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2001

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2001

Compared to the previous year, 2001 saw KONAMI step back a bit with their BEMANI titles. The aging PlayStation was almost seeing the end of its run, as the PlayStation 2 became more and more the dominant BEMANI system. All three new BEMANI titles from the year before - Dance Maniax, KEYBOARDMANIA, and ParaParaParadise - ended their runs this year, and the older series that were still around at year's end went through large shake-ups.

KONAMI only introduced one new BEMANI series in 2001; the short-lived MAMBO A GO GO. It used three bongos, each one with three sensors. It was made to capitalize on the Latin music craze of the early 2000's, and consisted of licensed Latin dance music and KONAMI originals, the latter from regulars in the GUITARFREAKS & drummania franchise like TOMOSUKE, Hirofumi Sasaki, and Motoaki Furukawa. (Not too surprising, considering it ran on KONAMI BEMANI System 573 Digital, the same hardware as GUITARFREAKS & drummania.) MAMBO A GO GO's first game was also its last; most of its originals eventually wound up in other BEMANI titles.

beatmania went from having multiple games and spinoffs a year to just three games in the entirety of 2001. The final CS-only spinoff game - beatmania THE SOUND OF TOKYO! - premiered in spring 2001. It boasted a completely original set of 13 licenses, the music focused more on house and jazz than earlier games in the series. The PlayStation 2 saw the keyboard-based beatmania打打打!!, which contained old beatmania songs that were played on a keyboard. The only beatmania arcade game released in 2001 was beatmania 6thMIX THE UK UNDERGROUND MUSIC, which scrapped all previous songs from the franchise for 27 brand-new songs, 12 of them by commission artists from the United Kingdom (hence the game's subtitle). beatmania III APPEND 6thMIX also came out; unlike beatmania 6thMIX, it kept older beatmania songs, though. It also included long versions of three of 6thMIX's new songs as a bonus.

pop'n music mostly stuck to the arcades in 2001, but not without a major visual upgrade with pop'n music 6. Lanes were separated by color for the first time ever, and it was the first non spin-off game in the series to include anime licenses, all of them brand-new to the series. shio, who was an early designer for the series who briefly worked on beatmania for a year, returned as head character designer, bringing larger, more animated characters to the series. The songlists only got bigger, and the gameplay expanded with more difficult songs on EX while still maintaining enough easy songs for beginners to adapt to. pop'n music 7 followed at year's end. On the home front, KONAMI stopped supporting the Sega Dreamcast, so pop'n music 5 CS was only on the Sony PlayStation for the first time ever. 5 CS didn't arrive until near the end of the year. To make up for it, though, KONAMI included a lot of pop'n music 6 songs as previews, and even included the speed mods 6's arcade version introduced.

DanceDanceRevolution saw itself focusing more on the new and less of the old. Along with going from 30 fps to 60, DanceDanceRevolution 5thMIX also saw the series remove all but 20 songs prior to 4thMIX, licenses and originals alike. KONAMI shook it up even further with DDRMAX -DanceDanceRevolution 6thMIX- later that year, which scrapped all previous songs altogether for 42 new songs, mostly consisting of new Dancemania licenses and CS songs, with only six new originals. KONAMI even removed the dancing characters for the first time in a mainline game. Videos consisted now of various background movies stitched together to form a video, though some songs received their own little original video bits. On the CS front, KONAMI released home ports of 4thMIX and 5thMIX. It also released DanceDanceRevolution EXTRA MIX, which brought the songs from DanceDanceRevolution Solo BASS MIX, DanceDanceRevolution Solo 2000, and (almost) all the new songs from DanceDanceRevolution 4thMIX PLUS in a single package.

Internationally, 2001 was a big year for non-Japanese DDR fans, as KONAMI started releasing DanceDanceRevolution titles internationally on the Sony PlayStation. DanceDanceRevolution CS (America) came out in the U.S., containing a decent mix of songs from DanceDanceRevolution through 3rdMIX CS, while Dancing Stage EuroMIX CS came out in Europe. Both North America and Europe received DanceDanceRevolution Disney MIX (Dancing Stage Disney MIX in Europe), a very loose port of Dancing Stage featuring Disney's RAVE that eliminated most of the non-Disney based licenses with 4thMIX KONAMI originals. The only major addition is MANIAC charts for all songs on Single, but you need to play all the songs on TRICK first to unlock them.

