1998 (year)

This page refers to the year 1998 in BEMANI history. For the DanceDanceRevolution EXTREME song of the same name, please see 1998.

1998

1998 saw the beginning of KONAMI expanding its music line. Two new game series went into location tests, and later released that year: DanceDanceRevolution and pop'n music. DanceDanceRevolution originally focused on dance music from TOSHIBA-EMI's line of Dancemania albums, as KONAMI signed a deal with to advertise their albums for in DanceDanceRevolution in exchange for access to their ever-increasing library of music. The few new original songs it had were made by a young Naoki Maeda, a recent composer for KONAMI who would later become the series' sound producer. pop'n music, meanwhile, consisted of original songs much like beatmania, but expanded upon the 5 key layout with nine different buttons, as well as a more colorful interface. It also had a character select screen to choose your desired character for play, which was still a new thing in music game at the time.

In addition to two new music game series, KONAMI continued to produce new games for their beatmania series. beatmania 2ndMIX and 3rdMIX came out, the former introducing Hiroshi Watanabe, the first ever commission artist KONAMI ever hired for their music games. His style of music, which varied from techno to house, made him popular within the beatmania community, even long after he stopped contributing.

By the end of the year two of the most notable character designers in BEMANI also made their debut. The first, Gyo Eguchi, got his start on beatmania 3rdMIX, later becoming the head graphic artist of the spinoff beatmania IIDX the following year, which he still works on to this day. The other is Tomoko Shiono, better known as shio, who got her start doing sketches of the original pop'n music game cast. She would leave a very pretty big impression just two years later on the pop'n music franchise, as the overall designs of the characters went from the rough, slightly crude style of the first games to the far more animated and appealing style the series is known for today.

In addition, 1998 also saw the debut of the very home music BEMANI game; beatmania CS, which came with a bonus disc called beatmania APPEND YebisuMIX, which contained a completely brand-new set of songs. This was the first music game worked on by Hiroyuki Togo, a KONAMI composer whose style of music - which dabbled in house, R&B, and hints of jazz - helped expand the music variety of beatmania. Togo would continue to work on most of the PlayStation beatmania games. beatmania CS ended up selling hundreds of thousands of copies, paving the way for CS releases of near every other BEMANI game for the next decade. A home version of beatmania 3rdMIX wasn't too far behind, coming out by the end of the year.

Lastly, 1998 also introduced two singers who would become big over the years. First was Kiyotaka Sugimoto, a friend of Reo Nagumo's who would compose music himself just a year later, becoming a core beatmania and pop'n music staff member. Second was Sanae Shintani, KONAMI's first break-out vocalist. Originally a receptionist, Sanae would over the years become one of the most popular vocalists across beatmania and pop'n music, going on to having six of her own albums, three compliation albums, two mini-albums, three singles, and many concerts she participated in.

As big as 1998 was, though, 1999 would eclipse it quite a bit.

March

March 18th: beatmania 2ndMIX is released to Japanese arcades.

September

• Date unknown: DanceDanceRevolution is released to arcades, the first game in the DanceDanceRevolution series.
• September 28th: beatmania 3rdMIX is released.
• September 28th: pop'n music is released, the first game in the pop'n music series. It ran on BEMANI DJ-MAIN HARDWARE, the same hardware as beatmania.

October

• October 1st: beatmania CS is released in Japan for the Sony PlayStation. It also includes a bonus disc called YebisuMIX, which contains nine brand-new songs.

November

• November 18th: DanceDanceRevolution Internet Ranking Version, an upgraded version of the original DanceDanceRevolution, is released. This version of the game adds some graphical updates, a new difficulty level for both Single and Double play, and two new songs composed by Naoki Maeda: MAKE IT BETTER and TRIP MACHINE. It was also the first BEMANI game with Internet Ranking, which allowed you to enter your high scores online to compete against other Japanese players.
• November 27th: beatmania APPEND 3rdMIX mini, an early version of beatmania APPEND 3rdMIX, is released in Japan for the Sony PlayStation. This early version only contains five songs: find out, life goes on, Queen's Jamaica, tribe groove, and wild I/O.

December

• December 23rd: beatmania APPEND 3rdMIX is released in Japan on the Sony PlayStation.