Warning: The videos linked in this post contain flashing lights and bright colors. Also some of the videos are in black and white because after 8:30pm my phone is transported back to 1943. #mycurse
Yesterday I decided to re-download a mobile rhythm game close to my heart: SuperStar SMTOWN. Apparently the developing team DalcomSoft has made other SuperStar rhythm games for other companies (JYPE, WakeOne, etc.) and specific groups (LOONA), but SuperStar SMTOWN is the only one that matters to me because SM has seven thousand groups and soloists, so you can play like half of all K-Pop songs released in the past 20 years on one convenient app that takes up half your phone's storage. Have you ever wanted to do Project Sekai but with an EXO B-side from eleven years ago? Of course you have!! Let's go!!!
So you do rhythm game stuff, but also half your time is spent powering up cards. There's a card for every idol in every group. I used to think it was one card per album photoshoot per idol, but then I saw a Jungwoo "Make Your Day" card and realized there was pretty much a card for every idol for every song, including B-sides.
You collect them all. There are so many of them. There are C-, B-, A-, S-, and R-grade cards. In order to even get close to leveling up a card to a higher grade (and I don't think you can officially do it without purchasing a pass or something), you have to get 5 stars on that card. In order to get a new star on a card, you have to use another card to power it up - kind of like getting two mantises to mate, because no matter what, the card you're using to power up another card will be eaten in the process. And sometimes the female mantis won't even get pregnant!
So, again, half my time is spent trying to get through a Red Velvet B-side unscathed, and the other half of my time is spent sacrificing Super Junior cards to an A-grade Yeri. Here's Joy beating my ass in "In and Out".
Some of the hardest songs in the game include "AROUND" by Taeyong and Hitchhiker (please listen) and "Saturday Drip" by NCT Dream, which is officially listed as the hardest. For reference, there are three levels on which you can play a song: easy, normal, and hard. Your average song on easy mode looks like this ("Jekyll" by EXO).
Here is "Saturday Drip" in Easy mode.
I don't think you can add friends on there, but my username is weezertime, in case you know how.