S21 Works is a mixed stream/speed/casual simfile pack and the debut pack of the stepartist Zaia, under the pseudonym ArkAngel.
| Pack Director | Zaia |
| Stepartists | Zaia (as ArkAngl) |
| BPM | 130-290 |
| Songcount | 29 |
| Blocks | 10-17 |
| Type | Mixed |
| Format | Singles |
| Release Date | April 28, 2009 |
¶ Structure
This pack lacks any defined structure, as it was made in a time period before I had begun thinking about those kinds of elements of a simfile pack, as well as lacking in the experience to develop content towards a specific goal.
Nearly all of the primary charts in this pack were placed in the Single-Hard slots (SH). This was an intentional design choice to mimic the way many DDR charts utilized the Heavy slot as their main chart, and reserving the Challenge/Oni slot for particularly difficult extra content. However, S21 Works was inconsistent in the application of this.
Many of the simfiles have inconsistent numbers of lowers, and there is a random mixture of simfiles that use individual graphics and those that use the fallback graphics.
¶ Development
This pack is able to trace its roots back to the very first simfile pack project I was developing, called IITGDX, which was to be a simfile pack based on Beatmania IIDX music, during April 2008. Although one simfile was completed, ErAseRmoToR maXimUM, which was to serve as the pack's boss simfile, the pack ultimately fell through and that chart would later be absorbed into what would would become S21 Works, though it had not formally entered development at this time.
Production on this pack began in earnest, with no specific plan to make a "pack". I was simply making singles until I reached a point in which I felt I could bundle them together and release as a collection of my work under one folder. It was not until around March 2009 that a plan to aggregate the simfiles into a pack began to form. By this time, around 80% of the pack had been stepped and the songlist included content that went as far back as Q4 2007. Fresh content was gradually made and added to it over time, such as the inclusion of Dance Dance Revolution X extra stage songs Horatio and on the bounce, and resteps from keyboard packs like Aztec Templing (Techno-titlan Mix), Red Lucifer Rising (Ver-0) and Superluminal.
The tipping point that caused me to fasttrack completion was when SSSC Pack came out, on April 12, 2009, which featured a WE LUV LAMA simfile by Zarkonis. S21 Works was released on Rhythmatic.net (formerly ITGFreak), r21freak and on the Revolution Street boards, a local Australian community forum.
¶ Artistic Influences and Chart Design
While this pack had no specific thematic direction, the overall general theme was based on the 1995 anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. The name of the pack, S21 Works, is a portmanteau derived from two sources: the R21 patch for In The Groove, and S² Works, which is the name of a 1998 album featuring arrangements of music from the Neon Genesis Evangelion series and the two films Evangelion: Death and The End of Evangelion. The title of this album is derived from the S² Engine, which is a plot device featured in the series.
Simfile influences for this pack included a number of popular keyboard simfiles and some pad stamina simfiles, although these were not as widespread or developed in 2009. Some key simfile influences included HST's Vertex BETA (Keyboard Collaboration II), the original GrooveStats simfiles (the ones that were uploaded to the site using upload tokens) and various contemporary DDR charts. A few charts in the pack were focused heavily on bracketmashing, which was a playstyle I was messing around with in Q4 2008-Q1 2009.
¶ Graphics
Although the pack contains a number of simfiles with individual graphics (all but one of which were stolen from existing simfiles, and one containing a background .avi video), the original planned artwork for the fallback was in line with the artistic theme for the pack. This artwork, containing the S21 Works title text in a rounded box and made in CorelDRAW 10 Graphics Suite, ultimately went unused in favor of an edit of the Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA 2 folder cover art, which applied a sepia-tone filter to the image and poorly-drawn black text using the brush tool.
This artwork was lost along with the original version of the pack and no copy of it remains in known circulation. I'm not sure why I went with it over the alternative art, which I'd already made.
¶ Songlist
S21 Works contains 29 songs. The currently-available version of the pack does not include Itchy and Scratchy Theme, which was lost after the original link for the pack vanished when the RapidShare file hosting service was dissolved, and nor does it include the original background art.
