Chimera

After the shock of Slam and Dignity, Chimera was the next cultural earthquake for the PIU community, and arguably the biggest of all. Its title comes from the pop-opera singer Kimera (spelled with a K), even though the melody itself is Mozart. When it landed, its charts dwarfed everything that existed: the Normal already played like a Hard of the era, the Hard like a Crazy, the Crazy like an Another, and the Nightmare debuted with a level so unprecedented it was simply marked "??". Later monsters such as 1950, PARADOXX and 1949 would eventually out-savage it, but no debut since has matched the sheer shock of Chimera's arrival.

The infamous Nightmare chart (now D26) was made by EHNE, a designer known for fiendish patterns. He later clarified that he built it himself, debunking the rumor that several authors stitched it together. The legend points to three culprits: JKD, the NX chart director who deliberately left designs untouched to preserve each author's personality; Yahpp, the composer and main director who pushed the BPM up to 210 to make it harder; and EHNE, who kept sharpening the chart after it was rejected for being "too easy." From Zero onward the policy had been to ship only full-combo-able charts, but that rule was dropped starting with NX. EHNE then vanished, fueling rumors he'd been fired from chart design. In reality, he had left for his mandatory military service.

Chimera spans a huge range, from a gentle beginner-friendly S4 up to the S23 packed with twists you can't realistically step the orthodox way, and the D26, which folds in nearly every technique the game has, including mixed stairs and the notorious mid-song "334" run of notes and hold notes. PHOENIX adjusted the hold-note ticks and made the D26 effectively harder to clear. The BGA evokes a Mesoamerican civilization (Aztec, Maya, or Inca) and closes on a "Special Thanks to FLOR" credit, FLOR being a Mexican PIU player who supplied visual material. For PIU's 20th anniversary, on April 1, 2020, Yahpp released a remix with constantly shifting BPM, in the spirit of Love is A Danger Zone 2 and Try To B.P.M.