Forum Overview :: Rants :: Beatmania for PSX/PS2 is not available here. Fortunately, Amplitude is.

[quote name="Damocles"][quote name="Fussbett"][quote name="curst"]I'd agree with Fussbett about both games being inferior to Beatmania except that A: I've not played Beatmania and can't imagine how it'd improve upon the simple-yet-fun gameplay of Freq/Amp[/quote] Nor do you need to play the game to join my Beatmania army. You know it's right, in your soul. It's not that Beatmania improves upon the gameplay, it's that Freq/Amp dumbed down and shit-ized the concept. The proof is in your very own statement that ultimately playing a favourite song in WinAmp with a visual plug-in achieves the same effect. Beatmania, on the other hand always awaits me, taunting. You get rusty from not having played certain songs in a while. Upon victory of a song, you feel like you played the shit outta that track. That you KNOW the song inside and out and that you WERE the instruments. Upon completing a Freq/Amp stage you feel like you did a good job playing pseudo-Tempest.[/quote] Huh? How does "played falling notes" differ substantially from "played notes flying towards me"? I've played Beatmania, I don't see the difference, except for the gay turntable. For the record, in Beatmania, you were only one instrument. In Freq/Amp, you really were all of them, and have to shift on the fly between wildly different types of patterns. Going from a drum track to a synth track to a driving guitar track without fucking up and losing your streak takes skills that go beyond "memorize the pattern of falling notes by playing that song eighty times" challenge of Beatmania. I mean, fuck, at least Samba randomizes it. (As for the Winamp plug in line, the same attack was made on Rez. It was gay then, it's gay now.) [quote name="Fussbett"][quote name="curst"]NO CRYSTAL METHOD. NO AKROBATIK. NO FEAR FACTORY. NO FREEZEPOP. NO RUN-MOTHERFUCKING-DMC.[/quote] Amplitude: P.O.D., Garbage, Pink, Papa Roach, Blink 182 and the worst Weezer song possible. Radio: The Game![/quote] Good job missing everybody else, and since when are all Bemani songs good? Not "unknown", not "goofy", but remotely listenable? [quote name="Fussbett"]Beatmania is a Japanese series, so all the songs are by obscure Japanese people when they're not just goofy compositions from Konami's in-house music dudes. Much of the charm of the games is from these half-baked songs, and holding that against it is misguided. Which leads us to the next point...[/quote] Much of the charm of Frequency and Amplitude was the weird shit from people I had never heard of. Remember Freezepop? [quote name="Fussbett"][quote name="curst"]Basically, Beatmania = LOSE LOSE LOSE LOSE and EXTRA-LOSE. Although I'll grudgingly admit that Fussbett's usually right about this sort of thing, so perhaps I'll rent it.[/quote] You can't, sadly. You may only play it in a crowded, noisey arcade where you can't hear the music over the DDR machine beside you. This is why I called Freq/Amp fans dilettantes. It's not their fault that they lack sufficient exposure to Beatmania. It's being kept from North Americans while Freq/Amp is easily available. Beatmania also has a heavy learning curve, so it doesn't reward the dabbler (ie: the people paying $1 per turn in an arcade).[/quote] Neither learning curve nor arcadeness stopped DDR from becoming big, and obscurity or foreignness does not make a game good. It's also the height of gay to claim that someone likes something out of ignorance of that <i>other</i> so much better game. The first music game I played was Samba de Amigo, and that rules on high over Beatmania. Especially 2000, which is the only reason one ever needs to give for owning a Dreamcast. Come to think of it, this argument is lame. It's not that Beatmania is a bad game, although the gameplay's somewhat dated (and it's long been eclipsed by the various "Freaks" games and DDR that succeeded it), it's that Frequency and Amplitude aren't bad games, either. Harmonix, like Sega, did a good job creating a unique variation on the music genre that required some of the same skills as the Konami games but introduced new elements that distinguished them and a musical mix that made them work. (Frequency arguably better than Amplitude, because Frequency was techno-heavy and techno works well with the "tracklaying" element of the Harmonix games.) Plus, there's one other thing that you didn't mention... Amplitude's online competitive play, and it's remixing mode. I'm not sure if Beatmania has the first, but I know it doesn't have the second. Dilettantes don't jam Sony's server full with remixes of the game's tunes. [/quote]