Saitama's Ultimate Weapon is a collaboration stream pack by Zaia and YourVinished (credited within the pack as “Arvin”). It is an artist-specific pack for the artist Saitama Saisyu Heiki (埼玉最終兵器 or S.S.H.), who was a fan arranger of existing songs and specialized in the synth rock/metal genre.
This pack has a companion pack titled Saitama's Starter Weapon. The Saitama Project referenced in these articles refers to both packs as part of a single combined project.
It is themed after the Capcom video game Street Fighter (1987) and the Japanese manga and anime One-Punch Man (2012, 2015). The pack's theming is a pun between the name “Saitama” being used as part of the name of S.S.H. and the main character of One-Punch Man, also named Saitama.
The kanji used in their name - 埼玉最終兵器 - translates to “Saitama's Final Weapon” or “Saitama's Ultimate Weapon”. The pronunciation of “Saisyu” is “Saishuu”.
| Pack Director | Zaia |
| Stepartists | Zaia, YourVinished, Levitas |
| BPM | 210-344 |
| Songcount | 40 (4 mixes) |
| Blocks | 12-33 (17-30 target) |
| Type | Stream |
| Format | Singles |
| Release Date | 23 Oct, 2021 |
¶ Structure
All simfiles in the pack have four charts, produced using the “cut-stream lower” method. There are four 20-minute mixes in the pack and these also have four charts each.
The Saitama Project packs contain both .sm and .ssc files, but there are no differences between them.
This pack contains extensive internal progression pathways. I included a graphic that shows the four slots sorted into order (independent of the other columns) to illustrate the overlap in blocks from slot to slot as well as the BPMs for those respective charts, which illustrate the distribution of BPMs. The darker colored sections are just an example to highlight the mechanics of the overlaps.
The goal of the stamina pack is to get its players towards the Expert charts and improve their stamina, and lowers exist primarily to serve this function. An internal progression path enables players to navigate a route from the easiest charts towards the hardest, by playing content that gradually increases in difficulty. Using the example on the left, this example pathway would work like this:
A Player starting the path on 220bpm 18s wants to work up towards 240bpm 20s. They would enter the pathway at the upper bands of the highlighted Medium and Hard slots. Immediately, they are able to cross-train by playing 220 and 240 bpm 18s in the Easy and Medium slots, whilst increasing volume by simultaneously working towards 210-220bpm 19s in the Hard and Expert slots. Once those are cleared, the player can repeat by playing 230-240bpm 18s and 19s in the Easy and Medium slots, whilst training volume on 210-230bpm 20s in the Hard and Expert slots. This would enable the player to start exploring content in the pack higher than 240bpm in the Easy and Medium slots, giving them access to 250-280bpm 19s and 20s, and continuing working on 240bpm 20s. This pathway is self-contained within the SUW pack and would not require a player to leave it. The cross-pollination between chart slots and bpms facilitates diverse growth, develops a strong stamina base and helps to mitigate plateaus and stagnation.
¶ Development
S.S.H has always maintained some kind of presence throughout 4-panel rhythm game history. The oldest instance of S.S.H. that people in the pad community would likely remember is DukAmok's Holy Orders chart from Community Keyboard Megapack - Volume 1 (2005). When the r21 patch was released on ITG, Holy Orders became one of the earliest viable 14s that players could play off of their usb sticks (it also helped that DukAmok was himself a pad player, so there was a cross-pollination between keyboard and pad disciplines). Ever since then, Holy Orders, and by extension, S.S.H. was able to plant an early presence as an artist whose music had some considerable visibility in the pad customs scene.
As time went by, pad-specific S.S.H. charts began to be made, and these were often on the harder end of the difficulty spectrum, so would show up in packs that catered towards stamina and footspeed players. A look at the StepMania Online database for S.S.H. shows how many different packs have featured his work in some capacity. The most famous of the pad-centric S.S.H. simfiles were those featured in Mad Matt's Tachyon series, particularly those from Tachyon Alpha (2009). Try To Star became highly popular due to its enhanced presence in FA-focused tournament packs like Fort Rapids IV and became a staple footspeed-focused 12 that non-hard songs players could enjoy, and also because players felt challenged by the song's title to try to 96 it, giving it some memetic value potential.
Despite these sporadic high-profile S.S.H. simfiles, which always kept him in the contemporary zeitgeist of ITG customs, and because of the sheer quantity of them (at least one S.S.H. song was bound to show up in any given pack), there had never really been a concerted effort to push for a dedicated S.S.H. pack. Many of the existing charts were famous, well-liked, had a long history of GrooveStats scores and restepping them felt redundant.
