Lapis the Nevrean

Those with a keen eye on my Round One videos will have noticed short clips of game play on Konami's beat mania IIDX - which is now on its 30th version. While I played IIDX quite a bit in the first portion of its releases (3rd Style is still the GOAT), it may surprise people to know that Konami's original 5-key beatmania release was way more influential on my rhythm gaming.

Beatmania, the originator of Konami's Bemani line of music games, celebrated its 25th release anniversary on Dec. 10. With Konami moving on the IIDX series to continue the beatmania legacy, that finally led to the older 5-key machines trickling into our area. It became common for arcades to have a 6th+Core or a Complete, with some even able to score a beatmania the Final. But my real introduction to the series came when an import shop I frequented my first year of college had a Playstation version of beatmania packaged with the ASCII home controller.

I think what really drew me in to the older versions of the game was in the "culture" it presented. It established the theme of the player performing real-time music sampling for an audience and went all-in on this concept.

During gameplay, if you are performing well, you see an icon of a person dancing, but if you are failing, the person instead stands and shrugs. Your score is presented in "money" earned by doing your performances in the club. It offered what games like Guitar Hero eventually built upon in an "audience feedback" to your performances.

The normal arcade mode also presents a DJ Battle, utilizing only the turntable to scratch out patterns so you can be deemed suitable to move on for your final performance. The use of the turntable is much more reserved in this early version, and usually results in a record scratch effect as opposed to becoming "an eighth button" in the later beatmania entries. It also presents "free scratch" sections that allow the player some creative liberties in their performance. This version also established the credits sequence, which allowed players to freestyle along with a track if they were able to clear the arcade mode.

The series definitely received large amounts of user quality improvements as time went on, but there is still something really cool about the vibe the original beat mania games exude. Going back to this original PlayStation entry, I'm honestly kind of surprised at how many of the songs still hold up today. I'm still a big fan of Tokai, Salamander Beat Crush and Do you love me?, and of course 20, November and e-motion are still as catchy as ever.

I think the real overall importance of beatmania to the local community of players I was able to be a part of was, yes, beatmania required a special control to fully enjoy the game, but it didn't require the dance mats and space for movement for DanceDanceRevolution. In addition, most of the DDR dance mats available at that time were the cheap, vinyl pads, and most of the available beatmania controllers offered a much more arcade-authentic experience. It was just easier to get groups together and unwind from an arcade DDR session by lounging around and playing beatmania and beatmania IIDX.

Twenty-five years later, when I think about beatmania, I'm more nostalgic for this original 5-key entry. I do enjoy IIDX, but my thoughts keep gravitating back to all of the fun I had in experiencing this OG Bemani game.

And of course, even all these years later, I still can't clear the freakin' end of Ska a Go Go ...