Beatmania

Beatmania
Cover art of the first home release of Beatmania
Genres	Music video game
Developers	Konami G.M.D.
Publishers	Konami
Creators	Yuichiro Sagawa
Platform of origin	Arcade
First release	Beatmania December 1997
Latest release	Beatmania: The Final January 2002
Spin-offs	Beatmania IIDX, Beatmania III, other Konami music games

Beatmania (ビートマニア^?) (styled as beatmania) was a rhythm video game developed and distributed by Japanese game developer Konami and first released in December 1997. It contributed largely to the boom of music games in 1998, and the series expanded not only with arcade sequels, but also moved to home consoles and other portable devices, achieving a million unit sales. The Bemani line of music games from Konami is named after the series, and was first adopted in the arcade release of Beatmania 3rdMix and kept ever since. The series came to an end with the last game being Beatmania The Final, released in 2002.

Beatmania gave birth to several spinoffs, such as the Beatmania IIDX series (a more advanced version featuring 7 keys and higher difficulty levels) and the other being Beatmania III, a remake of the 5-key series which featured a more modern hardware platform, a pedal for optional effects and a 3.5" floppy disk drive to save play records.

While the series was never ported to home computers, there have been unlicensed hard-drive copies which made it playable on a computer's keyboard, or even with a modded PlayStation controller. Its popularity led to non-official simulators, with one of the most popular being BM98.

Beatmania and its variants have a following in Japan and all around the world. The password based Internet Ranking service allowed competition wherever a machine is available. Today in the United States, many of the original beatmania cabinets are in the hands of arcade collectors and Bemani enthusiasts, and consequently are a rare sight at many arcades.

The player is a club DJ who must manipulate the controls according to the instructions on screen to win the praise of the audience. Each game consists of a set number of songs of various difficulties, and each song must attain a certain degree of satisfaction from the audience in order to progress to the next.

The game controls consist of five plastic vertical rectangular keys that are arranged in a zigzag pattern like the letter "M" or in vibraphone type arranged. They resemble the layout of the keys of a piano (e.g. C, C#, D, D#, and E) and are color-coded in the same fashion, with the lower row white and top row black. A turntable is to the right of the five keys, and is turned, or "scratched".