It's been close to ten years since Konami first released Beatmania in Japan. At first glance, a game as simplistic as it is would probably not fare nearly as well as one with flashier graphics, some sort of 3D element, or a combination of both. What looked to be simply Simon with a few breakbeats added in, however, turned out to be the seed of one of the biggest-- if not the biggest-- franchises that Konami owns. If you're wondering how Dance Dance Revolution, or indeed any of Konami's Bemani games, came to be, you have to look back at the series' namesake: Beatmania. After ten years, Beatmania has arrived in the US.
Don't let the description "Simon with a techno skin" fool you. Beatmania is a complex game of reflexes, rhythm, and memorization, which grows on you in much the same way Tetris does. Players are presented with five or seven columns on-screen, through which fall simple markers indicating a button sequence. When the markers reach a red base line near the bottom of the display, the player must strike the corresponding key on the Beatmania controller (or Dual Shock-- but the game comes with the controller, so using the Dual Shock is a bit unnecessary), which triggers a portion of the song to play. Adding to the challenge is an extra column representing the controller's turntable, which acts like any other button, except that players can scratch in either direction to activate. Players are scored on how accurate their button presses are to the prescribed sequence, and penalized if the hits come too far away from the mark, missed completely, or pressed out of turn. A Groove Gauge measures how well a player is pleasing the crowd, and rises with good play but falls with poor play. If the gauge reads under 80% when the song ends, the song is failed.
One of the key elements that made Beatmania such a passion in Japan is its nearly legendary difficulty margins; more recent mixes of the game (which feature seven-key play exclusively-- more on this in a second) feature a murderously unforgiving curve. Since this is the first home outing of the series for the U.S., the game's two primary overseas series were merged into the same disc as different 'modes' of play, differing primarily in the number of buttons used. Beatmania mode (the original iteration of the series) uses five keys, while IIDX mode (the second stage in the series' evolution, and pronounced "two-dee-ecks") uses all seven; both use the turntable. IIDX was intended to become the successor to the original, and indeed the two ran concurrently for a couple of years until the original series was retired in favor of producing IIDX mixes (called 'Styles') exclusively. The U.S. mix, however, differs just a little bit: whereas the original Beatmania games offered three difficulty levels, the U.S. Beatmania mode offers only a single level. This is mitigated somewhat by providing a good selection of more-difficult five-key songs, with the caveat that these are locked initially. The U.S. IIDX mode, however, has four difficulty levels for all of its songs (only the most brutal of these, 'Another', is locked), with a good spread of easy and difficult songs. The skill progression is much, MUCH smoother than that featured on import IIDX mixes.
That said, it's still damn hard. The reason that the difficulty progression is smoother is because the measure of the difficulty has been altered in the localization process, moving from a seven-star ranking to a ten-step system (putting it more in line with DDR's skill ratings). It's worth noting, however, that Beatmania mode doesn't quite use the new system; the most difficult five-key song is only ranked a seven.
The game also has a significant flaw in how harder songs are unlocked. Players are presented with only a small selection of songs during their first stage (while playing in 'Game' mode); stage two's song selection is determined by how difficult the stage one song was, and stage three's selection works the same way. Once played in Game mode (pass or fail), the song is available in 'Free' mode for play at will. However, the unlocking is done on a song-by-song basis, not on a song-and-difficulty basis. Which is to say, if you unlock "Lift Me Up" in Beatmania mode, you unlock only that one song (as Beatmania doesn't offer multiple difficulty levels) while if you unlock it in IIDX mode you unlock all three of its difficulty levels. Moreover, unlocking songs shared by both modes only works for the mode it's cleared in. So, if you unlock "Lift Me Up" in IIDX mode, it will remain locked in Beatmania mode until played there. Once all of a game's initial 'stage one' songs are unlocked, however, more difficult 'stage one' songs are not added to give players more challenge while striving for the more difficult tracks. It's really only noticeable in Beatmania mode, but it is irritating.
The track listing covers roughly sixty songs spread out between the two modes, each running the series-standard one-and-a-half to two minutes. There's a bit of overlap, of course, and there are some songs exclusive to a particular mode; but the songs don't really have a uniform style-- some tracks are hard-driving trance while others are jazzy funk and still others are ballads. Beatmania is a music game in one of the better senses of the word, in that it's not pinned down to one predominant style of music (like hyperkinetic Eurobeat or thrash-and-destroy metal). While the diversity might turn off some players from specific tracks, it also keeps them playing for the songs that they do like. The problem is that the track list can start to feel a bit small, especially when playing Game mode.
The game's graphics are largely a non-issue. They're serviceable and clean, and don't detract from the game's 'techno DJ' motif. Each song has a background movie that goes with the track, similar to DDR's background visuals. By and large these are purely for show; players won't be looking at the movies at all during play. Beatmania also features an Internet Ranking mode for its Expert courses (think Nonstops in DDR); players input Clear Code-like sequences at Konami's web site to participate. It's all pretty much equivalent to what Japanese players are accustomed to in a IIDX mix. If there was something I could change, however, I'd have pulled some of the videos in favor of generic background animations and put in more songs.
The predominant hurdle that Beatmania has to overcome is that "it's not DDR". Beatmania is indeed similar to Dance Dance Revolution, but most of the conventions of the venerable dancing game-- the bottom-to-top scrolling, the ability for players to freestyle, the uniformity of genres of music-- run completely counter to those set forth by its predecessor Beatmania. A lot of that sort of thing is mostly superficial complaints, but the difficulty is what has garnered the game its reputation. Players need to approach Beatmania in a different manner than they would a DDR version; in point of fact, Beatmania bears more similarities to Guitar Hero or Frequency than it does DDR, and you don't generally hear players complaining that those titles 'feel too restrictive'.
Konami's push for the Bemani series features the tagline "Music In Every Direction", and they're certainly taking American players in a new direction with Beatmania. It's arguable as to whether or not players will follow, however, as the game makes a clear distinction between itself and Dance Dance Revolution. I'm hooked, however, and I'm willing to join in the mania with a motto of my own-- "Vive le difference."
