FOR HARDCORE MUSIC GAMERS ONLY!!!
For you serious Bemani fans, you'll know what to expect. a diverse lineup of songs, all with ranging difficulty. Unlike DDR's foot pad, Beatmania comes packaged with the DJ controller (a very nice perk considering how pricey importing the controller use to be). The controller is made up of 7 buttons, and a turntable. All of which correspond to icons on the screen. Notes will fall from the top (instead of scrolling upward in DDR), and upon reaching the red line near the bottom, you just press the matching button, or spin the turntable.
Sounds easy right? WRONG! This is where Beatmania will turn away many players as learning to coordinate your hands to control 8 different notes which do not follow any kind of systematic beat can be hard to master. If you're familiar with any of the songs in the collection, do try those songs first as you may be able to pick up the pattern a bit better.
But don't let the hard learning curve scare you. When mastered, Beatmania becomes a challenging game that surprising will improve your reflexes. Especially when you play other music games.
The game does offer a solid presentation with lots of techno inspired themes and sounds. Each song also includes their own music video that plays along side it, which you wont notice since you need to pay attention to all the notes falling.
There are a bunch of options you can use to help you perfect your DJ skill such as a 5 key mode instead of 7, an auto-scratch which will do the turntable notes for you. Or options to make the game harder (if you have progressed to that level).
Beatmania is not for the faint of heart. Do not even try playing this game if you have never played any kind of music game before, have no sense of rhythm, or hate techno music. But, foryou expect music players, do give this one a try. You'll be surprised how deep it can be, and make you wish Konami will support the controller with more mixes.
Makes you wonder if the US will ever get to that 13th mix...