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MonMotha wrote: a 7 star "rape me up the ass with a pineapple" that you might expect to find on an older version

Is that an official term ?

-Dan

MonMotha wrote:Do realize that Happy Sky re-rated everything on a scale out of (IIRC) 12. So a 7 on happy sky isn't a 7 star "rape me up the ass with a pineapple" that you might expect to find on an older version, and don't even get me started on flashing 7s/8 stars...

Of course, the old scale changed a bit, too, as time went on. Pretty much all the Bemani games have done this. An average 35 on pop'n music 12 is notably harder than the average 35 on pop'n 8. I'm pretty confident IIDX has done this as well. That said, there's supposedly a few songs on the newer IIDX versions that NOBODY has passed on 14k Another.

The US version apparently uses the Happy Sky rating system, rather than the old one. I've been told that at least Happy Sky is now rating anothers, too. Then again, most people interested in beatmania USA won't be playing another difficulty for a LONG time

Yeah, they are rating Anothers in Happy Sky. And some of those are ass-destroying.

And yes, I noticed they changed the scale. Like, Final Countdown was a 7 on 4th style 7key, and it's hyper(pretty sure the notes were the same) was a 6 on Happy Sky, I believe.

This was probably already noted earlier but this difficulty system on US is the newer hyper/another upper difficulties instead of L7 and 7key right?

The US version somewhat does follow the Happy Sky ratings to some extent. For songs with ratings up to 7 they ported over the difficulties given in the JP version in almost every case, after that they've somewhat adjusted the ratings to compensate for the switch from a scale of 12 to a scale of 10. One thing that I saw as rather odd though was changing Outer Limits Hyper from 6 to 5 and Digital Mind (A/T Libra Mix) from 6 to 7.

So I bought it today, but I won't have access to my ps2 until saturday (bought it in Oregon, no sales tax makes me happy).

Overall, I love the feel of the buttons and the spread. But the table is rediculously smooth. Any mod suggestions? Or would loosening the screws make the smoothness not matter?

If you pound the turntable with a hammer, it becomes smoother and gives you little finger grooves to spin it easier.

Riot wrote:If you pound the turntable with a hammer, it becomes smoother and gives you little finger grooves to spin it easier.

...

Dude, I did it. Trust me.

Riot wrote:Dude, I did it. Trust me.

Lol, I wouldn't do it if I were you, Zach...

-Dan

Yikes! All I can say is yikes after those last few posts!

Alright, there is something about the US release that does bug the hell out of me. Why did they change the notecharts for The Shining Polaris Normal and I Was The One Normal? That was a very pointless and time wasting move!

Something that I should really note is IGN's coverage of Beatmania on http://ps2.ign.com/objects/748/748592.html#reviews. For those who don't feel like going, almost all of the reader reviews, ranging from new players to longtime bemani players have pretty much condemned the review as being rather short sighted to say the least.

The problem with official reviews about music games is that the people doing the reviews are generally more of the hardcore gamer type, who don't really care about music games, and view them as trivial. Either that, or the guy who reviewed it was just an idiot.

IGN wrote:Things might have been a bit easier were the keys simply circles instead of rectangles, helping to separate the look of the controller from a keyboard a little more.

I must say, that part ammused me. Hehe, round keys...

Well he was right about one thing. Bemani music is pretty terrible in general.

I don't understand why they can't get some good licenced tracks. On the US Extreme 2 they added some Sean Paul which is ok I guess. I'm still waiting for Linkin Park or some Snoop Dogg.

Well, it's all a matter of opinion. And keep in mind that the vast majority of Bemani music was neither created for nor targeted toward American tastes/audiences.

Personally, I've been hooked on Bemani-style music for the past 5-6 years as an alternative to standard American fare. Though I do admit that more familiar licenses can be an asset--especially for mass market appeal.

IGN Review wrote:...you can literally skip the first thirty notes, nail the last section of the song and wind up passing the track.

He's obviously playing it on beginner or at the most maybe some 2-3 stars on L7 if 30 notes is at all significant. His complaint about randomly placed notes matches this. Especially on beginner mode and really easy L7, some of the notecharts are stripped down so much that they don't really make sense anymore. The problem is that playing 7k is, well, difficult. I'll admit that IIDX notecharts do sometimes have oddly placed notes - perhaps he'd prefer Pop'n style notecharts more. IIDX seems to concentrate on placing parts on keys in a manner that would be like setting up a synth board, while pnm tends to just create notecharts that are designed to be fun while still keysounding things (but in patterns that don't always make sense from a keysound point of view).

While I agree with the complaint about the pass system being based very heavily on the end (and most IIDX players will know that Konami takes full advantage of that to make sure you can't pass some songs easily), it's just a different metric for playing the game. This is how MANY Bemani games work (IIDX, pop'n, and KBM at least). There's always hard difficulty if you want a DDR style autofail bar.

One thing the review seems to NOT take into account is that this isn't a new game. They mention briefly that it existed before, but they don't seem to actually take that into account in their review. The complaints about game mechanics and controller layout illustrate this pretty clearly. I'm also not sure what's up with the complaint about 2min shortened songs. This is the way almost all music games are, with the exception of Guitar Hero (and that's the number one complaint I've heard about guitar hero: full length songs are often too long and repetitive for a game). I'm curious what this reviewer would have to say about pop'n music (other than obviously hating the soundtrack).

The one thing I'll agree on is that (at least based on the screenshots), the interface is indeed butt ugly. I want to know what graphic artist at Konami needs to be fired over that one.

As Ho pointed out, the music comes mostly from older Japanese releases of IIDX. The music was composed with this audience in mind, and also with keysounding in mind. It's sometimes hard to fit keysounds to licensed tracks, especially if actual release performances are used (witness the horrible notecharts on the live versions of pop'n songs on pnm 8). Licensed tracks are also expensive, and at $55-65 for the bundle WITH CONTROLLER, they don't have much room to increase the price. They pretty much have to release the bundle for the same price as a normal game - most US players don't like to buy specialized controllers it seems.

From what I've seen of the songlist, I'm not sure that all the genres seen in IIDX are well represented in this release. I think it may be built somewhat as a market test. Hopefully another release with a larger, more diverse songlist (and what the heck, maybe some US licenses) will appear if this succeeds. My only worry is that most people interested may already be set up with all the Japanese versions, in which case this release has little to offer other than a nicer controller.