| Song | Artist | BPM | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250 BPM | AKIRA YAMAOKA | 125-250 | |
| All Of Your Love | Sanxion7 | 140 | |
| Alones | Aqua Timez | 190 | |
| Atmos Break | D-Mode-D | 175 | |
| Aztec Templing (Techno-titlan Mix) |
Hi-G remixed by DM Ashura |
205 | |
| Blazing | Banya | 158 | |
| Cyber Induction | Sharpnel Sounds | 96-191 | Title and artist incorrectly attributed. Correct are “Cyber Inductance” and “DJ Sharpnel” |
| Destiny -Eclipse Mix- | e^2 | 167 | |
| ErAseRmoToR maXimUM |
L.E.D.-G VS GUHROOVY |
125-1000 | |
| Escape from the City | Crush 40 | 130 | Artist incorrectly attributed. Correct attribution is “Ted Poley, Tony Harnell, Jun Senoue” |
| Euphoria (Long) | KaW feat. Smiley | 70-140 | |
| Final Audition Episode 1 | Banya | 170 | |
| Final Audition Episode 2 | Banya | 200-400 | |
| Forsaken Neon | Dimrain47 | 230 | |
| GEE | SNSD | 50-200 | |
| Horatio | OR-IF-IS | 165 | |
| Into the Oblivion | Warmen | 156 | |
| Itchy and Scratchy Theme |
Robert Israel & Sam Simon |
- | Permanently lost after original Rapidshare link went down |
| Judgment Days | beatMARIO | 190 | |
| Lamenting City | Axel Coon | 140 | my first original artwork |
| MAX -eroder- | Est | 300-640 | |
| Mne Uzhe | Ruki Vverh | 83-165 | |
| on the bounce | neuras | 150 | |
| Pump Me Amadeus | BANYA | 170-340 | |
| Red Lucifer Rising (Ver-0) | S.S.H. | 87-192 | |
| Rottel-the-Mercury |
sampling masters MEGA |
200-400 | |
| Snow Storm | dj Taka | 145 | Artist name is incorrectly stylized. Correct is "dj TAKA" |
| Superluminal | S2TB Recording | 180-360 | Title and Artist incorrectly attributed. Correct is “Super Luminal" and “mch” |
| WE LUV LAMA | SHARPNELSOUNDS | 105-210 | Artist incorrectly attributed. Correct is “DJ Sharpnel” |
¶ Reception and Retrospect
This pack released on R21Freak, Rhythmatic (ITGFreak) and AaronInJapan forums to poor reviews and considerably negative critical response. It was considered to be too jumpy or have too many brackets, and the sync was a mixed bag. Rhythmic choices were questioned, and the inconsistent presence of and use of graphics stolen from existing simfiles was also condemned. The inconsistent song choices and chart types resulted in a pack that was uneven in tone and unable to set an identity for itself. Players were not able to predict the kind of chart they would be playing from the songwheel, since the variety was too wide, and the general wide variance in chart quality discouraged players from exploring it beyond one or two charts. Some song choices were resteps of more popular charts that already existed (GEE, Euphoria), and they were unfavorably compared with those. WhiteDrMario's GEE in particular was at the height of its popularity at this time, so attention was drawn to that chart.
The negative feedback led me to withdraw from public content creation to pursue solitary contemplation and growth and to reassess my approach.
¶ Trivia
- Despite the pack officially being produced under the ArkAngel name, the simfile folders themselves are attributed with either the Chino name or the Serenade name. The ArkAngel name only appears as the cdtitle graphic.
- Chart metadata is horrendously inconsistent and incomplete. There are numerous fields of metadata from the previous stepartists whose skeletons I'd used that I had simply not removed. Some charts say "Copied From" and others say "Blank" in their description fields. Some have paths to graphics files that do not exist.
- There are also numerous instances of incorrect titles and artist attribution:
- Cyber Inductance was incorrectly titled as "Cyber Induction", and the artist, “DJ Sharpnel”, was incorrectly attributed as “Sharpnelsound”, the label DJ Sharpnel was under. I copied the title from TheCosmicPope's simfile to the song, which was also titled incorrectly in his pack Cosmic Apocalypse.
- Escape from the City: despite being featured on their self-titled 2003 album (and composed by the band's guitarist Jun Senoue), Escape from the City is not considered an official Crush 40 song, as the vocals were provided by Ted Poley, who was not their band's vocalist Johnny Gioeli.
- Super Luminal was incorrectly titled as “Superluminal”, and the artist as kors k's label “S2TB Recording”, instead of the artist “mch”
- WE LUV LAMA is also incorrectly attributed with the "Sharpnelsound" artist name.
- The Super Luminal chart in this pack is nearly identical to the one that was eventually placed into Tachyon Beta a year later. The S21 Works version contains a number of 16th bracket stomps and the long bursts of 24ths near the end of the chart were patterned differently.
- A number of songs in this pack would later be restepped and re-released as future Zaia content. As of Oct 2024, these include:
- Snow Storm (Nothing is Sound, 2010)
- Red Lucifer Rising (Ver-0) (Nothing is Sound, 2010)
- WE LUV LAMA (Cirque du Veyron, 2012 and Rebuild of Sharpnel, 2018)
- Atmos Break (Cirque du Lykan, 2014)
- Destiny -Eclipse Mix- (Cirque du Zeppelin, 2014)
- Cyber Inductance (Cirque du Beast, 2012 and Rebuild of Sharpnel, 2018)
- Super Luminal (Cirque du Beast, New Number Pack (TBA), Tachyon Conent (TBA)), with only the title, but not the artist, correctly attributed for the SRPG6 New Number Pack and Tachyon Conent versions
- This pack began the long-running tradition of referencing Neon Genesis Evangelion as part of the theme for a pack. Other packs to reference Evangelion include:
- Cirque du Beast (2012)
- Rebuild of Sharpnel (2018)
- Zaia's Dance Dance Rebuild (2023)