DanceDanceRevolution also saw a big first in BEMANI; the first mobile BEMANI game. Near a decade before jubeat plus or REFLEC BEAT plus, there was DanceDanceRevolution (i-αppli), which allowed one to play MIDI versions of DanceDanceRevolution songs on your mobile phone.

GUITARFREAKS & drummania found itself struggling with the limitations of the KONAMI BEMANI SYSTEM 573 DIGITAL hardware. The series was losing as many songs as it was introducing, many of which never returned to the series again, including KONAMI originals. Space limitations got so bad that by the time GUITARFREAKS 6thMIX & drummania 5thMIX came out, KONAMI had to remove near all the older songs' BASS charts just to have enough room for all of the songs. Both releases did get a boost with a certain add-on this year, which will be explained below. On the CS front, only one new home release for PlayStation 2 - ギタドラ! GUITARFREAKS 4thMIX & drummania 3rdMIX - came out this year, selling so poorly that KONAMI didn't bother to port any further games on PlayStation 2 for over four years.

beatmania IIDX got by far the best upgrades of any series this user. Not only did it receive two arcade games, but the interface was streamlined, added several new helpful options (more speed mods, song grades introduced, DVD video hardware replacing VCD), and the songlist and music variety only got better. Two new home versions came out relatively quickly as well, both having the subtitle "new songs collection", due to having new CS songs.

KEYBOARDMANIA received one final game this year with KEYBOARDMANIA 3rdMIX. For the final game KONAMI added a very interesting feature - Multisession GDK. This allows you to combine GUITARFREAKS, drummania, and KEYBOARDMANIA all at once to play songs on. While only a few songs were compatible, the result was the most complete band experience one could get in a music game an the time. Unfortunately, only the two new GF/DM releases this year - GF5th/dm4th and GF6th/dm5th - could be linked up to access this mode. There was talk of a 4th KEYBOARDMANIA title exclusive to PlayStation 2, but it never came to light.

Dance Maniax's final "new" game was an upgrade to last year's 2ndMIX, titled Dance Maniax 2ndMIX append JPARADISE, using the same interface. It included 14 new songs, though except for the (peculiar) beatmania IIDX crossover sanctus, most of the licenses/crossovers had earlier appeared in DanceDanceRevolution 5thMIX.

ParaParaParadise got its one and only sequel, ParaParaParadise 2nd MIX, this year. Unlike the original game, it never received a soundtrack or console release. It did boast a couple of original remixes, most notably one for then recent pop'n music song ウルトラハイヒール～I JUST WANNA TELL YOU. It was also the only BEMANI game to run on the BEMANI VIPER hardware. The same day 2ndMIX came out, ParaParaParadise received a PlayStation 2 home release based on 1st MIX Plus, though the home port received a bit of criticism for being a pain to set-up and implement.

2001 was definitely a year of KONAMI focusing more on quality over quantity with BEMANI, but 2002 saw another huge change in store for BEMANI.

January

February

  • February 7th: Para Para Paradise Original Soundtrack album released.
  • February 8th: おはスタ DanceDanceRevolution GB is released in Japan for Nintendo's Game Boy Color.
  • February 19th: DanceDanceRevolution (i-αppli), the first mobile BEMANI game, is released to Japanese mobile phones.
  • February 21st: beatmania CORE REMIX Original Soundtrack album released.

March

April

  • April 4th: beatmania soundtracks THE SOUND OF TOKYO! album released.
  • April 19th: Dance Maniax 2ndMIX append JPARADISE, an upgrade to 2ndMIX, is released to Japanese arcades.
  • April 25th: KEYBOARDMANIA 3rd MIX Original Soundtracks album released.
  • April 28th: pop'n music 6 is released to Japanese arcades.
    • wac starts sound directing the series beginning with this game. He would continue to serve as head/co-sound director of the arcade pop'n music series up until pop'n music Sunny Park.

June

July

August

September

October

November

Unknown Date

  • Kiyotaka Sugimoto leaves KONAMI to work on other projects.
  • Toshio Sakurai leaves KONAMI to form a band outside of KONAMI.
  • Youhei Shimizu leaves KONAMI to join Polyphonic Digital Inc.
  • Parquets join KONAMI's music label. They would continue to release singles/albums through KONAMI until 2006.
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