Beatmania

 (styled as beatmania) is a rhythm video game developed and distributed by Japanese game developer Konami and first released in December 1997. It contributed largely to the boom of music games in 1998, and the series expanded not only with arcade sequels, but also moved to home consoles and other portable devices, achieving a million unit sales. The Bemani line of music games from Konami is named after the series, was first adopted in the arcade release of "Beatmania 3rdMix" and kept ever since. The series came to an end with the last game being "Beatmania The Final", released in 2002.
"Beatmania" gave birth to several spinoffs, such as the "Beatmania IIDX" series (a more advanced version featuring 7 keys and higher difficulty levels, and to this day still receiving new version updates) and the other being "Beatmania III", a remake of the 5-key series which featured a more modern hardware platform, a pedal for optional effects and a 3.5" floppy disk drive to save play records.
While the series was never ported to home computers, there have been unlicensed hard-drive copies which made it playable on a computer's keyboard, or even with a modded PlayStation controller. Its popularity led to non-official simulators, with one of the most popular being "BM98".
"Beatmania" and its variants have a following in Japan and all around the world. The password-based Internet Ranking service allowed competition wherever a machine is available. Today in the United States, many of the original Beatmania cabinets are in the hands of arcade collectors and Bemani enthusiasts, and consequently, are a rare sight at many arcades.
Basic rules.
The player is a club DJ who must manipulate the controls according to the instructions on the screen to win the praise of the audience. Each game consists of a set number of songs of various difficulties, and each song must attain a certain degree of satisfaction from the audience in order to progress to the next.
The game controls consist of five plastic vertical rectangular keys that are arranged in a zigzag pattern like the letter "M" or in vibraphone type arranged. They resemble the layout of the keys of a piano (e.g. C, C#, D, D#, and E) and are color-coded in the same fashion, with the lower row white and the top row black. A turntable is to the right of the five keys, and is turned, or "scratched".
Each key has a corresponding vertical bar onscreen, as does the turntable. The bars indicate the path which rectangular icons cascade down towards a horizontal line near the bottom of the screen. The player must hit the corresponding key or rotate the turntable when the icon matches the line, which will trigger a preset sound sample and recomposes the song properly. Players are judged for each key press for the accuracy of the timing on a scale of p-great (from "perfect great"; also called "flashing great"), great, good, bad and poor. Hitting keys/scratching when corresponding notes are absent will deplete a bar indicating the audience satisfaction. The passing range is shown on the bar as a red region on the right, and green for the failing range on the left. The game may end prematurely if the bar is completely depleted, but this depends on individual machine settings.
The unit of score in the game is "money". A final grade (A – H) is given at the end of the game to indicate the player's performance. This grade is not directly based on the "money score", but is instead based on the player's overall accuracy.
Additional rules.
Various game modes are available, with different rule alterations that provide suitable challenges for players of various degrees of skill.
Cabinet design.
Two major styles of the Beatmania cabinet were originally created, the standard cabinet, and the mini-style cabinet. The standard cabinet was taller and wider than the mini-style and included a 29" screen, versus the 20" screen on the mini cabinet. The 1P/2P/Effect buttons were placed on the vertical face of the cabinet on the mini, while placed between the keys, ahead of the coin drop on standard cabinets. The mini-cabinet contained 6 speakers, 4 normal mid/high range, and 2 larger subs. The standard cabinet contained 10 speakers, including the 2 subs. Functionally the game boards, HDD, and ROM chips were the same between cabinets. Finally, the mini cabinet had a smaller spacing between the turntable and the keys, and the turntable was approximately half the diameter of the standard version. Today the mini-cabinet is much more difficult to find, especially in the United States.
Main artists.
"Beatmania" offers many musical genres from different disciplines of electronic music. Below are some of the artists who made frequent appearances in the series.
Releases.
The "Beatmania" series has been released on multiple platforms in addition to its arcade releases. The majority of the games have been featured on the Sony PlayStation and have also been featured on the Nintendo Game Boy Color, and the WonderSwan. The North American "Beatmania" on the PlayStation 2 also features Beatmania play.
Several key mixes were never ported to home or portable consoles, including Beatmania 7thMix and Beatmania The Final. Also there are many console-exclusive songs that were never introduced in the Arcade releases, in mixes such as Gottamix and The Sound Of Tokyo. Many songs were also released on one mix at the arcades but released in another style for the consumer versions. The best example of this was Gottamix 2, which contained consumer-exclusive songs in addition to the "Complete Mix 2 Anothers" that were released months earlier as an arcade exclusive.
Korean local releases (licensed by Unico Electronics Co. Ltd. (now Uniana) removed Japanese vocal songs because of the Korean law at that time.
Console releases
Reception.
In Japan, "Game Machine" listed "Beatmania" on their March 1, 1998 issue as being the most-successful dedicated arcade game of the year.