BeatmaniaIIDX

beatmaniaIIDX 5th Style Kabinet

beatmaniaIIDX (alternativ beatmania IIDX oder abgekürzt IIDX, ausgesprochen "two dee-ecks") ist eine DJ Simulation von Konami. Der erste Automat erschien 1999. Es ist das direkte Sequel zu der beatmania Serie und Teil der Bemani Reihe.

Geschichte oder Warum "IIDX"?

Konami fügte der beatmaniaIIDX Serie gegenüber den klassischen beatmania Serie zwei weitere Tasten hinzu. Um die (Tastenlayout-)Serien voneinander abzugrenzen erhielt die 7-Tasten Variante den Annex "II". Beide Serien, wie auch die beatmania III Serie, liefen simultan nebeneinander her, so dass keine Serie eine zeitliche Ära zuzuordnen ist. "DX" steht für Deluxe und beschreib ursprünglich das Arcade-Kabinet. Anfänglich gab es eine weitere Variante des Kabinets die in Bezug auf Tastenabstände beispielsweise mit dem beatmania Kabinet identisch war, das beatmaniaII Kabinet. Konami verbesserte dieses Kabinet, das eine Deluxe Variante darstellen sollte. Hier waren die Tastenabstände verringert sowie ein 16:9 Monitor und stärkere Lautsprecher implementiert worden. Konami plante beide Versionen des Kabinets anzubieten, allerdings wurde die Entwicklung des II-Kabinets eingestellt, so dass es nur die IIDX Variante verkauft worden ist. Aus dieser Historie heraus heisst die 7-Tasten beatmania Serie beatmaniaIIDX. Kurioser Weise ist das II-Kabinet in den Tatsujin Videos auf der beatmaniaIIDX 6th style CS DVD zu sehen.

Verschiedene Teile der Serie wurden tradtionell mit "style" betitelt verbunden mit einer aufsteigenden Nummerierungsnummer. Der elfte Teil der Serie war der erste Teil mit einem Thema und richtigen Namen: beatmaniaIIDX11 IIDX RED, gefolgt von beatmaniaIIDX12 HAPPY SKY, beatmaniaIIDX13 DistorteD und dem aktuellsten Teil beatmaniaIIDX14 GOLD. Jeder Teil der Serie hat ein anderes grafisches Interface.

Arcade Kabinet

Das beatmaniaIIDX Eingabegerät besteht aus sieben, klavierähnlichen Tasten (vier weiße, drei schwarze sowie einem Turntable auf jeder Spielerseite. Der Turntable für den ersten Spieler ist auf der linken Seite neben den Tasten und der Turntable für den zweiten Spieler auf der Rechten.

Unter dem 16:9 Bildschirm befinden sich der Start Button, der Effector Button und Effector Regler. Seit beatmaniaIIDX 9th style gibt es zudem ein Kartenlesegerät für Magnetkarten des e-AMUSEMENT Systems.

Heimversionen

Konami hat in Japan bis heute 10 Versionen und in Amerika eine Version für die Playstation2 veöffentlicht. Die Japanischen CS Versionen entsprechen ihren AC Versionen, allerdings mit weniger Songs, während die amerikanische Version an keine Arcade Version angelehnt ist.

Spielweise

Die Spielweise ist im Vergleich zur klassischen beatmania Serie unverändert geblieben, bis auf die zwei zusätzlichen Tasten: there are 8 columns on the screen, corresponding to each of the keys and the turntable. While playing, small horizontal bars fall straight through each of these columns, and the player must press the right key (or play the scratch) when the bar touches the bottom of the column, no sooner and no later. The correct timings for the notes follow the beat of the music, so the player has to have a very keen sense of rhythm.

Every time a key is pressed or the scratch is played, an instrument is played to complement the song. So, in order to hear the song correctly, the player must get the bars on the right timing. Additionally, the game shows a rating (flashing Great, Great, Good, Bad or Poor) for each falling bar that's played by the user.

The objective of the game is twofold: pass songs and get a good grade. Passing a song enables you to continue playing up to a three song limit, plus possible extra stages. Grade measures your performance and is used for ranking among players. The beatmania games are very peculiar in that passing a song and getting a good score on it are almost totally unrelated; one can theoretically pass a song with an F and fail with a AAA, although this is rare in practice.

During gameplay, the player gets performance feedback from two sources. One is a life bar (often referred to as the "groove gauge") at the bottom of the screen. The other is rating text in front of the falling notes. The life bar is increased moderately by flashing Greats and Greats, slightly by Goods, depleted somewhat by Bads and heavily by Poors; the emphasis is clearly on missing as few notes as possible. To pass a song, the life bar has to be at 80% or above at the end of a song. Consequently, the only thing that matters as far as passing a song is concerned is getting the ending right, and as such a lot of songs have a sudden jump in difficulty at the end to cause the player to lose that crucial top 20% of life and fail.

