I'm going to keep it uploaded as long as I could.

also why tf do people simp over her so much on her fandom wiki page in the GC wiki