0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Beatmania (Europe)

  

Beatmania (Europe) also known as just 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 game is a remix of the original Japanese release of the game from 1998, the game features a few unique tracks over the original release, the game came out in 2000 in Europe.

Beatmania was re released in Europe in 2000, gameplay wise it is identical as the original release in Japan. 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 European release of the game was fairly received by critics with review scores ranging from good all the way down to below average, with a majority in the above average range. As usual though we will start with the best of them which is an 80 rating from NowGamer.

The review saying the saving grace of the game is the 2 player mode, making it a fun party game. They continued by saying While for master mixers, long-term appeal is increased by an Expert mode with three club ‘courses’, not to mention hidden, double, random, and mirror options to make it even harder.

Swedish publication Super Play were next up along with French publication Jeuxvideo.com who both scored the game at a solid 70. Starting with Super Play, who’s reviewer thought that Beatmania is great fun, praising the game layout and concentration needed to succeed. The reviewer however found the game to be boring looking, with the reviewer finding the video collage that flickers in the eyes always feels crazy because you don’t look at it.

French publication Jeuxvideo had one major criticism of the game, that being the games playability with the conventional Playstation pad, which they found to be problematic even reconfiguring the controls. The reviewer also questioned the longevity of the game, with the reviewer finding the game to become very tiresome in a long run.

German publication Mega Fun rated the game at a 63 and only had a brief summery on the game, with the reviewer having this to say. This game is certainly an absolute hit for fans of Japanese culture, but the average player will enjoy it very briefly.

Dutch publication Power Unlimited who scored the game at an above average 58 were brief and to the point in their review conclusion with the reviewer saying. Stupid graphics, high difficulty, good sound. Hmmm, I do not think kids in the Benelux region will warm for a contentless game like this.

Lastly we have Power The PlayStation Mag also known as Playstation Power, with the reviewer commenting that they usually applaud originality and quirkiness. The reviewer continued however, but not this time, the reviewer finding the game to be fun for only a short time, with the reviewer finding it quickly becoming deeply irritating. The reviewer also commented on the game with the controller as well as being just too expensive.

 

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 European only release. More surprising is Retrogames.co.uk not stocking the game either, they do stock the controller as previously mentioned in this game original release. The controller is priced at £45 and is in excellent condition.

Heading over to eStarland.com next, where we don’t find this European only release listed, we do find plenty of Beatmania titles listed but sadly not this one. So we will move quickly on to Amazon.com but we sadly also don’t find this release listed.

With this being a European only release we will next head over to the co.uk version of Amazon, where we do find the game listed, the supply however is very limited with just 9 copies on the market as of the 27^th of January 2018.

While the supply of the game is very limited you can still pick up the game pretty cheaply and complete. With a good quality condition copy listed at £4.89 and a very good condition copy of the game available for just £6.55.

These are by far the cheapest on offer for the game with the remaining used copies jumping up in price significantly with the next three used copies priced between £25 and £30. A few new copies of the game are available, these again however take a big leap in price with the cheapest coming in at £57.06. The remaining two copies will set you back around £60 and £80 respectively.

Written by

P J Gibbon