Sources for various songs featured in In the Groove 1 & 2

In the Groove is a set of two games in the style of Dance Dance Revolution (when I say "ITG" in this post, I mean both games as a whole). Both are arcade games, though the first got a PS2 port as well. Unlike DDR, which often has in-house musicians making 2-minute tracks specifically for DDR, a solid chunk of ITG's music was made and released prior to the game's inception. These songs were then cut/edited down to be about 2 minutes long—the standard length for songs in these kinds of arrow-stomping, movement-intensive games.

The ITG-size versions of all the songs can be found fairly easily, as they were all ripped from the game and the actual step charts themselves be played in StepMania with ease. What we're missing, though, isn't easy to describe in just a few words. Because the songs were licensed for use in ITG from various copyright holders, distributors, labels, etc., there are varying levels of just how "lost" the songs can be. Thankfully, many are completely found and officially downloadable and streamable. Unfortunately, many are not. Sometimes, we know the album a song was initially released on, but that album ends up being its own case of lost media. In the worst cases, we don't know where the song came from at all, meaning it's either undocumented or unreleased.

It is worth noting that a couple of these songs were made specifically for ITG, and may only be two minutes long. No way to be sure until they're found or released officially.

Here are songs that we can't find full versions of anywhere:

> Affinity - Monolith
> DJ Zombie - Ride the Bass
> Georgetown - Turn It On
> Inurvise - Boogie Down
> JS14 - July -Euromix-
> KBIT - Robotix
> Nina - Life of a Butterfly
> Nina - Pick Me Up and Tango
> Onyx - !
> Reflection Theory - Don't Promise Me ～Happiness Comes Mix～

We can't find full versions of these, either, but they were made by Kyle A Ward, an ITG developer and creator of step charts. These are less likely to have full versions:

> Inspector K - Disconnected ～Mobius～
> ZiGZaG - Energizer
> ZiGZaG - Pandemonium
> ZiGZaG - VerTex
> ZiGZaG - Vertex²

And then, there's these:

> Sammi Morelli - I'll Get There Anyway
> Sammi Morelli - Perfect
> Sammi Morelli - Let Me Be the One
These songs all appear on the 2002 album Unlimited, released when Sammi Morelli was only 14 years old. Sammi Morelli still releases music today, but this rare demo has been buried by time, it's unlikely to ever be officially released again. The CD will probably have to resurface in order for these to get found.

The State of Finding Things
Though the game is old, progress gets made every once in a blue moon. Just last month, a label released full versions of four ITG-featured songs for download via Beatport, saving them from becoming lost. A full-version live performance of Monolith by Affinity was recently brought to my attention, confirming the song's existence. There are other songs we've managed to find full versions of, even though they aren't available for official download or streaming. I've omitted those from this post, but anyone curious the rest of ITG's music can look here, where I've listed the specifics of every track's status.