Not Your Father's Bemani, Part One

[rmz]

NOT YOUR FATHER'S BEMANI, PART ONE
A Retrospective of Bemani Games Fallen By the Wayside

Konami's Bemani franchise as a whole is, today, debatably more popular
than it's ever been in its nearly ten-year history, with its once
seemingly-endless selection of off-the-wall and innovative music-game
concepts having been concentrated and pared down to a mere handful
today -- Dance Dance Revolution, beatmania IIDX, pop'n music, and
GuitarFreaks & DrumMania. With Konami making so many hits (and
misses) over its exploration of different music-game concepts, what
ever happened to the multitude of Bemani series that didn't make it
past just a few installments for one reason or another? What were
they all about, and, if you come across one happenstance in your
corner arcade, are they worth dropping a few quarters into? Today, we
take a look back at the history of Bemani and a few of those games
that you may have forgotten about -- or may not have even been aware
of.

DANCEMANIAX

DanceManiax was an interesting spin-off of Dance Dance Revolution back
in the early days of Bemani. Perhaps responding to observations from
players that Dance Dance Revolution didn't have as much capacity for
real freestyle "dancing" as some had hoped, Konami published
DanceManiax: a game that had players using their arms (and, if they so
desired, their legs) to perform dance patterns in a similar vein to
Dance Dance Revolution. DanceManiax's freestyle possibilities were
more robust than its predecessor -- offering players the ability to
fully integrate their hands, arms, feet, legs, torso, and even head
into their routines to register notes -- but were still hampered
slightly by the design of the machine itself. Slightly above
waist-level there jutted four sensor arms, each detecting movement
made above and below them. While this offered a four-note setup for
each player that was easy for DDR players to grasp, the sensors
themselves made the kind of freestyling that some players yearned for
rather difficult, often getting in the way and causing pain when you
mistakenly whack your wrist into the corner of one in the middle of a
routine. A nice feature that was carried over from other Bemani games
included Double Play support, which allowed a player to play across
all eight sensors by himself instead of just four. This further
increased the freestyle potential of the machine, but the fact that
the sensors "wrapped around" the machine and weren't in a straight
line often made it more difficult and cumbersome to move between sides
quickly and fluidly.

DanceManiax had a total of three releases -- 1st Mix, 2nd Mix, and 2nd
Mix Append J-Paradise, which all featured familiar songs from Dance
Dance Revolution as well as a number of new songs. Some songs that
were later transplanted into other Bemani games also had their origins
in DanceManiax, such as Virtual Mind, Quickening, Mind Parasite, and
Dynamite Rave (B4 ZA BEAT MIX).

Appeal Today: If you happen to find a DanceManiax machine in your
local arcade, a few plays will reveal a nostalgia-fest of old DDR
songs -- including long-forgotten ones like Boys and enough cheesy
Naoki for a lifetime -- despite the small songlist by today's
standards.

Watch For: If you do well enough, it's possible to play Extra Stage
sudden-death nonstop megamixes featuring songs not otherwise playable
on the machines, such as Jet World and Drop Out. Also look out for an
exclusive Paranoia remix (Paranoia Jazzy Groove) that you may not have
ever heard of before!

MAMBO A GO GO

Mambo A Go Go was an interesting Bemani game that many people have
totally forgotten about today. Similar to a modified version of
DrumMania, players had three large conga drums laid out in front of
them that they struck with their hands to play notes. The difficulty
scaled immensely -- the easiest level had three possible notes (one
for each drum), while the hardest difficulty featured three sensor
zones per drum for a total of nine different notes! The music was
excellent, featuring songs that one might not have expected conga
drums to mix well with but worked surprisingly well despite that.
Pop'n Music players are likely familiar with many of this
single-release game's highlights, such as Sci-Fi Girl, Feux
d'Artifica, and Wall Street Downsizer.

An interesting gameplay mechanic added to Mambo A Go Go that sets it
apart from most Bemani games is the "drumroll" note type, which is
analogous to the balloon notes found on Taiko no Tatsujin. When a
drumroll appears, the player must hit the drum in question a certain
number of times before the note ends, which often occurs at the end of
songs to let you finish the song in a "freestyle" sort of way. I
thought it was a nice addition, reminiscent of the "free scratch
zones" from early Beatmania, allowing the player to go wild in a
marked "safe" zone with no risk of losing any energy.

Appeal Today: If you happen to find a Mambo A Go Go machine at your
local arcade, I would definitely recommend giving it a few plays. It
suffers from the same problem that all early Bemani did -- a miniscule
songlist -- but what's there is enough to keep you entertained and
provide enough variety to make it to the higher difficulty levels. It
seems rather common to find machines that have ill-maintained sensors
in one or more areas, though, so beware of that if you're having
trouble getting certain notes to register. Too many kids can't resist
the temptation to walk up and smack the drums as hard as they can!

Watch For: Once you get the hang of the game, try out the hardest
difficulty and go for Gamelan de Couple, which is a great song but
about as difficult as Mambo A Go Go songs get.

PARA PARA PARADISE

Para Para Paradise seemed like the strange lovechild of Dance Dance
Revolution and DanceManiax, featuring five sensors arrayed in a
semicircle pattern around the player, who moved his or her arms
between the sensors to register notes. Based on the ubiquitous
Japanese craze of Para Para dancing, the entire style revolves around
hand and arm movements in rhythm with the music (as well as awkwardly
stepping left and right in place, but I guess Konami figured that that
was what DDR was for). Perhaps the most striking thing about Para
Para Paradise was the appearance of the large cabinet, where players
stood inside a cage-like structure that housed the sensors. A small
addition to Para Para Paradise was the inclusion of holds, much in the
same way as Dance Dance Revolution's "freeze arrows," which helped
break up the occasional repetitiveness of long stretches of straight
eighth-note taps.

Beatmania IIDX players who enjoy Avex might be interested in Para Para
Paradise's songlist, which features songs like Night of Fire.
Being ambivalent about Eurobeat, I personally would rather
play DanceManiax to get a little more diverse songlist, but diehard
Eurobeat fans won't mind a bit.

Appeal Today: If you can find a machine near you, you might want to
give it a shot if you enjoy Eurobeat -- LOTS of Eurobeat -- or if you
like Para Para in itself. If you're looking for hand-waving Bemani
action, I would personally suggest DanceManiax over this, but it's
more of a personal preference.

Watch For: The home version! Yes, unlike the other two games in our
retrospective, Para Para Paradise had a home release, complete with
sensor array that you could lay out on the floor around you. It can
be tough to find (and expensive if you do), but for die-hard Para Para
fans the price is but a small concern.

---

Join us next time as we examine Keyboardmania, beatmania III, and pop'n stage!