The difficulty of songs is measured in 'stars', however the system has not remained concrete. The newest styles often contain songs harder than the star system can accurately represent, and as such is constantly revised which each new style. Originally, the difficulty ratings ranged from one to seven "stars". In IIDX 5th style, a "flashing seven" difficulty debuted, although they would not actually flash until 6th style. IIDX 9th style introduced new difficulties by Level, in which "flashing 7's" are replaced with Level 7+. In 10th style, the maximum difficulty was raised from Level 7+ to Level 8. IIDX RED (beatmania IIDX 11: IIDX RED, the first IIDX series with an individual theme title) debuted Level 8+. As of beatmania IIDX 12: HAPPY SKY, the difficulty system was completely overhauled, and all songs are now rated on a scale of Level 1 being the easiest, to Level 12 as the most difficult.

Many players consider a pass to be rather arbitrarily determined, and so the usual focus is on getting as high a grade as possible. Grades (a feature that came about as of 6th style) are determined by the player's "EX Score", which is the number of Flashing Greats (also known as Just Great) times two plus the number of Greats. 8/9ths of the maximum or above yields a AAA, 7/9ths or above is a AA, and so on down to a minimum of F. Getting the maximum possible EX Score on a song(ie all Flashing Greats) is generally considered an unrealistic goal, if not impossible. Despite this, some very good players have been known to achieve this feat, albeit on some of the easier songs in the game.

beatmania IIDX has long been a 'cult' game because of the sheer learning curve of the game for new players, unlike other Bemani games like Dance Dance Revolution. The machine is often found in Japanese arcades, but they are rare in American arcades with absolutely none at all in the United Kingdom.

Game modes

BEGINNER

This mode was added in 9th style (5th style for home version). In the arcade, Beginner limits the list of songs available to only 1-3 star songs, thus severely limiting the number of songs available in a game. In the home versions, Beginner gives an alternate note chart for nearly all songs, rated from 1-3. These alternative note charts are not available in the arcade.

LIGHT7 / NORMAL

This mode is a degree of difficulty lower than 7KEYS. On LIGHT7, the game will not end if you fail the first stage. Before 8th style, it was possible to attain the extra stage by playing in this mode. You may play the 7KEYS difficulty for a song by holding down the VEFX button when selecting the song.

In IIDX 12: HAPPY SKY, this difficulty was renamed "Normal".

7KEYS / HYPER

This is the standard play mode. When a fixed condition is satisfied on the last song, you can get an extra stage.

In IIDX 12: HAPPY SKY, this difficulty was renamed "Hyper"

ANOTHER

Most players will agree this is the hardest mode by far. The key configuration and 'charts' are similar to that of 7KEYS, but are often harder and not as straight forward. Even if you can complete a song on 7KEYS, you may not even be able to get too far on ANOTHER. To play a song on ANOTHER, you must select 7KEYS from the menu and then select the song while holding down the VEFX button. Songs in ANOTHER difficulty were not given separate difficulty ratings in IIDX 1-11, which was often misleading as the difficulty meter showed the same rating as the 7KEYS variation. As of IIDX 12: HAPPY SKY, songs in ANOTHER difficulty were given a separate rating. Not every song has an ANOTHER version. Some tracks have an Another that sounds different from the original song.

4KEYS

Replaced in 3rd Style by LIGHT7, this was intended as a beginner-friendly mode that used only the four white keys. Available only on 1st, Substream, and 2nd style.

5KEYS

Available for home versions as a specific mode, this plays exactly as 7KEYS, except for the idea that the last two keys farthest from the turntable are not used. This is probably a compatibility issue with original beatmania controllers, so that owners of the original could still somewhat play beatmania IIDX, only having the 5-key controller at hand. In arcade versions of IIDX, 5KEYS has been available from the start as a special gameplay option, most likely as an attempt to help players of the original series make the transition. Starting with 9th style, 5KEYS can be used with notecharts other than the ordinary 7KEYS mode.

EXPERT

This mode is one in which you can play a course of songs in a row without stopping. You start with the gauge at its maximum; if it drops to 0, the game is over. The gauge is the same as that used in Hard mode in normal play, but drops at a much slower rate.

CLASS / DAN / Step Rank Recognition

This is basically the same as EXPERT, but as for options, you can only select HI-SPEED, and each course has four songs. The combination of songs differs for every difficulty, which is the difference between this and EXPERT.

FREE

Practice mode. You can play to the end of a song and won't fail, but you get one song less than if you were to play LIGHT7 or 7KEYS. (Usually, you'd get 3 songs if you played LIGHT7 or 7KEYS; you only get 2 with FREE.)

Furthermore, when DOUBLE is selected in the options selection screen before the game starts, "7" changes to "14", and you use both sides to play.

Special modes

Auto Scratch

The turntable is played automatically, not requiring player input. In home versions, it is not possible to set new records with this mode enabled.

