2002 (year)

This page is for the year 2000 in BEMANI. For the song of the same name from beatmania IIDX 7th style, please see [[2002]..

This page is under HEAVY construction.

2002

If 2001 saw KONAMI slowing down their BEMANI series, then 2002 saw them keeping a stronghold on what series remained this year, with introducing two new things to the BEMANI line as a whole.

The first of these two new ideas was V-RARE SOUND TRACKs, limited release CDs that came with pre-orders of the CS release of BEMANI titles. As their name applies, these CDs contain exclusive remixes and sometimes even original songs on them, and the grand majority of the content on them have never re-released anywhere else, even today. KONAMI only did this with their PlayStation 2 BEMANI releases, presumably to gain more incentive in purchasing the games on the still recent platform in Japan. The first release, V-RARE SOUND TRACK, came with the limited edition version of DDRMAX -DanceDanceRevolution 6thMIX- CS. KONAMI would continue to produce V-RARE SOUND TRACKS as late as 2010, though it became more sporadic after the mid-2000's.

The second big thing was the launch of e-AMUSEMENT for their arcade BEMANI titles. First launched in August 2002 with GUITARFREAKS 8thMIX & drummania 7thMIX, e-AMUSEMENT is an online service provided by KONAMI to access exclusive content you otherwise wouldn't be able to with just regular coin-based gameplay. Among the benefits of e-AMUSEMENT include the ability to save your scores and records for BEMANI games, view live Internet rankings, and be able to unlock content from events held in BEMANI games. While only GUITARFREAKS 8thMIX & drummania 7thMIX and pop'n music 9 supported e-AMUSEMENT in BEMANI titles released in 2002, by the following every active arcade BEMANI series supported e-AMUSEMENT, which is still used to this very day.

beatmania entered its last year this year, as it released its two final games: beatmania 7thMIX -keepin' evolution- and beatmania THE FINAL. 7thMIX introduced the short-lived 1-turn Scratches, which required you to turn the tuntable exactly once by the time the note ended to get the best score possible. THE FINAL featured the series' biggest number of songs in the series with 192 songs, with songs from every non-licensed game. While memory limitations met some games' songlists were very incomplete, as well as videos being reduced to just a little square boxes, all older songs received brand-new charts to replace any duplicate charts left over, and the new songs of the game featured the hardest charts the series had ever seen, with Double ANOTHER charts like IMPLANTATION and Quickening's just as hard as any beatmania IIDX charts at the time. beatmania 6thMIX + CORE REMIX was also released on the Sony PlayStation, combining the new songs from both beatmania CORE REMIX and beatmania 6thMIX -THE UK UNDERGROUND MUSIC- together. It will be the last CS release, unfortunately, as neither 7thMIX or THE FINAL ever got home ports. (Though quite a few of 7th and THE FINAL's originals ended up in pop'n music via ee'MALL the following year.)

DanceDanceRevolution saw the release of DDRMAX2 -DanceDanceRevolution 7thMIX-, which introduced a whole new difficulty level; CHALLENGE. And with the new difficulty level came a new mode called CHALLENGE MODE, where you played courses made up of songs with one noticeable catch; you had a battery displayed instead of the traditional dance meter. Each time you got anything other than GREAT or PERFECT, you lost a part of the battery. Four misses results in an instant GAME OVER, though it will recharge each song depending on your performance. KONAMI revived some older KONAMI originals as well, though memory limitations left the videos very pixelated.

The end of the year then saw the release of DanceDanceRevolution EXTREME. Intended to be a relaunch of the series (its arcade tagline was "We're starting over"), it ended up being the last arcade release in Japan for over three years. EXTREME revived near every KONAMI original from the series that had been earlier removed, along with 13 classic Dancemania licensed tracks, as well as adding a then record 69 new songs to the series, with BEMANI crossovers ranging from the original beatmania to as recent as last year's MAMBO A GO GO. Despite lower sound quality and very grainy video, the game became a huge hit and is even still today considered one of the greatest DanceDanceRevolution releases of all time.

On the homefront, only new CS DanceDanceRevolution game came out in 2002; DDRMAX -DanceDanceRevolution 6thMIX- CS, a direct port of DDRMAX with two new songs. However, it did mark the first game in the series to be released on the PlayStation 2, and was the first game to introduce the V-RARE SOUND TRACK album concept explained above.

Internationally, DanceDanceRevolution continued to make strides in North America and Europe. In both areas KONAMI released two new games for both. North America's first release was the final PlayStation release in that country, DanceDanceRevolution KONAMIX, which contained a large 52 songs. As the name applies, it only contained KONAMI originals, its songs consisting of most of the KOANMI originals from before DDRMAX. Its second release was the first on PlayStation 2, DDRMAX -DanceDanceRevolution-. Despite sharing the interface and the same name as the Japanese arcade game, DDRMAX US instead focused on more KONAMI originals that weren't in KONAMIX, new BEMANI crossovers, as well as classic Dancemania songs that hadn't appeared in a US DDR release at the time. The game became a hit, and KOANMI would continue to release new PlayStation 2 DanceDanceRevolution every fall for the next seven years in North America.

