User:Kyle3912/sandbox/beatmania III THE ULTIMATE

This is currently a work-in-progress. Feel free to expand upon this page or fix errors if necessary.

Imagine this...

One day in late 2003, KONAMI decided to commission a Japanese arcade game developer to create a brand new game: beatmania III THE ULTIMATE. It would be unlike any version before it as it would contain absolutely EVERY song that had ever been playable in any arcade/consumer beatmania title before it, including licenses. Considering their licensing fees at the time, they couldn't really do it themselves, and they had to commission another company to re-license songs and develop the game. These Japanese developers agreed to do this massive project, referencing from the beatmania III THE FINAL source code provided to them by KONAMI (this project assumes that KONAMI still has the source code), and even going as far as to re-license licensed songs that previously appeared, or were removed from prior beatmania games. They also took the time to add in new features to improve the player experience, and the game as a whole. Eventually, after months of hard work and lots of care being put into the game, it was released to Japanese arcades sometime around late 2004, with an American version known as hiphopmania ultimateMIX being released in mid-2005.

New Features

• The game now uses PC-based hardware, similarly to what beatmania IIDX was doing at the time (and still is today).
• Save data is now primarily stored on e-amusement ENTRY CARDs, a feature that KONAMI wanted to be included in the game. The publishers of the game later released an updated version of the game in early 2006 that also supports the then-recent e-amusement passes.
  • If you used to save data onto a floppy disk and want to transfer your song records to an ENTRY CARD or e-amusement pass, you can insert the floppy disk into the machine's disk drive, and then insert an ENTRY CARD/pass into the card reader so it can read the data and then add them into the e-amusement card. You will then be asked to remove the floppy disk from the disk drive and the game will continue as normal.
• Some screens had their menu timers changed. Now, MODE SELECT lasts 20 seconds, SOUND SELECT lasts 90 seconds (120 seconds in EXPERT mode), and the screen where your can view your high-scores for each song lasts 80 seconds.
• The mode selection has been changed to NORMAL, EXPERT, and FREE. NORMAL is the regular play mode, and EXPERT and FREE are nearly identical to the TSUNAGI and SOZAI modes (respectively) from previous beatmania III games.
• In the SOUND SELECT screen, difficulties can now be changed by pressing the two black keys simultaneously. (NORMAL→HARD→ANOTHER→FOOT)
  • You can also easily switch to FOOT charts by pressing the foot pedal in the SOUND SELECT screen
• All music previews are now keysounded and loop from the beginning (no matter where they start) immediately after reaching the end, rather than a while after
• The play option menu in the SOUND SELECT screen has been given an overhaul. You can now use the white keys to go to the next (lower) play option, while the black keys go back to the previous (higher) one.
  • The play frame system has been updated. The "SEPARATE," "COUNTER," and "SPE-ANA" frames are now separate play options (SPE-ANA's option is known as ANALYZER), so every play frame now supports all of these features. Furthermore, all play frames now support FOOT charts. (in beatmania III THE FINAL, it wasn't possible to have a counter while using a singular frame like the CLOUD frame. It is now possible in this game.)
  • The FAST PLAY option has been renamed to MUSIC TEMPO and can now be adjusted from ×0.5 to ×2.0 in intervals of 0.1, also including multiples of 0.25. (×0.5→×0.6→×0.7→×0.75→×0.8→×0.9→×1→×1.1→×1.2→×1.25→×1.3→×1.4→×1.5→×1.6→×1.7→×1.75→×1.8→×1.9→×2) Every song now supports all MUSIC TEMPO options as well, and you can now properly see a song's visual animations while playing on faster MUSIC TEMPO options. (Earlier games just displayed a generic animation with your FAST PLAY option instead of the song's animations) Furthermore, timing windows are now consistent between all MUSIC TEMPO options over ×1, now using the timing windows for ×1 MUSIC TEMPO, no matter how high the MUSIC TEMPO is. (The developers said that this change makes the option more accessible to people who don't like the tight timing windows of FAST PLAY in previous beatmania III games. I might be wrong about this, though...)
  • The HI-SPEED option has been updated: This option can now be set anywhere from ×0.25 to ×20 in intervals of ×0.05
• All duplicate charts have now been dealt with, as songs with duplicated charts now use their charts from their latest appearance in beatmania. If the song had duplicate charts in their latest appearance, the developers decided to either replace a specific chart of the song with a unique chart created in-house, or remove it altogether. Not only that, but all DOUBLE charts can now have separate ratings from SINGLE charts. 2-player FOOT charts still can't be played in DOUBLE PLAY, though.
• The scoring system has finally been updated to have JUST GREATs be worth twice as many points as normal GREATs, thus raising the maximum possible score on any song to 200,000.
  • The score counter has also been upgraded to hold up to seven digits.

