2000
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2000
The year 2000 might have been KONAMI's biggest year ever with BEMANI. In addition to all their previous series of the following years receiving brand-new games, which all had several new installments this year, KONAMI released three new BEMANI series: Dance Maniax, KEYBOARDMANIA, and ParaParaParadise. They also released another spinoff of beatmania; beatmania III.
2000 also saw the year of KONAMI slowly transitioning to more powerful consoles for their BEMANI series. With the excpetion of Dance MAniax, all these 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 pop'n music 4. Curiously, KONAMI continued to run the original beatmania series on BEMANI DJ-MAIN HARDWARE, and beatmania IIDX, DanceDanceRevolution, and GUITARFREAKS and 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 DanceDanceRevolution through EXTREME, as well as GUITARFREAKS 3rdMIX & drummania 2ndMIX through GUITARFREAKS 11thMIX & drummania 10thMIX. MAMBO A GOGO would also run on this the following year.)
For the first time ever, beatmania did not receive a numbered sequel this year, opting instead to do another compilation game and a few spinoff games. KONAMI experimented with the franchise both in the arcade and at home. beatmania ClubMIX focused mainly on licensed club music, beatmania featuring DREAMS COME TRUE focused on the Japanese band of the same name, and beatmania CORE REMIX's songlist almost exclusively contained remixes of songs from beatmania and beatmania 2ndMIX, along with their original versions.
DanceDanceRevolution, meanwhile, saw expansion into Korea, with two Korean versions based on DanceDanceRevolution 3rdMIX: DanceDanceRevolution 3rdMIX Ver.KOREA and DanceDanceRevolution 3rdMIX Ver.KOREA2. These games contained brand-new licenses, the former game's licenses even appearing in a later Japanese arcade release.
pop'n music its own spinoffs with two games containing popular anime licenses: pop'n music アニメロ and pop'n music アニメロ2号. It also received a Disney license spin-off game, pop'n music MICKEY TUNES.
GUITARFREAKS & drummania didn't receive any spinoff games, though they did get something quite big by the end of the year; full session connectivity. 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 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 made his debut in drummania 2ndMIX, adding to the series his own unique sound of lounge and house to the series.
drummania also marked a big milestone for KONAMI as a whole. Its whole port, drummania CS, was actually one of the launch titles for the Japanese PlayStation launch in Japan, making it the first (and so far only) BEMANI game to be a launch title for a video game system.
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; 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, 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.
Dance Maniax was the first BEMANI game to use motion sensors for gameplay, as opposed to the traditional button/pad hitting gameplay of other BEMANI games at the time. By waving your hands above or below four sensors, you danced along to music. Like DanceDanceRevolution, Dance Maniax's licenses were also from the Dancemania series, though it also boasted a large amount of original songs, too. Many of the originals eventually found their way to DanceDanceRevolution over the years.
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.
If that wasn't all, KONAMI also made even more Game Boy Color BEMANI games, this year introducing new DanceDanceRevolution and pop'n music GB games.
This year also saw the release of the very first non-Japanese home BEMANI game - beatmania (Europe), released only in Europe. KONAMI also released Dancing Stage EuroMIX in Europe, as well as DanceDanceRevolution USA in North America, the first North American-exclusive DanceDanceRevolution arcade title.
But what goes up must eventually come down, as they say. While 2000 was a huge year for BEMANI, 2001 would see some slowdown, as well as not one but two reboots to two of their biggest music game series.