Europe's only home release of 2002 was Dancing Stage PARTY EDiTiON on the Sony PlayStation, which featured all but six of the songs from KONAMIX, replaced with five brand-new licenses. Its 51 song tracklist would be the biggest in the series for the next two years, and the largest in the European PlayStation library. However, Europe did get something this year that North America did not; an arcade release! Dancing Stage EuroMIX2 came out this year, based on the DDRMAX 2 game engine (though CHALLENGE charts did not transfer over). 11 new licenses and three new KONAMI originals were bundled together with eight older Dancemania licenses, along with 30 classic DDR tracks that hadn't appeared in any European arcade release at the time. It was also the first arcade release with the now traditional BEGINNER difficulty. While CHALLENGE MODE is gone, NONSTOP MODE takes its place. While its tracklist of 78 songs wasn't quite as big as DDRMAX2's 135, EuroMIX2 contained several DDR originals that still haven't been revived in the arcades in Japan to this day, such as MAKE A JAM! and HYPNØTIC CRISIS.

pop'n music saw two new arcade releases this year and two new home games this year. pop'n music 8, much like beatmania THE FINAL and DanceDanceRevolution EXTREME, saw a lot of BEMANI crossovers come its way, possibly as a late hurrah for the aging BEMANI FIREBEAT HARDWARE, being the last game in the series to run on it. pop'n music 9, released near the end of the year, was the first to run on BEMANI VIPER HARDWARE, but was also the first to support e-AMUSEMENT for saving scores. As if that wasn't enough, KONAMI revived near every song from the past eight arcade games back, many of them which received brand-new charts. Licensed characters could also be finally played as as well, after years of being restricted to only being rivals.

The first of the two new home releases was pop'n music 6 CS, the last Japanese game on the original PlayStation. And what a sendoff; it had the biggest songlist in PlayStation BEMANI history with 104 songs. It included all the new originals from pop'n music 6, and even most of the course songs as well. As if that wasn't enough, near the entire pop'n stage songlist was included for play as well as a bonus. But this came with some sacrifices: all but two licenses were gone, BATTLE MODE and RGB MODE were removed, and course songs only had the chart in that course and no others. Despite this, the game ran at a smooth 60 FPS and boasted an impressive high number of new songs as well. It also introduced 悲しいね, at the time considered the hardest song ever in a CS pop'n music title, going at a frantic 200 BPM and putting in 820 notes into a song barely over 90 seconds long! The second game released this year, pop'n music 7 CS, saw the series switch over to the PlayStation 2. Space restrictions were a thing of the past: BATTLE MODE made its CS debut, course songs now had their full charts and playable in arcade mode as well, and the loading times got overall shorter. 7 CS sold well and was even re-released as part of KONAMI's KONAMI thee BEST line several years later at less than half its price.

GUITARFREAKS & drummania still struggled with the space restrictions with the PlayStation-based KONAMI BEMANI SYSTEM 573 DIGITAL hardware. GUITARFREAKS 7thMIX & drummania 6thMIX only had 98 songs versus the previous game's 138, though the new songlist spawned quite a few popular BEMANI crossovers choices for the future, including Concertino in Blue, considered one of the better songs from the classic era of the franchise and was even popular enough to be transplanted into beatmania IIDX, DanceDanceRevolution, jubeat, and pop'n music many years later. GUITARFREAKS 8thMIX & drummania 7thMIX was the first game to revive older songs, and was the first ever BEMANI game to support e-AMUSEMENT for exclusive content; in this case, the ability to play songs from the power-up version of the game that came a few months later, which added six new songs and saw re-ratings for near every chart in the game.

beatmania IIDX saw two new arcade releases in 2002 as well. beatmania IIDX 7th style came out this year, introducing the new EXTRA STAGE and ONE MORE EXTRA STAGE model for exclusive songs rewarded to those who managed to complete the requirements for them. beatmania IIDX 8th style was noticeable in that it was the first game in the series to be released after beatmania's end, released just a day later. Many beatmania regulars at the time migrated over to beatmania IIDX; sound director SLAKE even joined the beatmania IIDX staff as a member of the following two arcade games. Unfortunately, similar to GUITARFREAKS & drummania, beatmania IIDX found itself struggling with the limitations of the Twinkle arcade hardware - new songs in 8th style didn't even have overlays, and a lot of originals in both 8th and the preceding 7th were removed due to space. KONAMI seemed to be aware of this, though, as the following year saw a big change in store for the series, one that would turn it into the future cornerstone of all of BEMANI altogether.

On the CS front, only a single new beatmania IIDX CS release came out this year; beatmania IIDX 6th style -new songs collection-, near 10 months after the arcade release. Despite its numerous features (the first CS game with an art gallery, H-SPEED 4, EASY/HARD modifiers, an enhanced DRILL MODE) and exclusives (Tatsujin videos, Music Clip Mode, daily expert courses), the game struggled to sell. One of two reasons have been given on the Internet: either KONAMI made too many copies of the game, or it became a target of massive bootlegging. Whichever the case, beatmania IIDX 6th style -new songs collection- was a financial failure, and KONAMI put the production of future CS games on hold for well over a year, requiring the fans' support to continue going.

With the end of beatmania and hibernation beginning for the arcade version of DanceDanceRevolution, 2003 would see KONAMI make a big change for beatmania IIDX, and the start of a new DanceDanceRevolution series internationally, the first home console games made outside of Japan.