Full Songlist

Charts with a * symbol next to their difficulty number are new charts. DOUBLE charts with a † symbol next to their difficulty number use the alternative DOUBLE version of the song.

Genre	Song	Artist	BPM	SP Difficulty			DP Difficulty
				NORMAL	HARD	ANOTHER	NORMAL	HARD	ANOTHER
beatmania 1stMIX (10 songs)
PRACTICE	PRACTICE STAGE	DJ KONAMI	112	1*	-	-	1	-	-
BREAK BEATS	greed eater	The Dust Fathers	112	1*	-	-	1	-	-
REGGAE	jam jam reggae	jam master '73	90	1	-	-	1	-	-
HIPHOP	u gotta groove	DJ nagureo	94~100	1	3*	-	1	3*	-
BREAK BEATS	2 gorgeous 4U	prophet-31	150	2	-	-	2*	-	-
DJ-BATTLE	DJ BATTLE	DJ nagureo	112	3	-	-	3	-	-
TECHNO	OVERDOSER (romo mix) / OVERDOSER (ambient mix)	MIRAK	132 / 134	3	-	-	4†	-	-
HOUSE	20,november (single mix) / 20,november (radio edit)	DJ nagureo	130	4	5	6	4†	6†	8†
RAVE	e-motion	e.o.s	130	4	5*	-	4	5*	-
SOUL	LOVE SO GROOVY / LOVE SO GROOVY (12inch version)	LOVEMINTS	141	4	4	4	4†	4†	4†
beatmania 2ndMIX
beatmania 3rdMIX
beatmania YebisuMIX
beatmania completeMIX
beatmania GB
beatmania 4thMIX
beatmania GOTTAMIX
beatmania 5thMIX
beatmania GB 2 ガッチャミックス
beatmania completeMIX 2
beatmania IIDX 3rd style
beatmania APPEND 5thMIX
beatmania III
beatmania ClubMIX
beatmania featuring DREAMS COME TRUE
beatmania GOTTAMIX 2
beatmania GB ガッチャミックス2
beatmania CORE REMIX
DJ-BATTLE	DJ-BATTLE ～JODLER MIX～	DJ SIMON	130~240	3	5	-	3	5	-
beatmania APPEND ClubMIX
beatmania THE SOUND OF TOKYO! (13 songs)
GROOVY DRUM METHOD	ビートの達人	小西 康陽	163	1	8	9	1	8	9
BOOGIE DISCO BREAK	How to Scratch Part.1	TMVG (AKIRA MIZUMOTO+HIBIKI TOKIWA)	119	1	6	7	1	6	7
LATIN BREAKBEATS	mambotango no.5	COMOESTAS	135	1	6	7	1	6	7
POP ART BREAKBEATS	THIS FLIGHT TONIGHT	P&ART SASANOOOHA(パンダとササノハ)	185	2	3	4	2	3	4
SWEET FUTURE JAZZ	Young Gun(Who is H&H)	須永 辰緒	124	2	5	6	2	5	6
JOKER BREAKBEATS	a monkey scratches	atomic soul experiences	166	3	5	6	3	5	6
JAZZY GROOVE	中華街大作戦	横山 剣 (クレイジーケンバンド)	182	3	6	7	3	6	7
LATIN HI-NRG	GAME OF EXOTICA	TAKÉ RODRIGUEZ AND HIS EXOTIC ARKESTRA	161	3	5	6	3	5	6
LOVE GROOVE	I LOVE YOU	野本 かりあ	127	3	4	5	3	4	5
BRAZILIAN HOUSE POP	A.O.R.	Mansfield	123	4	6	6	4	6	6
HAPPY HI-NRG	BLAST OFF!	The Orangers	165	4	6	7	4	6	7
JOKER SAMBA HOUSE	サンバじゃない？	ロケットマン	134	4	5	6	4	5	6
ORGAN JAZZ LOUNGE	あ！ ことりになっちゃった！	TUCKER	109-154	5	7	8	5	7	8
beatmania 6thMIX
beatmania 7thMIX
beatmania 6thMIX + CORE REMIX
beatmania THE FINAL

Play Frames

• AUTO (Default option. The play frame chosen depends on what song you're playing)
• CLOUD
• TECHNO
• STREET
• METAL
• JAPAN
• SEA
• EXOTIC (In a European version, this would be called WORLD due to censorship)
• BOLD
• STYLISH
• RAINBOW
• KONAMI
• CLASSIC (A remake of the play frame from beatmania 1stMIX and 2ndMIX)
• completeMIX 2