This game has, on December 18th, 15 Japanese counterparts available on ps2. None of these will see US store shelves, and will likely never make it to the big time in US arcades. Unfortunate for beginners there is a steep learning curve, but this learning curve provides much replay value... in fact with all the Japanese versions together there are almost 1000 songs to practice with. Most of these songs have 4 difficulty levels (Beginner(Levels 1-3), Normal, Hyper, and Another(Hardest)). In my experience, the better you get, the more songs you can play, and since there are so many available only in the Japanese versions, the replay value is nearly limitless. In Japan it seems a new PS2 version is released every 6 months or so, each game having around 100 songs. Not to mention before Beatmania IIDX which is just called Beatmania in the US, there was a game called Beatmania which has 5 keys instead of 7, there are 6 of those games too, in addition to append discs which are basically music cd's that you load into beatmania after you start the game. All in all this is one of my favorite game series of all time, and it definitely takes the crown for my music game preference.
Oh Konami, why do you hate us american bemani players so much? After years of waiting the Beatmania series has finally seen a stateside home release, with less then great results. Thankfully not everything is lost, and... Read Full Review
I won't detail all the history of Beatmania and of Bemani to you because too many reviews start with knowledge that half the readers already know and half just don't care about. Let it be known though, that without Beat... Read Full Review
