Customer Reviews

Beatmania Bundle

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The first thing I looked at was the controller. The US Konami Official Controller is really a treat, the new rounded keys are great, and a nice improvement from the Japanese KOC. That being said, the turntable is awfully stiff and I modded it with wax paper circles. However, this mod also had to be done on the JKOC, and it's easy enough.

The actual game itself is a reskin of the Japanese beatmania IIDX 9th style. I see nothing wrong with the interface, it's functional. This mix has an okay selection of songs, both lisences and Konami originals from the greats like Taka. There are a few songs which will be familiar to US DDR players, like Mobo*Moga, and a lot of familiar faces. Sana, Togo, L.E.D., they're all there. This mix has a great selection of songs for someone just getting into beatmania, and has a five-key mode, supposedly to help beginners by omitting the two extra keys used in IIDX mode.

If you like this game, and get good at it, you will want to import games from Japan, which have better interfaces and song selections, and even though everything is in Japanese, there is translation help for these games available online. Plus, even though this will get costly(anywhere from approx. $40-upwards of $70), you won't have to import a Japanese controller, as the American one is better quality and works fully with all Japanese IIDX games.

This game _is_ difficult, though, and you will take a while to get used to the gameplay and become a great player. It will happen over time. The beatmania series is probably the best Bemani game on the market, and the first ever. Coming from DDR helps a little bit, but beatmania is really a completely different experience.

By the way, it is *really* supposed to be "beatmania", not "Beatmania".

It's a really well made controller but the game itself is a real letdown from the Japanese versions. It's like Konami put no effort at all and just rehashed everything. BMUS could have sparked a BM fad in the US like DDR/Guitar Hero but they lost their chance. Oh well, I guess I'll be buying DJ max games in the states rather than Beatmania.

This is the worst mix I have encountered in the Bemani series of games next to DDRX.

Basically, this is what you do. You buy this game just for the controller. Take the controller out of the box and set it aside. Go to a Japanese website and start ordering Beatmania IIDX games (I highly recommend Beatmania IIDX 16 Empress + Premium Best). While you are waiting for the good Beatmania game to arrive, use the American version as a frisbee. That is all it is good for. The music is bad, the mechanics are somehow wrong, it is missing modes, and it has a total fatal flaw that kills any possible aspect that could redeem itself. It has... an unlocking system.

This is how it works. Under freeplay when you first start the song, you have Jam Jam Raggae, that's it. What you do is play Arcade mode, play a song you have not played before so it gets added to the freeplay mode. THEN, to top that off, not all the songs are selectable. You have to play an easy song first, then you can select more songs. Assuming from the crappy music selection you find yourself playing this garbage even with the TV on mute (yeah, they get THAT old), you get to select another possibly better song. After the second, all the songs (I think become accessible). You have to do this at least 20 times before you get to have a reasonable amount of songs to play for freeplay mode. Really, the only good song I see is PARANOiA, and it is not even the good one. It is the 190 dirty mix. Couldn't they have used PARANOiA 2MB KCET Clean Mix at least? Or what about Max 300? Or any of the famously difficult songs from Dance Dance.

Bottom line, nightmarishly bad game for the music series, but a must have so you can get the controller and start playing imported Beatmania games with good music and no stupid unlocking systems.

Konami's famous beatmania series hits the US PlayStation 2 in all the wrong ways possible. beatmania offeres the worst of both worlds as the classic beatmania "djing" gameplay is mixed with the worst songs in the series. A mixture of OLD and REALLY OLD beatmania tracks give the poor impression on the average American gamer whose oblivious to the series. Instead of Konami aiming this game as a club style game like what they do with DDR, they should have ported a modern Japanese release with all the trippy music and anime which appeals to so many Americans. Get this bundle for the controller and import Japanese beatmania games instead.

This game is pretty fun. I don't like guitar hero because it's to easy, and I cant play DDR, I'm a fatty so I decided to go with this because I also like techno. The 7 buttons and a turn table combo gives me enough of a challenge to wrap my head around, then there are the modifiers such as 4x speed.

The game itself is a beat game, by hitting a key you are adding music to the game, the better you do the better the song sounds. I gave this game a 5 for fun and 3 overall because the soundtrack on the American version is horrible but it's still fun to play. If you just want to try a new Bemani game I would tell you to try this, if you like it you might want to think about getting an import PS2 and importing the some of the others from a site like playasia.

Beatmania is the predecessor of the insanly popular Dance Dance Revolution series. Yes, even though this is the first home installment of Beatmania in the U.S., this game actually game out in Japanese arcades in 1997, and spawned the entire genre of rhythm games, from DDR to Donkey Konga and Guitar Hero.

As a huge fan and experienced player of DDR and other rhythm games, I was anxious to try this game, as the arcade version is rare in American arcades. Alas, I found it lacking in comparison to the more recent games.

I have been told by experienced Beatmania players that the game is satisfying like no other once you learn how to do it. I've been playing nightly for more than a week now, and I still haven't really gotten a "feel" for the controls (unlike games such as Guitar Hero, which felt natural right out of the box). The difficulty of the songs never seems to be just right - it ramps immediately from "so easy it's boring" to "insanely hard." Even songs that are rated 3 or 4 stars out of 10 are incredibly hard - and the strict scoring system makes it even worse.

The music selection on this game is very nice, using many songs that have been featured in past arcade and home versions of DDR (actually, most of these songs originated on arcade versions of Beatmania). However, you can't enjoy the music if you're playing poorly, because the music doesn't sound right unless you hit every note perfectly. I'm also annoyed by the fact that only a certain portion of the songlist is available to you on the first and second rounds of each game.