High Speed

The notes will scroll at a higher speed. It is important to point out that the actual notes do not have to be pressed any more quickly, the scroll speed is simply increased and the notes become further apart. Most beatmania IIDX players use High Speed to make the notes easier to read. High Speed has had a variety of different forms throughout the history of the game. The first four arcade versions (1st through 4th style) had only High Speed 1, which doubled the scroll speed. From the arcade 5th style onwards, High Speed 1, 2 and 3 (2x, 2.5x and 3x the scroll speed, respectively) became available. Home versions, however, employed a different progression. The home version of 3rd style had High Speed 1, 2 and 3 which were speeds of 2x, 3x and 4x respectively. The home version of 4th style had similar options that were slightly slower. The home versions of 5th style onwards had identical High Speed settings to the arcade, with the exception that 6th and 7th style (and presumably future versions) have an additional "High Speed 4" option, corresponding to a 3.5x scroll speed. IIDX 12: HAPPY SKY has High Speed settings incremental from 0.5x to 4.0x at .5 increments.

Easy

On Easy, the gauge does not decrease as quickly and rises faster than usual.

Hard

On hard, the gauge functions differently. It begins at 100%, and the song will immediately end if it reaches 0% (but on the other hand, you will pass if you simply reach the end of the song without failing partway). The gauge decreases very fast in this mode, usually as much as 10% for every missed note.

Random

On Random, the song's notechart is temporarily altered. All the notes for each key are assigned to another key, picked at random. It should be noted that this is done on a per-key and not a per-note basis, so for instance an alternating sequence of two keys would still be on two keys (but probably not the same two keys as before). Random can make songs with many scale-type maneuvers easier. Note that only the keys are randomised; scratches are not affected.

Random+

Introduced in IIDX 11: IIDX RED in the arcade and 8th style on the home versions, Random+ is like Random, except that the scratch column is included in the randomisation process, so the scratches usually end up assigned to a key, and a key gets assigned to the scratch. This modifier usually completely changes the character of the note chart, so scores obtained using this modifier are not recorded.

Mirror

Mirror flips the note layout so, for example, all notes that would normally correspond to the extreme left-hand key now correspond to the extreme right-hand key, and so forth.

Mirror+

Introduced in 9th style CS, Mirror+ differs from Mirror in that in addition to mirroring the columns, the scratch is also swapped with a randomly-selected note column after the mirroring is performed.

Sudden

On Sudden, notes only become visible when they enter the lower portion of the screen. The visible portion is approximately a third of the screen.

Sudden+

Introduced in IIDX 12: HAPPY SKY in the arcade, Sudden+ is like Sudden, except user configurable. The user may hold down the Start button during play and spin the turntable to change the portion of the play field that is covered from the top down.

Hidden

On Hidden, notes are only visible in the upper portion of the screen (again, approximately a third of the screen).

Hidden+

Introduced in IIDX 12: HAPPY SKY in the arcade, Hidden+ is like Hidden, except user configurable. The user may hold down the Start button during play and spin the turntable to change the portion of the play field that is covered from the bottom up.

Sudden & Hidden

It is possible to enable both Sudden and Hidden at once. If this is done, notes are only visible for a very short time in the middle of the screen.

5 Key

In 9th style and up, 5 Key became a selectable modifier in the main game, rather than a separate game mode. In this mode, the two rightmost keys are not used by the player and any notes that would correspond to those keys do not need to be played.

Liste aller beatmania Spiele

Arcade

Japan

• beatmaniaIIDX
• beatmaniaIIDX substream
• beatmaniaIIDX club version 2
• beatmaniaIIDX 2nd style
• beatmaniaIIDX 3rd style
• beatmaniaIIDX 4th style
• beatmaniaIIDX 5th style
• beatmaniaIIDX 6th style
• beatmaniaIIDX 7th style
• beatmaniaIIDX 8th style
• beatmaniaIIDX 9th style
• beatmaniaIIDX 10th style
• beatmaniaIIDX11 IIDX RED
• beatmaniaIIDX12 HAPPY SKY
• beatmaniaIIDX13 DistorteD
• beatmaniaIIDX14 GOLD

USA

• beatmaniaIIDX14 GOLD lokalisierte Version

Europa

• beatmaniaIIDX14 GOLD lokalisierte Version

Heimversionen

Japan

• Playstation2
  • beatmaniaIIDX 3rd style
  • beatmaniaIIDX 4th style
  • beatmaniaIIDX 5th style
  • beatmaniaIIDX 6th style
  • beatmaniaIIDX 7th style
  • beatmaniaIIDX 8th style
  • beatmaniaIIDX 9th style
  • beatmaniaIIDX 10th style
  • beatmaniaIIDX11 IIDX RED
  • beatmaniaIIDX12 HAPPY SKY

USA

• PlayStation2
  • beatmania

Verwandte Links

• beatmaniaIIDX AC Gateway
• beatmaniaIIDX Notecharts