StepMania was included in a video game exhibition at New York's Museum of the Moving Image in 2005.

A separate development team called the Spinal Shark Collective forked the bleeding-edge branch and continued work on it, branding it sm-ssc.

Development on the upcoming version, 5.1, has gone cold over the past few years after a couple of betas were released over at GitHub.

The game is scored based upon how accurately the player can trigger the arrows in time to the beat of the song.

An award of AAA+ (triple A plus, formerly AAAA or quadruple A) is the highest possible award available on a standard installation and indicates that a player has triggered all arrows with "Flawless" timing (within 0.0225 seconds under official settings) and avoided all mines and completed all hold (freeze) arrows.

Specialized adapters that connect console peripherals like PS2 and Xbox controllers or dance pads to one's computer can be used.

Some versions of StepMania will run on most common operating systems (Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista/7/8, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X), as well as the Xbox console.

The song must be under a compatible license for distribution or be authorized for use in StepMix 4, or the entry is automatically disqualified.