With DJ Hero just recently coming out, I feel like it's time to go ahead and give credit where it's due. That's right, ladies and gents: it's time for me to finally review Beatmania.
GAMEPLAY - 7/10
Beatmania (US) is actually based on the 9th game in the popular and long running Beatmania IIDX arcade series, which is also a sort of reimagining of the original Beatmania series. The gameplay consists of buttons falling from the top of the screen to the bottom, with the player having to press the corresponding button as soon as it reaches the bottom. While the formula doesn't sound to different from any other music game out there, its real charm comes from the sheer difficulty and learning curve. While most games tend to make concessions towards introducing players to the game, then getting progressively harder, Beatmania starts you off at the bottom of the staircase, shows you the first two steps, then smashes the rest of them with a gigantic hammer, lights it on fire, then lines the rubble with nails dipped in poison and asks you to reach the top. Part of the challenge comes from the fact that the samples you're playing usually involve tapping rhythms and melody at the same time, while managing the turn table. This might not be that big of an issue, but it requires you to have at least 85% of the notes played correctly through the entire song, with your percentage becoming a life bar. Once you reach the upper threshold, any missed notes will slowly pull it down. Basically, this boils down to you possibly being great at a song and failing because of the last 5 seconds of the song if you don't know the ending, which can lead to a lot of frustration. If anyone out there is a fan of the previous (or later) releases, the US version is a perfect port in terms of gameplay, along with giving you a chance to get an official Beatmania controller.
GRAPHICS - 4/10
While the US music games tend to focus on creating unique interfaces, characters or customization, Beatmania focuses more on a minimal graphical style that makes it feel more like you're learning some bizarre language instead of playing a game. Most of the time, you'll be staring at a plain black background with white, blue, and red keys flying down screen. If you can peel your eyes away, there's a video playing on the side, but that's about it as far as in-game visuals are concerned. The music select screen is nice, but there's really not too much that sets up any sort of atmosphere other than music-game-in-corner-of-arcade, which doesn't really cut it for console music games anymore.
SOUND - 7/10
If you're one of those people that criticizes DJ Hero for not having enough trance/techno, the soundtrack here might float your boat a bit more. While there's still a bit of the traditional eurobeat stuff that plagues so many japanese music games, you also get some of the more original songs from the franchise (Bad Boy Bass? Yes plz). In addition to that, you get a few original songs along with the required American tracks, which includes a decent remix of Britney Spears' Toxic, Funkytown, etc. In total, you've got 58 songs, some exclusive to Beatmania, the others in IIDX, and a few more that are selectable in both modes once you unlock them.
OVERALL - 7/10
For anyone that's always loved Beatmania or is a huge fan of music games, this is well worth at least trying out, however the steep difficulty curve and song list might alienate some players. If you persevere and manage to pass some of those more tough songs and possibly even AA them, you'll get one of those rare moments where you might jump out of your chair or away from the TV in excitement. This is also probably one of the easiest way to score an affordable and decent Beatmania controller for long time fans, but it's a bit hard to locate copies of the game since it didn't sell too well in the US. While BM US is easily a must buy for Beatmania fans, people that are hardcore fans of American music games might want to approach this one with caution and everyone else might want to look at videos to see if it looks interesting before even trying it out.
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