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The new and this time not really awaited game Pop’n Music 16 was released in Japan the 24th of March.

The game is full of colors. In general most used color seems to be yellow (at least that’s my impression). The game features 34 new songs. Some of the songs are completely new, some of the songs come from other games like DDR or IIDX (sobakasu, run to you, 月光花). I was also pleased that a new Contemporary Nation is available in PNM16.

There is Enjoy Mode, Challenge Mode, (Cool) Challenge Mode, Expert Mode and Battle Mode. The second Challenge mode has new challenges than those we know from normal Challenge mode. Also Cool evaluation is turned always on in this mode. The rest is unchanged.

Lately Maya Takamura’s video DVD was released. Maya Takamura is the only female in the IIDX staff. She works along other members of the graphics team on 2d and now 3d movies for IIDX games (Movie Designer). Her 2d drawings easy to recognize. Her lineart is not so strong and her coloring style reminds of water color use (no cel shading as most other artist do).

She brings a bit of lightness to IIDX graphic. She is most known for the illustration of Killer from Genocide. (from IIDX Red)

She has done videos for Xepher, Zenius-I-Vanisher, Blind Justice, Twelfth Style, Little Little Princess etc.

It’s almost the end of January and that means that ATEI - a coin-op and amusement exhibition is held in London.

This year KONAMI went to ATEI 2008 with Silent Hill: the arcade and Drummania V4 and Guitar Freaks V4. Nothing was said about Jubeat or any other new Dance Game (only that it will come^_^). So it is up to us to wonder what KONAMI will do next. (hypernova?)

Andamiro stand was showing Pump it up Pro. For all these three days you have the chance to try this relatively new game out and meet Kyle Ward. He likes to chat and likes to play and having fun is what counts.

DDR Supernova is there too even though it’s not at KONAMI stand.

The next interesting thing is a new multiplayer by DifferentPlay (up to 72 players multiplatform). The game is based on Stepmania (it looks like StepMania played over LAN). You can see scores in different colors (each player has one) but that’s about it. The game does not have BGAs or even real backgrounds. The interface is mostly yellow and pink which are not the best colors I think.

KONAMI couldn’t decide better, after releasing IIDX15 they announced a location test of their completely new music game called jubeat. This game is played with your fingers on a 4×4 grid. Your aim is to press the buttons at correct time.

The game’s name came from the word “yubi” meaning finger and “beat”. Thus the game is also pronounced with “y” not “j” as many people like to say.

There are two modes of play. Online play and Multiplayer. Online - you will be able to compete with players connected to the same network. Multiplayer - you can play against anyone standing right next to you (if there are two machines of Jubeat).

After selecting mode of play, you are prompted to choose a song. There 21 songs from which you can choose. Just press the button correspondin CD picture of a song you wish to play. If you are in Online play one player chooses a song and the other one matches the choice. In Multiplayer mode this is not necessary, the game starts right after one player chooses a song.

There are three difficulties in general Basic, Advance and Expert. Each song has its difficulty of its own (level 1 to 8). The boss song being a Snow Goose (200BPM LVL8 on Expert)
(You’ve got arrows and buttons on the arcade, one is effector button, one is for changing the difficulty and the arrows are for choosing a song)

When you finally get to the game your aim is quite simple. You are supposed to listen to the music for clues when to hit the panels (for example if the clue is lyrics - then you will be pressing the panels with at the same time you hear the vocals). These panels (starting position is all black) will start lighting up. Your goal is to press them^_~. The button variations can consist of all the buttons (1 at a time, 2, 3,4,…16).

The score is calculated from the evaluation of notes. If you get all perfects you should be rewarded with SS and 1000000 score. The worst “not fail” grade is D.

The game ends if you won’t get over 700000 points on one song.

New Dance Pad
Positive Gaming has been developing their new hard pads (mostly for their multiplayer systems) for about two years. I’ve seen the previous versions, they are quite light (10kg), durable and easily handled (it has handles on the top of the pad).

Eurocup?

Many of us hoped that it would have been held in Silverstone this November. But November is gone and no information was known about the upcoming Eurocup until now. Positive Gaming has announced that next year there would be another Eurocup for sure. But we have no more information about it yet.

New 4-panel dance game?

It’s been a while that many of know that a new 4 panel games is being in production by Positive Gaming but it also seemed that was nothing happening. Today Positive Gaming announced that they are looking for professional musicians and step chart artists.

It consists of the exercise program itself, a dance pad and a motion sensor belt. A person can choose what kind of movements he wants to do for example yoga or martial arts. After the selection the person just follows the “notes” on the screen and performs the predefined moves (at the right time). The belt calculates the score and calories burned so the game keeps you post it on your calories burned and if you are the best at this kind of exercise. Could be fun don’t you think?

Two days ago we could find the information that KONAMI announced that PNM 16 will be released in March 2008. The game’s full name is Pop’n Music 16 Party. It will contain more than 40 new songs. The song total should be over 700 (I can’t even imagine that).

A part from Battle Mode, Challenge Mode and Expert mode there will be once again Enjoy mode. Beginners will have once again a place where to start (hope it won’t be pink…-_-).

The whole interface should be blue.

The game will also have a new character^_~.

On the 26th of September DDR Supernova 2 CS was released.

It has marvelouses always on, it has a different scoring system (you can get AAA by even getting some perfects^_~). It shows the name of the song when you play the song. SN2 has smoother graphics. Really the difference can be really be seen this time. It’s more gradient and shaded. It has also more visual effects in the background animations and song selection (but I guess we don’t care much about it).

Here you can switch Extra Stages on/off if you like. (you no longer get Extra Stage by AAing anything on heavy-_-). The red songs are NGO, Unreal and well known FELM.

The first songlist you will see is quite “American” there is almost no Japanese song but later on when you unlock other songs you will discover new crossovers (ehm actually new KONAMI originals). You know songs like Arrabiata, Stars, Raspberry Heart. Ofcourse there are returning songs.

Watch this video, the end with Twilight on Expert is magnificent. This would be impossible in my country….

ITG Multiplayer

573 does this number sound familiar? Do you know what it has to do with this blog? Well, I will tell you.

Beatmaniaiidx.com was supposed to be mainly about the great music game BeatMania IIDX (7K) which is an “upgrade” of BeatMania (5KEYS). BM is the first musical game from a series called BEMANI. As you can see everything on this blog has to do with either BEMANI or other music games. BEMANI games are produced by a company named KONAMI. So you wonder where the number 573 is hidden in the word KONAMI?

It’s easy actually. KONAMI is a Japanese company. Isn’t there something more to the name? Well, there is. Five is said “go” in Japanese and it can be changed to voiceless version “KO”. Seven can be said nana and from there comes the “NA”. “Number” three can be described by mittsu from which comes the last syllable “MI”. From this 573 was born and the company is also known under this number. That’s also why the KONAMI’s name is written in katakana rather than kanji characters (which would have a real meaning).
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573 number can be found in KONAMI games. For example both The Legend of Max and Max300 from DDR have max combo exactly 573.