Beatmania Series
Konami's first foray into the world of arcade music games, presumably inspired by the success of Parappa The Rapper. Wildly successful due to its simple, unique concept and difficult gameplay, it would typically spawn an enormous number of sequels, spinoffs and imitators.
Note: This page is intended to have information only pertaining to the original 5-key beatmania series of games. Everything other than direct sequels should go in their seperate series pages.
Concept
Controls consist of 5 oversized light-up keys positioned in an octavial formation and, to the right of the keys, a turntable. After pressing start, the player is presented with a short cutscene, and given the option of playing an explanatory practice round to familarize themselves with the controls and gameplay concept. If the player declines at this time or accepts and finishes the practice round, he or she is then given a selection of several songs to play, each with a star difficulty rating and genre.
In either case, the player is presented with a display consisting of 4 vertical lanes on both sides of the screen seperated with an animation display in the center. Grey and blue rectangles scroll down the left 3 lanes, representing the lower three and upper two keys, respectively. Larger red rectangles scroll down the right-most lane, representing the turntable. When the rectangles reach the red line at the bottom of the lanes, players must hit the appropriate key or scratch the turntable in time with the music, which plays according to the song selected. When a key is pressed or the turntable is scratched, a sound is played which corresponds with the music, and the player is judged based on his or her timing, from Great (best) to Worst.
If the player consistently hits the keys and scratches the turntable according to the audio-visual cues, a “Groove Guage” at the bottom of the screen will increase to the right. If the player performs poorly, however, the Groove Guage will decrease to the left. If the player's Groove Guage is above 80% at the end of the song, then the song is considered cleared and the player is given another stage to play. In this stage, titled “DJ BATTLE”, the player must play a song consisting entirely of scratching in progressively more complex patterns in order to impress a rival DJ, who appears in the graphic display in the center of the screen. After the DJ Battle is a 3rd stage, in which the player is given 3 new (more difficult songs) to choose from. Play proceeds until the player fails a song (by finishing a song with the Groove Guage at less than 80%) or until he or she reaches the game's ending (consisting of a “credits” song in which the player can press the keys to create a few ambient noises as the staff names are displayed in the graphic display) after the 3rd stage.
In addition to the default play mode, the player may also play an “Expert mode” by mashing all 5 keys at once at the game's title screen instead of just pressing the start button. In this mode, the player plays a “course” of 5 songs in a row, with a much harder-to-fill Groove Guage.