Beatmania Best Hits [Import]
Beatmania comes back in full force, bringing us gamers a collection of our favorite songs, and lets your "wanna be a DJ" dreams come true. Being one of the most popular series in video game history, Beatmania has captured the interests of many, many people. This being the case, Konami held a poll asking gamers what their favorite songs were from the Beatmania series (including 2nd Mix, 3rd Mix, Gottamix, 4th Mix, and 5th Mix games). From those results, they chose the top 30 songs from the series to be put into one collection. What a collection it is too; this game contains all the older goodies that you might have missed if you didn't obtain every game in the bunch. Not only does this game bring you the BEST songs, its also brings you the game engine from the newest of the Beatmania games (5th mix). Giving us gamers a ton of new features to mess around with, and play through, this game is sure to give every Beatmania fan a thrill.
For those who are new to the series, the concept is fairly simple (while the game play can become incredibly hard!). Basically BM is a real-time music simulator, you use your controller, or the BM keypad (consisting of 5 buttons and a turntable) to manipulate music according to the on-screen indicators. However this is not all, in addition, you the player, are a DJ at a club, and depending on how well you do, creating the real songs with the controller, you get a ranking (poor, bad, good, great, and new to the series, a second high great). If you do poorly, you get booed off the stage, if you do well you continue on to other songs. It is quite similar to Bust a Groove, and Pa Rappa in that fashion, however neither of those games can really even remotely compare in difficulty to some of the songs in the BM series.
Beatmania takes this simple idea, and forms it into something much more complex, as the barrage if indicators forcing your hands to move faster and faster to keep up with the pace, and the sounds change from everything to, symbols, to vocals to scratches, this game is one of the most inventive ideas to hit the gaming world, and this new best hits only improves upon what was previously the standard in innovation. Adding tons of new features such as double, random, mirror, hi-speed etc. allowing you to use these new features on songs from the older games. Beatmania Best Hits has enough added to it to warrant a purchase even if some of the other games are in your possession.
The Graphics in this game aren't really what you would call spectacular. They are pretty much just basic animations to give you a little eye candy during play, even though the majority of the time your eyes wont move off the indicators at the bottom to the screen! They are not that interesting, however, these animations do change depending on the speed and type of music you are operating. Such as hip-hop will have silhouettes of break-dancers in the center of the screen. Even though this seems cool at times it is not the main attraction of the game. This game will have you sucked into to its play so much, you wont care how it looks; it could look as if it was just kids scribble, and believe me you would still play this game forever.
As you might have guessed the music in this game doesn't even need to be explained, simply put, it's got almost every kind of music! There is joy in this game for all, its has everything from hip-hop, to Japanese pop, to jazz, to. well you get the point. The music is superb in this game, it even supports Dolby Digital, which is terrific for all you audio-files. What more can you say, more songs, the best from the series, and well more fun!
The controls in this game are quit simple, even though you only have 5 buttons, with a normal controller it can become hell. Beatmania has its own controller produced by Konami, with this controller the games fun is magnified 10 fold, with out it the games consistency is still the same, just memorizing where the buttons lay is your biggest worry. Even though this controller makes the game a little easier, the game doesn't ever release its grip on difficulty. Beatmania makes it very hard to synchronize your hands with its play. There are irregular patterns, double, triple button presses, and this isn't including the speed at which some of the songs travel! Once you get the hang of one level, you will have an equally difficult time mastering the next, some levels I have come to except are above my ability with a normal controller, some songs I do not think are humanly possible without a DJ controller! A quite amusing statement I presume, however it is the truth, some of the songs in this game can not be successfully mastered without the BM DJ pad. However, if you can not obtain this piece of hardware, do not decline picking up this game, for it will leave you with a lot of pleasure, I fear I will be playing this game forever. The replay value of this game is among the highest I have ever seen or played, it should be appreciated for all its worth!
As a whole, this new Beatmania Best Hits is a terrific game! It really doesn't have any bad sides to it. The weakest part of the game is where the least emphasis is placed, the graphics. They do not detract from the game at all; they in fact add a fun atmosphere to the game. The games play is even better than previous Beatmania games, adding tons of new features Beatmania Best Hits reaches new levels of excitement and playability. As a fan of the series or not, all gamers should own Beatmania Best Hits, it shows the best of the series and shear innovation. Lets hope we see at least one of the Beatmania games come across seas, if we do it should be this one, meanwhile, any chance to import this game should defiantly be taken!