I am impressed by the high quality of the controller, but I'm not exactly sure how the seven keys are supposed to emulate a DJ station. It's more like playing a piano.

I'm skeptical about this game's chances for success in the U.S. Most experienced players will be disappointed with this game's small songlist and lack of exclusives, as many of them have already imported the numerous Japanese titles. Meanwhile, new players such as myself will be stymied by the extreme difficulty and non-user-friendly interface.

I'm glad this game came out, but now that I've experienced it, I think Konami should refocus its efforts on the much more successful and accessible DDR.

Beatmania bills itself as a DJ music mixing game. Really it's a lot like Guitar Hero, but instead of a guitar you have a short keyboard that makes either keyboard or drum noises.

I in fact play keyboards, so I was very interested in seeing how this plays. There are only 4 white keys and 3 black keys, plus a "turntable" to spin. The keys were easy to play and in only a few minutes I was hitting 200-in-a-row on songs I'd never heard before. This was a quick glimpse into the long term benefits and problems that I found as I continued to play this game.

On the good side this IS like a piano. This means that, unlike with Guitar Hero, you actually gain "real life skills" by playing this game! Your ability to quickly hit the various keys is really good training for actual piano playing. Sure, you're not playing real notes on a staff. Still, being able to hit 2 keys at once, or to move quickly between keys, is quite important.

The game really is enjoyable when you get into a groove, playing along with the song and hitting all the notes. Depending on the song, you are playing piano, keyboards, drums, cymbals and other instruments. It's a lot of fun.

On the bad side, I really wonder who chose the song list for this game! I think I recognized 3 of the songs. There was little real variety. I own a ton of karaoke, drumming and other "music" style games. I really love this genre. The song list in this game is probably the worst I have ever seen in any of them. It's not just that I didn't know the songs - it's that many of them were really bad songs. I went through them to get to the top rating - but they weren't songs I enjoyed playing along with in some cases.

The turntable controller is really iffy. While the keys were very responsive and had a good "finger feel", the turntable was VERY sticky and often would not turn well. It's frustrating to be playing along perfectly, then to break your chain because the turntable is stuck (again).

Which brings up another issue I had - gameplay flow. There are a LOT of aspects of gameplay which were just really poor in this console version. I realize the game is adapted from arcade games. Still, it doesn't mean we have to suffer with the BAD aspects of arcade gameplay as a result! For example, you play through 3 songs - and then you are DONE. No more songs. With other games, I get rewarded! I can keep playing! Here, it barely even says "good job" before it goes into an 8-minute-long credit run. OK, you can skip them, but the point is that the game should keep going if you are doing well. It shouldn't end after only 3 songs and make you restart from the very beginning.

The game is very harsh about scoring. If you get a chain, you're usually OK. If you miss just one note, perhaps because of a sticky turntable, then your points plummet.

In one of the most inane design elements ever, when you get your praise about doing "perfect" on a note - those words show up OVER THE INCOMING NOTES. Who thought that up?? Show them off to the side somewhere - not covering up the notes you are trying to play.

There are little videos to the top right while you are playing the songs, but since you're paying attention to the incoming note markers, you never get to see them. You could only watch them if you had a friend who was good enough to make it through the song for you. I would much rather see little happy audience members, a la the karaoke games, that cheered you on. That would be much more enjoyable than a video that I can't watch.

The sound is rather good, which you would hope from a game that focusses on music. That is - you hear the instruments quite clearly. As commented before, the actual song mix is another story.

I'm torn on this game. It is a great concept but there are some real flaws here with how it was implemented. I really want to get the NEXT version of this game when they fix all of these issues. However, if enough of us don't buy this current version, they won't make a next version :) So I would say to go ahead and buy this if you enjoy music / keyboard games, if only because it really does build up your keyboarding skills. Then we can all write the makers and ensure that they do a better job on their next version. At that point we'll have the player unit and will only have to buy the new software.

If you love hip hop or r&b then you are in luck, most of the songs on here are in that genre. Few dance tunes and mostly unfamiliar music grace the American version of Beatmania. While this is not necesarily all bad, I just feel most of the music could have been much better. Sometimes I think those at Konami must be slightly deaf because some music is just plain bad.

It will take a lot of practice to play this game, if you are just beginning. It can be very frustrating, but practice makes perfect and in the end i'm sure it's worth it to show off to friends, etc..Also, the better you play the better the music is, as you play some of the notes yourself.

Beatmania has a cool graphical interface and the controller is top notch. I'm sure they'll have future releases as well.

There is something about this game that is as enticing as Guitar Hero is to all. Though males are more apt to try this, the females need to come forward and give it go. It's fun and intoxicating. You will be drawn in.

I enjoy playing games with the likes of Guitar Hero, Amplitude, Frequency, DDR and Drummania, and I will rate these games: GH=5 stars; Amplitude=5 stars; DDR=4 stars; Drummania=3 stars; Frequency=2 stars and this game=1 star.
There is really no use for the controller that came with this bundle, using the PS2 Dual Shock Controller is more responsive. The soundtracks? I dunno, but, besides that they are not popular to the ears, they are not even catchy. If you want to try out this game rent it first from your local video game rental shop before you go out and waste your money on this one.
If you really want a great fun on a musical simulation game, I'm telling you...you might as well get yourself a Guitar Hero Bundle. You got yourself a "BUNDLE-O-FUN and a ROCKS GREATEST HITS COLLECTION". I can't wait for GH2.

"GET YOURSELF A PLASTIC GUITAR,
DON'T NEED TO TAKE A LOT OF TIME
TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY!
YEAH-YEAH-YEAH!"