That said, there have been multiple projects bearing the Saitama's Ultimate Weapon name dedicated to stepping the discography of S.S.H.
2011
The first project was in production at least as far back as mid-2011, helmed by Arvin (YourVinished) and Little Matt (mattm). The only record I have of this project existing is a screenshot of a single post from an r21freak thread.
2014
The next attempt at an S.S.H. project occurred in December 2014, this time led by rikame. It was a resurrection of the prior attempt and open to community submissions. I even responded to the thread on AaronInJapan and then completely memoryholed doing that. This effort did not seem to yield any results, and I cannot find a record of any internal pack betas (the bulk of discourse likely would have taken place over on r21freak, as rikame was more of a regular there).
2018
My involvement in an attempt to resurrect the Saitama's Ultimate Weapon project didn't start until March 2018, in a totally different ITG environment than had been around previously. Now, there were much better stamina players and this meant that “full stream” charts to S.S.H. songs were now viable, which opened up the entire discography to a style of chart that hadn't been done before.
Arvin led the way, having stepped numerous S.S.H. songs for his own packs, and other collab stream packs like Stamina Selects, so there was a solid amount of unreleased existing content in this dumpstream category. Many of these had ongoing features in ECS packs, demonstrating that they were meta-viable, and this begged a reappraisal of the property for the potential to have a successful solo pack.
Such a project was formally dedicated on March 05, 2018, with what I assume was the first S.S.H. song stepped for this project specifically, Valestein Castle.
Riding the motivation high, about two-thirds of the finished pack's Expert charts were written over a week or so. I had just come off a break from the January 03 triple release of Enzo/Rebuild/Jackhummer so my brain was well-rested and mentally fresh to start stepping again.
Then Stamina Showcase 2 started and motivation to work on SUW quickly went dry. One of the issues I was having was an overload of music choice. We had a shared Dropbox folder and Arvin had uploaded what seemed to me was an exhaustive discography (it contained like 200 song files), so it was difficult to go through and make definitive picks (the audio quality also varied in consistency, which added further work on top to locate a high quality version (which potentially might not have even existed) - not super easy, even as recently as 2018).
2021
The pack lingered in lower hell for a couple of years; particularly after 2019 when Arvin transitioned away from stepping and towards music production. In 2020 I was preoccupied with tech, and any time i gave to stream projects went elsewhere. It wasn't until Q3 2021 that work picked up on it again, but with mainly just me at the helm. The remaining work was mostly just filling out lowers and doing internal preparation work (sync checks, filenaming, ratings, info fields etc), so Arvin didn't need to do anything. Outstanding lowers for his charts I did myself by cutting streams at my own discretion. A handful of more new simfiles were added, and during this time was when Levitas was invited to add to the pack. He had stepped Crystallized Silver for fof and I said it could find a home in the Saitama project, since it had a lot of 292.
In the last week of work, I had an idea to make some 20ish minute mixes of songs of similar BPMs and use the singles charts to fill them out. This allowed lowers for the mixes to be filled out as well. There were four mixes in total, all spaced 20 BPM apart, and named after One-Punch Man Disaster Level grades. It was at this time that the idea for Saitama's Starter Weapon was born.
¶ Artistic Influences and Chart Design
Saitama's Ultimate Weapon underwent a fair number of changes throughout its development cycle, since it covered a critical formative era in high-end footspeed, which was growing and changing constantly. There weren't many significant rhetoric models that the charts in this pack followed - for me at least, this was part of the “post-Enzo” era where I had more or less completed my “training” and was now able to make whatever I wanted. To that end, we needed more high-volume 240+ stream simfiles, and these charts were able to do their part in contributing to the gene pool of the footspeed metagame.
Charts ranged from slidey to steppy and could fall just about anywhere on the spectrum. I wrote my charts using my standard methods and techniques, though some were skewed in certain directions more than others. It was really a pack that was a “free-for-all” and a project for me to utilize everything I knew. Charts had unique elements written into them to help give them more character: To Make the End of Battle was very slide-heavy and written like a Petriform's Factory chart (even though the first version was written before the Petriform's Factory project existed, the second version written in 2021 was modeled after the first). Hell Watchdog contains only U/D anchors and no L/R anchors. Try To Star had the double staircases during the drum rolls. Momentary Life had its UDUD boxes. Fuuga had little copy-paste, so the chart felt structured somewhat like a dark psytrance chart. The Spirit Chaser employed large tension wind-ups to highlight the intensity of its chorus sections. Weekend Racer ~R666~ used repeated triple-double patterning to emphasize movement on one foot whilst keeping the other relatively stationary.
