*Interesting Imports is a little series of games that I've imported & decided to review. This'll be part one. Hopefully, enough people will be interested enough for a part two...*

I decided that instead of reviewing the game that I imported, I would review the entire series in general since there's so many games in the series. This is a review/history of the beatmania IIDX (pronounced 2-DX) series.

Beginnings & gameplay: WAAAAAY back in 1997, Konami released a game in the JPN arcades called beatmania. Basically, the controller consisted of 5 buttons (or "keys") & a turntable (please note that this is the 2P side. 1P's side has the turntable on the left & the keys on the right):

The gameplay was simple: Simply press the keys & spin the turntable when the bars on the screen hit the red line to produce a sound to make the song:

At the end of each song, you must have your gauge at 80% or higher in order to pass the song. Then you're graded on a scale of F to A, AA, & AAA (almost like Dance Dance Revolution).

The game did well & had a number of sequels & PS1 ports. In 1999, Konami decided to make a "deluxe" version of the game, adding 2 more buttons/keys to the controller (note: this is the controller for the US release (more on that later). The JPN controller is squared at the end rather than rounded):

& now, after 10 years, the series is still going strong. The regular beatmania series ended in 2002 (beatmania: The Final), but the IIDX series is still being produced.

Console ports: Starting with 3rd (& 4th, as 3rd & 4th were put together in 1 game), Konami has ported the IIDX games to PS2 which basically include:

- All the new-to-AC songs

- a certain # of "revivals" (songs from past games)

- around 5 to 10 CS exclusives (songs that were made exclusively for PS2. Sometimes, after time, the song will make it to either AC &/or other CS releases)

Sometimes, Konami will be nice enough to include "preview songs", which is basically a song from the newest arcade game on the newest PS2 release, which is usually 1 game behind (i.e on the newest PS2 release, which is the 16th game, there's 2 songs from the 17th game, which is in arcades now).

All the PS2 ports have been only released in Japan, but in 2006 (before the PS2 release of the 11th game in Japan), the US got a released simply called "beatmania", which consisted of both songs from the original & the IIDX series. It was different from the JPN version (mostly toned town in diff. & song count) & sadly, didn't do all that well (annoyingly, X-Play deemed this a "Guitar Hero rip-off" despite beatmania/IIDX was released YEARS before GH, not to mention Konami made their own guitar/drum simulators.....but I'll talk about that for another time). However, it's a great game to help introduce people into the IIDX series, plus it's alot cheaper than importing a controller.

Music: This is what is going to decide on if you want to import the series or not. On the latest arcade release, there's over 500 songs. The PS2 releases usually have (starting w/ the 11th, or RED) 89-99 songs. However, on the newest release (beatmania IIDX 16: Empress + Premium Best), Konami added a SECOND DISC containing 99 songs that consist of songs from the past 15 games, as a way of saying good-bye to all the years the IIDX series has spent on the PS2 (no word on which console the series will move to). There's MANY different genres of music, most of which you wouldn't expect to appear. There's even some songs from the Dance Dance Revolution series (Konami also made that) & songs from IIDX that have appeared on DDR (we call these "crossovers"), so if you like some of the songs in DDR, you'll like the songs in IIDX (though I think IIDX has better songs than DDR).

Difficulty: I want to address this because while the game is great at teaching new people & it starts off easy, it can get HARD. VERY, VERY, VERY HARD:

YEEEAAAAAHHHHHH, I'm not gonna pass that anytime soon, & neither are you.

But don't worry. That's one of the hardest songs. You won't have to deal with alot of those. Most of the songs are alot more easier to beginners (especially the ones in the US release I mentioned). There's 4 different difficulties in the series. Normal, which is just as it sounds & where you'll play the easiest charts/songs. Hyper, which is the medium diff. & Another, which is the hardest & where you'll see those kinds of ridiculous charts. In the PS2 release of the 15th game (DJ Troopers), Konami made ANOTHER difficult which basically translates to Kuro/Black Anothers, which is basically even HARDER charts, but not all songs have this. As you can see in the video above, the chart on the left is the Another & the chart on the right is the Black Another. The rating system goes from 1 to 12 (as of the 12th game), 1 being the easiest & 12 being the hardest.

Recommendation: Go listen to some songs on YouTube & determine for yourself if the music will want you to get the games. I got the US release & then started importing the newest JPN releases since '06 (I have 11 through 16, the newest), so if you're lucky enough to find the US release w/ the controller, I'd say get it to start out & see if you want to import them like me. I've enjoyed some of the music so much, most of my music on my MP3 collection consists of songs from the series (& other Konami music games). If you want a list of songs that appear on each game & what songs are part of the beatmania series, I'd suggest this site, as it'll also answer some other stuff not mentioned here.

Next time: GUYS can be cheerleaders?!

P.S: Bit.Trip Void will be added to WiiWare tomorrow, so once I play some of that, I'll review it, plus DSi got another Art Style game, so I think I'll review that too w/ Bit.Trip Void. Also, there's now a demo of Bit.Trip Beat on WiiWare for download, so please download to try the game out.