Konami gets In the Groove

By Brendan Sinclair, GameSpotPosted Oct 19, 2006 10:31 am PT

Dance Dance Revolution publisher ends court case with Roxor; settlement sees Konami get rights to In the Groove franchise.

As often as gamers and critics cry "copycat" over titles that share visual styles or gameplay mechanics, it's rare for the publishers themselves to take such issues to court. And when they do, there's no clear pattern of what can happen. In the early 1980s, Atari successfully had the Magnavox Odyssey game K.C. Munchkin pulled from store shelves because it was ruled too similar to Pac-Man, for which Atari had the exclusive home license. In the '90s, Capcom sued Data East over the Street Fighter II-like Fighter's History, but it failed to secure a victory in court.

The latest in the long line of legal clone wars has concluded, as Roxor Games announced on its Web site yesterday that it had reached a settlement with Konami over its In the Groove franchise of dancing games, which bears a striking resemblance to Konami's own Dance Dance Revolution series. The terms of the settlement state that Konami gets the rights to the In the Groove series, and Roxor will respect the publisher's intellectual property rights in the future.

As of press time, Konami and Roxor had not returned requests for comment.

40 Comments

  • -Nintendude-

    Posted Nov 26, 2008 1:04 am PT

    DDR is just dated in my opinion. I actually prefer Pump It Up Pro over ITG now, it's from the makers of ITG but is naturally much complicated game because of the PIU pad. There still is a ITG2 arcade machine quite near here and I play it once in a while also.

  • Shirokani

    Posted Aug 14, 2008 6:37 pm PT

    Agreed. There's so many more options and the backgrounds aren't distracting. If only I could find a copy...

  • MixMaxDancer

    Posted May 3, 2008 4:25 pm PT

    I find ITG Style of Gameplay MUCH more fun than DDR Style of game play.
    DDR arrows kind of blends into the background of the game making it hard to see. ITG you can change the Arrows so the stand out

  • banzaigtv

    Posted Feb 21, 2008 8:17 am PT

    It appears that Konami is learning from RoXor. They have finally released an ITG-wannabe boss song done right: Pluto Relinquish. It's superhard, but the stepcharts are actually good. In fact, this song was done much better than FaxX, FELM, HDV, and Chaos. Download link: http://zenius-i-vanisher.com/v4/viewsimfile.php?simfileid=2947

  • sword_stalker

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 2:17 pm PT

    Starfox said: "Goes to show that when you rip from someone else's idea, you're putting yourself in a big legal crosshair. And Konami took that shot. They had every right to sue Roxor Games. Now the Andamari suit, they didn't have to do that. The only thing PIU and DDR has in common is the concept of stepping on arrows. There were a few songs on PIU that was in past Bemani games, but no reason to sue. As for Roxor, their own fault. I applaud you Konami, you have every reason to go for it!" I disagree with him. In The groove is better game engine with a better gameplay. I can do about 600-700 steps on ITG in 2minutes, and I can barely step 100-200 steps on DDR... The pad response is disgraceful. ITG rules.

  • krillinish

    Posted Sep 11, 2007 1:10 am PT

    Sad face comment.

    Come back, ITG!

  • Janzu93

    Posted Sep 6, 2007 11:56 am PT

    Konami didn't like ITG cause ITG1 was made to DDR cabinet
    and Konami cancelled ITG3 but just wait for next DDR to see how much they did copy from it

  • perfectchslemon

    Posted Jun 28, 2007 12:17 pm PT

    If only Roxor could've stayed just a little longer to release ITG3. I really don't think Konami cared at first when Roxor made ITG. It was active for 2 years. I do agree that Roxor should have gotten permission to make an extra dance game, but It seemed like Konami might have been jealous of ITG because it was so much better. Now that Konami had made SuperNOVA, they tried to make steps harder than ITG steps, and they sucked. Healing D Vision oni sucked and so did Faxx oni.

  • CdWafflez

    Posted Oct 22, 2006 3:05 pm PT

    I've never played DDR but I have played In The Groove so yay for them

  • _Sam_

    Posted Oct 22, 2006 1:58 pm PT

    I didn't know about this lawsuit

  • anamnawshad

    Posted Oct 20, 2006 9:11 am PT

    Never played a dance game......

  • zenntench

    Posted Oct 20, 2006 2:03 am PT

    ahh. and now i want to know what would happend if i told this to my friends that loves and plays itg. hmmmm

  • DGFreak

    Posted Oct 19, 2006 10:46 pm PT

    LOL@LAZZOR's comment.

    A ddr-style dance-off in a court of law. Could you imagine?

  • comthitnuong

    Posted Oct 19, 2006 8:14 pm PT

    i predict that it will not be successfull

  • nintendorocks

    Posted Oct 19, 2006 7:37 pm PT

    What does this mean? In the Groove will never again see the light of day. R.I.P. In the Groove-You kinda sucked.

  • starfoxmcleoud

    Posted Oct 19, 2006 7:10 pm PT

    Goes to show that when you rip from someone else's idea, you're putting yourself in a big legal crosshair. And Konami took that shot. They had every right to sue Roxor Games. Now the Andamari suit, they didn't have to do that. The only thing PIU and DDR has in common is the concept of stepping on arrows. There were a few songs on PIU that was in past Bemani games, but no reason to sue. As for Roxor, their own fault. I applaud you Konami, you have every reason to go for it!

  • pie_guy

    Posted Oct 19, 2006 5:27 pm PT

    ...Not cool konami....not cool...... :'(

  • -CR7-

    Posted Oct 19, 2006 4:25 pm PT

    Boom headshot! I never really liked ITG. DDR FTW!!!

  • paranoiasurviva

    Posted Oct 19, 2006 3:36 pm PT

    Stedmister:

    Work on your English.

  • Stedmister

    Posted Oct 19, 2006 2:16 pm PT

    korean publisher's pump it up is another copy of DDR, go looka at video, DDR and PIU are different and similar in many was, but the man difference is PIU uses five "arrows" while DDR uses 4, and PIU is degined for freestyling whille DDR is not, research people, research, and from what I saw of ITG, i'm glad it got pawn the graphics looked horable.

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