Beatmania Bundle (PS2 NTSC)& its better than DJ Hero
Want to take your gaming to the next level? Are you a fan of electronica, dance, hip hop, trip hop, trace, pop, and other synthetic genres of music? Then you absolutely MUST get this game.
Beatmania has been around for awhile in Japan, way back on the PlayStation. Back then it had 5 buttons (versus 7 ) and a DJ turntable. About 7 years later, Beatmania hits shelves in USA, not doing to well in sales due to it not being exposed to the public. The game has had several releases in Japan, however. Last year, Empress (the 17th game in the series) was released to the arcades, and should be coming to PlayStation 2 systems later this year.
A quick history of games in this arcade style genre would show that the USA is remodeling Japanese games with a more "American" interface. In Japan, they had Guitar Freaks, which was a Guitar Hero-esque game with the same General User Interface (GUI aka screen display) as Beatmania (for the most part). Notes fall from the top of the screen into a bar in which the user hits the notes. It was divided into 3 columns so the guitar had 3 "fret" buttons of various colors depending on what guitar you used. Now we see "Guitar Hero" with "American" sons and a more graphical type interface (notes scroll towards you in a 3d motion versus falling straight down in 2d). With that said, DJ Hero is releasing later this year with 3 buttons on the turn table and movable turntable. If you want to play the game this evolved from, try out Beatmania. Trust me. It's A LOT harder than DJ Hero will be, but also a lot more fun. Instead of mixing Lady Ga Ga and Eminem (them together? ew?), you'll be playing trace songs that are a minute or so long, but will keep your fingers begging for more. It's certainly more accomplishing than what can come out of mixing two songs you might not like together.
As I said, highly suggest this game. If you import games, by all means, import Empress. I've played the arcade version, and it's phenomenal. It includes songs found on the new DDR (beatmania is owned / published by Konami, the leader in arcade style games [DDR, Beatmania, Karaoke Revolution, Drummania, Guitar Freaks, ect] as well as world renown game icons such as Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid which is produced by Kojima Productions, a company that specifically publishes with Konami) and more.
Also, as for all you people thinking "Rock Band" being cool for being the "first" to set up instraments working together in music, you should check out the linking that Guitar Freaks and Drummania had. They were able to have both guitars from Guitar Freaks to play the same music with Drummania as a "band" type game. Konami knows what they're doing when they publish games, and this game is no exception.Read full review
