What is beatmania

From RemyWiki
Revision as of 00:35, 3 August 2016 by GlaringRadiokid (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

beatmania and its sister series beatmania III are a pair of rhythm game series introduced by KONAMI in 1997 and 2000, respectively. beatmania was the first series of rhythm games produced by KONAMI, kicking off and naming the successful BEMANI line. Variants of beatmania were released in the United States as hiphopmania and in Korea as beatstage; beatmania III was never officially released outside Japan. Both series ended in late 2002 with the release of beatmania THE FINAL and beatmania III THE FINAL. beatmania's first sequel series, beatmania IIDX, continues to this day.

Cabinet information

The central gameplay feature of both beatmania and beatmania III cabinets is a pair of 5-button keyboards with a turntable on the right of each. The keyboard has 3 white keys on the bottom and 2 black keys on the top, modeled after piano keys in arrangement. beatmania III also has one foot pedal for each player.

Differences between beatmania and beatmania III

  • beatmania uses the DJ MAIN platform, built on early 1990s technology. The low performance of this platform compared to the FIREBEAT used by beatmania III means that a given beatmania III release will usually have more songs, better sound quality, and better graphics than its beatmania equivalent.
  • beatmania III uses a scoring system with a maximum score of 100,000 different from the scoring system used before beatmania complete mix.
  • Like beatmania IIDX, beatmania III cabinets allow various effects to be applied to audio, though beatmania III units offered a far more versatile effect selection than contemporary beatmania IIDX releases.
  • beatmania III allows a player to save their high scores and options, along with some unlocks, to a floppy disk. beatmania does not have this feature.
  • Later beatmania III versions often add long versions of songs that do not appear in arcade beatmania titles.
  • beatmania III displays a rank after every song played, while beatmania only ranks the player on their entire set.
  • beatmania III retained separate Normal and Hard modes after beatmania removed them.
This article is a stub. You can help complete this page by filling in missing information and/or by correcting any errors.