STsung

Yes, the test location for Beatmania IIDX 17 called also Sirius begins on the 27th of May and ends the 2nd of June in Japan.
And btw the way it seems that Sirious is going to be actually bright^_~ (white/light blue)

We did not need to wait for long till Jubeat’s test location. The first test location started today at Round 1 - Sanomiya . This one will end tomorrow at midnight.

Next test locations will be held at Round 1 - Yokohama Station West Exit and Entertainment Square Pasuka. At both locations Jubeat will be present from 17th of March till 22nd of March.

Jubeat Ripples theme looks like “Soappy Bubbles everywhere”. Different blue colors are the main color + orange. There is a new Touch marker. It’s not the Green/Purple one from the previous game. This one shows the perfect timing with a “cloud” turning from white to orange color. The super high-tech feel is gone…

Most of the songs on Jubeat Ripples are licenses. Few are covers and KONAMI Originals.

Songlist

AREA 51 by 96 (KONAMI original)
Russian Snowy Dance by Mutsuhiko Izumi (KONAMI original)
愛 NEED by キマグレン
今 by ET-KING
にんげんっていいな by ガガガDX
バカサバイバー by ウルフルズ
Musical Messenger by 九州男
労働 CALLING by 怒髪天
ロボットハニー by Aira Mitsuki
情熱大陸 (cover)

Today the official arcade release of PNM17 THE MOVIE is released.

At ATEI, I had the chance to try out Jubeat for the first time myself. I have to say I started to like the game since the first song and I thought that Jubeat won’t be appealing to me at all.

The first song I played was Sandstorm on Advanced - thus level 8 - and I nearly cleared it. Second song was Captain Jack on Advanced which I cleared. Then I tried some other songs like Polaris Adv, Happy Happy Adv and Take on me Adv. On the last song I managed to get almost a full combo. I missed few notes at the end. But still I was rewarded with a score around 810k. I was like WTF? Something is wrong. I realized then that the game is actually a music game and that I should really press the buttons with the music.

I decided to try out the tutorial for the first time. I managed not to hit the skip button and tried it…I found out that I have to actually WAIT till the panel becomes fully lit with the word TOUCH all over it. After realizing this I went to try the song once again and it was a yellow/gold bliss. If you get a high combo or you are doing good and getting perfects you will be rewarded by a really awesome animations that are golden kind of. It felt good^_^.

After this I tried the rest of the song on Advanced and tried a few on Extreme. I enjoyed the game and would play it again, but probably am not that big fun of it that I would actually pay a lot for it.

What concerns my technique…I used my fingers at first, later with more difficult songs I even started using my palms and other parts of my hands. And it worked…it just felt like playing Pop’n Music - on 4×4 grid though^_^. I just needed to realize that I have to wait a bit till I can hit the panels.

This weekend was probably joyous for many Japanese BEMANI players. They could come to AOU to try out DDRX (and new edits), PNM 17 THE MOVIE, GFDM V6 BLAZING and JUBEAT US. Of course they could play Beatmania IIDX Empress as well…but that game was already released^_^.

Players could listen to artists performances. Among the artist there were あさき , L.E.D. , ショッチョー, TAG, dj TAKA, DJ Yoshitaka, Des-ROW,TЁЯRA, wac and others. When it was DJ Yoshitaka’s time to play he as well announced that Jubeat 2 (name still not given) will be tested soon. After this Top Rankers of each BEMANI games showed their superplays.

What concerns GFDM. At the loc.test there were these new songs…

1/n - iri
humming rabbit - mighty puppet
Juicy - Des-Row
My Favorite Things - Atsuki
Let Me Go - Brad Holmes
S.T.A.R.S - reach up to the universe
イジワルなあなた - 達見恵 featured by 佐野宏晃
ブルーバード - いきものがかり（版権）
君影草 - AIRI
罠 - THE BACK HORN
Under The Nest - Rotten Blotch
Red - Kozo Nakamura
A.DOGMA - あさき
20th Century Boy - T.Rex
キセキ - GReeeeN

Through The Fire And Flames by DragonForce

Just for your information TTFAF is a 92 level song on drums, level 94 song on guitar (level 70 on bass, and 95 on open)! I just can’t imagine 400BPM song of such level on GFDM. GH version was fine, but hm…let’s see^_~.

After Handsome JET’s early death announcement another sad news shocked me;

Jason Michael “Stillwind” Borenstein has passed away last Saturday. He has helped with the likes of DanceDanceRevolution SuperNOVA2 and Dance Dance Revolution X and was also the audio director of the Xbox DDR series. He is also famously known as the face of Michael a la Mode on the TUTORIAL modes of beatmania IIDX GOLD and above.

(Source: bemanistyle.com)

Ugh…I wanted to do some routine that does not originate in Velfarre and I was thinking about some song actually sung in Japanese. I chose Sepia by Eryko and here is the outcome…I just couldn’t really sync well to this song. It sounds more trance to me than eurobeat.

Two days ago I discovered on Mieya’s Blog that Handsome JET died. But I was surprised to find out that it was already 8 months ago thus in May 2008. He died in a traffic accident.

He is known for doing music for Guitar Freaks and Drummania (wasuremono, futari no rabu, kimi no tonari ni, dare? etc). But for IIDX players he might be known more because of his song - Little Little Princess.

I bring you another SEF routine - Doctor Love…I rather not comment on this…

Everyone was wondering if KONAMI comes up with conversion kits for DDRX. And well the good news is that they will be released on 28th January 09. Cool isn’t it?