2000: Difference between revisions

2000 also saw the year of KONAMI slowly transitioning to more powerful consoles for their BEMANI series. With the exception of Dance Maniax, all of this year's new BEMANI series ran on the more powerful BEMANI FIREBEAT HARDWARE, which allowed for more space and better graphics. pop'n music even began using it this year, beginning with [[AC pnm 4|pop'n music 4]]. Curiously, KONAMI continued to run the original beatmania series on BEMANI DJ-MAIN HARDWARE, and beatmania IIDX, DanceDanceRevolution, and GUITARFREAKS/drummania would continue to run on PlayStation-based hardware for a few more years. (Dance Maniax ran on KONAMI BEMANI SYSTEM 573 DIGITAL, the same hardware used for [[AC DDR 3rd|DanceDanceRevolution]] through [[AC DDR EXTREME|EXTREME]], as well as [[AC GF3DM2|GUITARFREAKS 3rdMIX & drummania 2ndMIX]] through [[AC GF11DM10|GUITARFREAKS 11thMIX & drummania 10thMIX]]. '''MAMBO A GOGO''' would also run on this the following year.)

GUITARFREAKS & drummania didn't receive any spinoff games, though they did get something quite big by the end of the year; full session connectivity. [[AC_GF3DM2|GUITARFREAKS 3rdMIX & drummania 2ndMIX]] were the first games in their respective series to have SESSION MODE, allowing as many as three players to play together: one on drums, one on guitar, and one on bass. While limited originally, the sequel [[AC_GF4DM3|GUITARFREAKS 4thMIX & drummania 3rdMIX]] allowed SESSION PLAY for ''all'' of its brand-new songs, a tradition that is still followed in the series to this day. Future big-name BEMANI artist [[Tomosuke Funaki|TOMOSUKE]] made his debut in drummania 2ndMIX, adding to the series his own unique sound of lounge and house to the series.

beatmania IIDX also didn't receive any new spin-off games, but instead two new arcade games. It also followed drummania in that it also received a console game on the then new PlayStation 2; [[CS 3rd style|beatmania IIDX 3rd style CS]], which boasted a then record 81 songs, the largest of any home BEMANI titles at the time of its release.

The newest spinoff to beatmania, [[AC bm III|beatmania III]], used only five keys much like the original beatmania, but it also had a foot pedal to add difficulty to certain songs. It also featured something no other arcade BEMANI game at the time had; the ability to save your game scores, through usage of a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive. In addition to featuring near every new song in the arcade beatmania series at the time of its release, beatmania III also featured 23 brand-new songs to play. While beatmania III never had an official sequel, KONAMI released APPEND counterparts for the series, released about a month or so after its beatmania arcade counterpart for the rest of the series' history.

'''KEYBOARDMANIA''' was a keyboard simulation game that used 14 white keys and 10 black keys on both sides to simulate a keyboard. It was even possible to play Double charts with this set-up, resulting in 28 white keys and 20 black keys to hit! Despite a high difficulty curve, the game became a minor hit, and even received ports on the PlayStation 2. Most of the soundtrack to the game was composed by in-house and commission artists, many of whom were also contributors to pop'n music at the time (or would be in the future).

'''ParaParaParadise''', like Dance Maniax, used sensors for its gameplay. Compared to Dance Maniax's selection of dance music and KONAMI originals, ParaParaParadise near exclusively featured eurobeat licenses from [[avex trax]], along with remixes of BEMANI songs to sound more like eurobeat. The game was created to take advantage of the Para Para dancing craze that was huge in Japan in the late 1990's through the early 2000's, even featuring Para Para dancers in the background. A few of the series' licenses would also appear in beatmania IIDX in the following year.

* March 29th: ''beatmania 5thMIX ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK'' released. Unlike previous beatmania soundtracks, this was published by Toshiba-EMI, due to its having Dancemania licenses on it. It is also the first beatmania soundtrack to have a second disc with a megamix of the first disc's songs.  

* April 26th: ''beatmania ANI-SONGS MIX featuring 石ノ森章太郎'' album released. This contains songs with anime/sentai series created by late manga artist Shotaro Ishinomori, who died in 1998 from heart failure.

* November 30th: [[AC DS Disney's RAVE|Dancing Stage featuring Disney's RAVE]] is released to Japanese arcades. A home port, retitled [[CS DDR Disney's RAVE|DanceDanceRevolution Disney's RAVE]], is released the same day in Japan for the Sony PlayStation.

* December 6th: ''Dance Dance Revolution Disney's RAVE Original Soundtrack'' album released. Similar to the ''pop'n music ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK MICKEY TUNES'' album, this soundtrack was published by Walt Disney Records and distributed by avex distribution due to its usage of Disney music.