0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Beatmania

       

Beatmania is the first home console release of the long running series of music rhythm action games. The game and series as a whole was developed and published by Konami. The games first home console release would be exclusive to the Japanese market releasing on the 1^st of October 1998, just over a year later the game would re release as part of the Konami the Best release.

Notable People who worked on this game, Yōhei Shimizu who worked as a Programmer on the game would eventually move on to work on the Gran Turismo series, usually as a Tool Programmer but he had other roles on the series such as Sound Programming and Sound Simulation work.

The game came with its own custom controller, modelled after the Arcade version of the game, you have five keys that resemble those of a piano, these key are positioned vertically, the keys are also colour coded the same way as well with three of the keys being white while two are black.

Alongside the keys on the controller is the turntable, the player is able to turn or scratch the turntable, the game also supports standard controllers as well. With turntable movement and scratching keyed to the circle and triangle buttons, piano key are controlled using the D-Pad Left, Square Button, X button as well as the shoulder buttons the game has a key config menu.

Each of the keys or buttons have a corresponding vertical bar on the screen, as does the turntable, each of the bars indicate the path in which rectangular icons cascade downwards towards a horizontal line near the botton. The aim for the player is to hit the corresponding key or rotate the turntable when the icon reaches and matches with this horizontal line.

When hitting the corresponding key or button you will be graded on how well you have done with Great, Good, Bad and Poor appearing on screen, the better you do the more audience satisfaction you will receive, miss time your button or key presses and turntable scratches will result in your audience satisfaction decreasing.

The Audience satisfaction is displayed by a red and green bar, the audience satisfaction bar does not go from red to green as you would expect, the green part of the bar is the lower audience satisfaction with the player needing to get into the small red section at the end of the bar in order to pass the song and move on to the next one.

Upon completion of the song/level, the player is awarded a score which is money, also shown is the players final grade, this is from A to a G grade, this is not related to the amount of money you have earned, instead this is based on how accurate you were over the course of the track in addition to being a single player game up to 2 players can play.

The game comes with two CDs the first included the tracks from the original coin-op version Beatmania 2nd Mix, the second disc that comes with the game is the append disc which features new tracks in the "Yebisu Mix. The first disc also functions as a key disc in order to start the second disc, some later releases in the Beatmania series only came with an append disc and require this release to work. 

Only a trio of critic reviews are available for Beatmania, no surprise really with this being the Japanese only release of the game. Those that are available range from a highly impressive 100 down to an above average 60, as usual though will start with the best which comes from German publication Video Games.

The reviewer praising the game for proof that the boundaries of game development are not sealed by racing, fighting and action games. The reviewer continued by praising Konami for creating an original and innovative video game concept as Konami demonstrates (you can tell this is before they turned into complete arseholes).

The reviewer continued by saying, Such a creative and innovating gaming experience has been in vain in recent Playstation years, they continued by mentioning the possible PAL release of the game next, which would include the ASCII controller. With the reviewer concluding with What we could only welcome, because Beatmania is the party hit.

GamesAreFun.com were next up with a significant drop in review score down to an above average 70, this review came much later than the other two that are available, this one coming in October of 2003. the review commented on the vast library of entries in the series, saying there are better versions out there but the game is a solid buy.

The reviewer went on to comment about the controls, with the reviewer saying it is a lot more fun with the peripheral controller, but also added if you find the game without you can still pick it up and have some great fun with it.

The final review and the lowest of the trio comes from NowGamer who scored the game at an above average 60. the reviewer commenting that if you’re into the scene and fancy yourself as a funky DJ, there Is sufficient material here, the reviewer however did not recommended it for others though saying curious onlookers will soon tire of the inordinately-high difficulty level.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, who unsurprisingly don’t stock this Japanese only release. So moving on to Retrogames.co.uk who also don’t stock the game, they do however have the controller for the game, this is the updated controller design and is priced at £45 which converts to $63.90, the controller and box are both in excellent condition.

Moving on to eStarland.com where we find the imported version of the game available, with just one copy available at the time of writing, this copy comes complete and Is priced up at $9.50. Also on offer is a trade in for the game, with eStarland offering up to $3 for a copy of the game.

Lastly we have Amazon.com where we find three listings, the first being the controller where we find four currently on offer all in good condition or better. Prices for the good condition controllers range from $73.94 up to $92.86, the remaining very good condition controller can be picked up for $100.76.

The next item up is the Konami the Best re release of the game with a fair number of this imported release available, while there are no new copies of the game on offer, with the exception of one acceptable condition copy the rest are either in good condition or very good condition.

These copies mostly are reasonably priced with a very good condition copy with free shipping, the first listed on this game page available for $8.91. A few more copies in either good or very good condition are available around the $10 mark again with free shipping, one is an Amazon shipped one though so prime or $25 spend for the free shipping.

Lastly we have the original release of the game, where we find a good supply available. The cheapest while only in acceptable condition does come complete and can be picked up for $5.45, a good condition copy that appears to be complete is also available for just $5.45. Another good condition copy is also available for just $5.80 as well.

A couple of very good condition copies, both of which come with free shipping are priced at $10.45 while another copy this one in good condition and priced at $11.67, again coming with free shipping. Used prices continue to steadily climb reaching a current high of around $36 to $38

New copies of the game are by far the most prolific with three full pages of listings available. If you are in the market for a new copy of the game it will set you back significantly more, with prices starting at $87.16. on a plus not all bar a few of the new copies come with free shipping. Prices for a new copy of the game are currently peaking at the $144.80 mark.

Written by

P J Gibbon