¶ Graphics
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The visual theme was originally only based on Street Fighter, and the art was modeled after the title screen of the game. I didn't have the skills back then to make the graphics exactly like Street Fighter's, but was able to make it similar.
The addition of One-Punch Man graphics happened during the finishing of the pack in 2021, and when Saitama's Starter Weapon was now a part of the project.
Some flavor text was added to make the image appear more like a video game title screen. At the bottom, the “CAPCOM 1987” text was replaced with “ARVIN X ZAIA 2019”.
The inclusion of Saitama helped to emphasize the “boss" nature of the pack - Saitama is the strongest character in One-Punch Man, and Saitama's Ultimate Weapon had some of the hardest charts written for pad at the time.
The “Levitas” cdtitle had his name written in text underneath it, which was removed. It is also the first pack my updated cdtitle is used in.
To animate the banner, I manually moved the hue slider in Photoshop on the text layer whilst using OBS to record my screen. I then cut it in Sony VEGAS to the correct
dimensions and rendered it as a .mp4 file.
¶ Songlist
Saitama's Ultimate Weapon contains 36 songs and four mixes.
| Song | Artist | BPM | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aggressor | S.S.H. | 316 | Zaia |
| Appearance of the Demon Beasts | S.S.H. | 272 | Arvin The Legend of Heroes III: Appearance of the Demon Beasts |
| Battle (Shin Megami Tensei) | S.S.H. | 335 | Zaia Shin Megami Tensei: Battle |
| Be Careful | S.S.H. | 240 | Arvin Ys III: Wanderers from Ys: Be Careful |
| Big Blue | S.S.H. | 228 | Zaia F-Zero: Big Blue |
| Boss Battle (Shin Megami Tensei- Devil Summoner) | S.S.H. | 316 | Zaia Shin Megami Tensei: Boss Battle - Devil Summoner |
| Crossroads of Sadness | S.S.H. | 248 | Zaia |
| Crystallized Silver | S.S.H. | 290 | Levitas Touhou: Perfect Cherry Blossom - Letty Whiterock's Theme: Crystallized Silver |
| Fierce Fight | S.S.H. | 280 | Zaia eXceed3rd-JADE PENETRATE-BLACK PACKAGE OST: Fierce Fight |
| Fuuga | S.S.H. | 260 | Zaia Guilty Gear X2 OST: Fuuga (Elegance) |
| Go Back Home | S.S.H. | 240 | Arvin |
| Going On (HM Ver.) | S.S.H. | 250 | Arvin |
| Headless | S.S.H. | 220 | Zaia Brandish: Headless |
| Hell Watchdog | S.S.H. | 262 | Zaia |
| Holy Orders (Be Just Or Be Dead) (Exploding Festival Ver.) | S.S.H. | 272 | Zaia Guilty Gear X2 OST: Holy Orders (Be Just or Be Dead) |
| Intersect Thunderbolt | S.S.H. | 250 | Zaia eXceed3rd-JADE PENETRATE-BLACK PACKAGE OST: Intersect Thunderbolt |
| Mad General | S.S.H. | 324 | Zaia |
| Major Demon | S.S.H. | 320 | Levitas Sorcerian: Major Demon |
| Meia Worzen | S.S.H. | 226 | Arvin Dragon Slayer IV: Drasle Family (released outside Japan as Legacy of the Wizard): Maia Worzen |
| Metal Max Metals | S.S.H. | 246 | Arvin |
| Metal Squad | S.S.H. | 216 | Arvin Restepped from Stamina Selects/ECS6.5 version Thunder Force IV: Metal Squad |
| Mighty Obstacle | S.S.H. | 277 | Arvin Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim: Mighty Obstacle |
| Momentary Life | S.S.H. | 216 | Zaia Guilty Gear X2 OST: Momentary Life |
| Palace of Destruction | S.S.H. | 236 | Zaia Ys I ・ II: Palace of Destruction |
| Satomi Tadashi Pharmacy | S.S.H. | 304 | Zaia |
| Shock!! | S.S.H. | 260 | Zaia eXceed 2nd -VAMPIRE REX-: Shock!! |
| Since 1983 | S.S.H. | 304 | Zaia Black/Matrix: Since 1983 |
| Stopper | S.S.H. | 240 | Arvin |
| The Decisive Battle With The Fugitives | S.S.H. | 226 | Zaia Final Fantasy VI: The Decisive Battle |
| The Ordeal Becomes Great | S.S.H. | 344 | Zaia Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys: A Great Ordeal |
| The Spirit Chaser | S.S.H. | 256 | Zaia Treasure of the Rudras: The Spirit Chaser |
| To Make The End Of Battle | S.S.H. | 255 | Zaia Ys I ・ II: To Make the End of Battle |
