beatmania
Just not feeling it.
Published: April 15, 2006
Before Japanese (and later US) arcades went nuts with the DDR craze, the Bemani line of specialty cabinets with funky custom controllers started with (and indeed the Bemani name itself was born from) beatmania, a turntable and sampler simulator that would eventually become the base example for all the Bemani products.
Like DDR, Para Para Paradise or Guitar Freaks, notes stream from one side of the screen to the other, and when they cross a line, you simply hit the corresponding button. Orignally, it was just five buttons -- two black ones on top and three white below -- but beatmania IIDX added two more (one of each color) for a full complement of seven. A faux turntable added a fun gimmick and an extra level of challenge, and the thus the quarter-fed trap was set.
Perhaps it's a byproduct of the game being the start of the Bemani series, maybe it's the controller itself (which spaces the buttons out enough that you have to use both hands and dart over to the turntable), or maybe it's just the nature of the game as a whole, but beatmania is an entirely different beast from something that's a little more newbie-friendly like DDR. Natural rhythm helps, but because beatmania has you playing a lot of samples most of the time rather than trying to specifically make the music, there's a slight disconnect there.
It's also a game with much wider plateaus in terms of how you get better. Raw play time is needed to not only teach your hands where to move and work the concept of blue and white bars lining up with those spots in physical space, but for raw memorization, because many of the songs have patterns that just don't directly line up to the beat -- indeed some of them aren't even the main beat at all. It's a game that can be immensely rewarding, but it also requires pushing through some serious stretches where it doesn't feel like you're getting any better.
It doesn't help that the song selection for the US was pretty miserable. In addition to covers, remixes and a few genuine licensed tracks that were included likely at the suggestion/insistence of a marketing guy to make the game more appealing to less hardcore consumers, the original beatmania stuff isn't terribly compelling. Though you'll get 50+ tracks, it isn’t until you start unlocking stuff later that the game gets good, and unlocking tracks means you'll have to play through a lot of the same songs over and over again, which can be a grating experience.
More to the point, though, beatmania isn't a game for the casual consumer; it's hardcore, and it basks in the difficulty curve it presents. The jump from two- to three-star songs is so jarring at first that I almost didn't come back -- and I consider myself fairly good at rhythm action games (certainly the other Bemani ones). I can now comfortably play five-starers or crank up the difficulty level on easier songs, but I still feel like I'll never get the point where I can play through some of the more advanced songs, which are usually the ones I like the most.
beatmania works on a simple concept: play the notes, hit the scratch sections with the turntable (often at the same time), and don't mess up. The game keeps constant track of how you're doing, so overall performance isn't as important as pulling it out at the end to finish above 80%. Again, it's hardcore, but that's part of the appeal. You can screw up a couple times in the song, but so long as you get it together after about the halfway point, you'll usually finish, albeit with a crappy grade.
Like DDR, Para Para Paradise or Guitar Freaks, notes stream from one side of the screen to the other, and when they cross a line, you simply hit the corresponding button. Orignally, it was just five buttons -- two black ones on top and three white below -- but beatmania IIDX added two more (one of each color) for a full complement of seven. A faux turntable added a fun gimmick and an extra level of challenge, and the thus the quarter-fed trap was set.
Perhaps it's a byproduct of the game being the start of the Bemani series, maybe it's the controller itself (which spaces the buttons out enough that you have to use both hands and dart over to the turntable), or maybe it's just the nature of the game as a whole, but beatmania is an entirely different beast from something that's a little more newbie-friendly like DDR. Natural rhythm helps, but because beatmania has you playing a lot of samples most of the time rather than trying to specifically make the music, there's a slight disconnect there.
It's also a game with much wider plateaus in terms of how you get better. Raw play time is needed to not only teach your hands where to move and work the concept of blue and white bars lining up with those spots in physical space, but for raw memorization, because many of the songs have patterns that just don't directly line up to the beat -- indeed some of them aren't even the main beat at all. It's a game that can be immensely rewarding, but it also requires pushing through some serious stretches where it doesn't feel like you're getting any better.
It doesn't help that the song selection for the US was pretty miserable. In addition to covers, remixes and a few genuine licensed tracks that were included likely at the suggestion/insistence of a marketing guy to make the game more appealing to less hardcore consumers, the original beatmania stuff isn't terribly compelling. Though you'll get 50+ tracks, it isn’t until you start unlocking stuff later that the game gets good, and unlocking tracks means you'll have to play through a lot of the same songs over and over again, which can be a grating experience.
More to the point, though, beatmania isn't a game for the casual consumer; it's hardcore, and it basks in the difficulty curve it presents. The jump from two- to three-star songs is so jarring at first that I almost didn't come back -- and I consider myself fairly good at rhythm action games (certainly the other Bemani ones). I can now comfortably play five-starers or crank up the difficulty level on easier songs, but I still feel like I'll never get the point where I can play through some of the more advanced songs, which are usually the ones I like the most.
beatmania works on a simple concept: play the notes, hit the scratch sections with the turntable (often at the same time), and don't mess up. The game keeps constant track of how you're doing, so overall performance isn't as important as pulling it out at the end to finish above 80%. Again, it's hardcore, but that's part of the appeal. You can screw up a couple times in the song, but so long as you get it together after about the halfway point, you'll usually finish, albeit with a crappy grade.