| Try To Star | S.S.H. | 216 | Zaia Gradius III: Try To Star |
| Valestein Castle | S.S.H. | 222 | Arvin Ys: The Oath in Felghana: Valestein Castle |
| Venus Fire | S.S.H. | 230 | Arvin Thunder Force III: Venus Fire |
| Weekend Racer~R666 | S.S.H. | 230 | Zaia |
| [MIX] 210 Disaster Level- TIGER | S.S.H. mixed by Zaia | 210 | Metal Squad Momentary Life Headless Try To Star Valestein Castle |
| [MIX] 230 Disaster Level- DEMON | S.S.H. mixed by Zaia | 230 | Big Blue Weekend Racer ~R666 Meia Worzen Venus Fire Palace of Destruction |
| [MIX] 250 Disaster Level- DRAGON | S.S.H. mixed by Zaia | 250 | To Make the End of Battle Stopper Intersect Thunderbolt Go Back Home Going On Be Careful The Spirit Chaser Crossroads of Sadness |
| [MIX] 270 Disaster Level- GOD | S.S.H. mixed by Zaia | 270 | Holy Orders Mighty Obstacle Fuuga Appearance of the Demon Beasts Fierce Fight Shock!! |
¶ Reception and Retrospect
Saitama's Ultimate Weapon had a decent reception, and it was critically well-received, but its popularity was limited because it was an artist-specific pack (all artist-specific packs operate with this handicap in place). S.S.H.'s reach was further limited by the steep difficulty of its charts and relatively low accessible playerbase - half of the pack is above level 20. The high amounts of content in SUW's block+BPM combos being produced meant that it had a lot of competition to contend with, and if you were not into S.S.H. music, then it was not likely that this pack would appeal to you.
The mixes achieved greater success and many had been featured in ECS events (the inclusion of lowers gave them flexibility to fill a content gap for any given event).
SUW received two patches:
- Oct 23, 2021:
- Big Blue SX19: doublestep at m32 fixed
- Corresponding doublestep in [MIX] 230 Disaster Level- DEMON was also fixed
- Oct 24, 2021:
- Palace of Destruction SX21: rerated to 20
¶ Trivia
- This is the first of my packs to include both
.smand.sscfiles - This was my first pack, along with Saitama's Starter Weapon, to feature volume normalization
- It is my largest project by stepcount, clocking in at a little over 750000 steps
- Its because of the mixes
- SSW only accounts for about 50000 of that count
- S.S.H. were initially a duo of brothers, but became just the younger brother
- There is a version of the background art where the stated date is “2021” instead of “2019”, but the 2019 date was kept as an easter egg for the pack's original release year
- “Saitama” is the name of a prefecture in the Kanto region of Japan.
- The S.S.H. brothers are from the Saitama prefecture
- ONE, the author of One-Punch Man, grew up in the Saitama prefecture
- Headless was previously stepped in Cirque du Veyron, under the erroneous title “Brandish Headless”
- “Brandish” is the name of the game the original song is from
- Meia Worzen was initially Arvin's submission to the Stamina Showcase 2 finals
- He submitted it under the fake title “Gaia Worza” to purposely mislead the judges
- Shock!! was the only chart that got restepped during the 2021 phase of production
- The first chart to it was featured in ECS 7.5 Upper (SX25)
- A lower was used in ECS8 (SM23)
- List of rejected simfiles:
- S.S.H. (Arranged by Lix) - Artifact Connection
- S.S.H. - Fighting of the Spirit
- S.S.H. - Neon Night
- I can't remember why this one was excluded. My best guess is drift issues + no HQ audio (would have had to step the YouTube rip)
- S.S.H. did a rendition of Clash on the Big Bridge from Final Fantasy V, but it was only a segment from a medley.
- He had a second Big Bridge theme, but it wasn't the one we wanted
- There was a highly coveted Release of the Far West Ocean remix from 2003 that he did that we could never find a download for
- This fansite had an extraordinarily comprehensive record of S.S.H.'s works and we would refer to it to help track down songs