It’s not that their existing mobile games aren’t doing well, but most of the content for jb+, RB+, and GD is recycled from the arcade versions, and I don’t think the amount of money they make off of selling DLC packs once is sufficient to sustain development of the game if arcades magically vanish overnight. What they need in my eyes is a game that is built for mobile, with songs made specifically for it, as opposed to leeching off from existing titles, with a business model that allows it to sustain its own development.
CROSSxBEATS is doing this extremely well, and while the monetization strategy is very polarizing in the community, ultimately it is more satisfying to me as a music gamer than shit like LoveLive/t7s/Derestage where the music game is a side attraction, and the real game is how good the stats on your magic gacha girls are.
pop’n rhythmin and Beat Gather are ultimately failures. rhythmin hasn’t gotten new content since November 2014 so it’s effectively dead, and it just never felt very satisfying to play. (It also launched within weeks of CROSSxBEATS, which features effectively the same kind of gameplay, but executed on it way better.) Beat Gather just dynamically generates charts to whatever song or YouTube video you throw at it, so it probably only appeals to the most casual of people.
Yeah there is a joke in the music game community that each new IIDX is going to be it’s Last. 24th Style, Sinobuz, released just yesterday. (Which means I’ll get access to Copula soon, Whoooooooo Excite Bike)
The problem with a lot of the newer games Konami tries to do is that it is either too easy, or too confusing on how to play. SDVX stuck mainly because they keep increasing the difficulty levels per style. Booth has Levels 1-15 and Song Chats Novice/Advanced/Exhaust. Infinite Infection Introduced Level 16 and Song Chart Infinite which is harder then Exhaust. Then in Gravity Wars, Song Chart Gravity was introduced and seemed to Replace Infinite (Or maybe not, I never played Gravity Wars) and other Songs Started getting a 4th Chart.
Jubeat I was able to do 10s after my 4th time playing it. Thats the hardest Level and because I got there so quickly I became bored with it. With playing IIDX, it’s difficult enough that I haven’t even passed a 12 and I’ve been playing the game for 5 years now. Literally as of Today, 10/28/2011. I want and expect a challenging game that challenging because it forces me to fight against myself to get better. Pop’n Music is like that, IIDX is like that, DDR is like that, Gitadora is like that, SDVX is becoming that. Jubeat and Reflec beat was never that, Reflec beat has more staying power however, because it’s Mascot, Pastel, is a fucking cutie.
The problem with Konami Games now is they stopped being challenging.
The 4th difficulty’s name changes based on the version that introduced the 4th chart, so II had INFINITE, III has GRAVITY, IV has HEAVENLY. Also, as of SDVX4, it’s implied all songs will have a 4th difficulty out the gate.
I don’t think that’s entirely correct. Yes, since jubeat, new Bemani series are mostly easier by design, because they’re trying to appeal to a wider demographic. jubeat did particularly well with casuals; there is a reason most arcades are stacked with cabs and that up until two years ago or so, the cabinets were completely packed. I’d still argue that games released since then have an element of challenge for experienced players, but the challenge isn’t in clearing the songs, it’s in scoring well on them. 10s in particular feel relatively easy to clear, but even though I can get good grades (S and up) on 8s and 9s, the added complexity of 10s bumps me down to a C on average. Getting those grades up is where the grind is in jubeat.
I also think experienced players perceive these games to be easier than they really are because they’re proficient in the genre already. I can typically walk up to a random music game I’ve never played before and feel pretty confident I can pass an 8 (out of 10 difficulty scale) regardless of how it’s played just because I have a decade of experience playing these kinds of games.
I mean, I get that I’m decent at most of the games because I’m relativity ok at playing IIDX, but dang, even Reflect Beat I can’t do the hardest level on. Jubeat is fun in it’s own right, but its easy. It’s probably a better starting point then Pop’n Music at this point. SDVX was easier when it first came out, I was like doing 8s maybe 9s in IIDX when we first got access to it. I was able to do 9s and a single 10 in SDVX after a few rounds. I felt in comparison between both the games I was in the same general midpoint spot between the two, when usually I’m a little worse at the newer game then what I would be at IIDX. Jubeat I felt that I surpassed what my skill is in IIDX, which never happened with another Music game. Scoring is a huge part in all Music Games. Even in Future Tom Tom where it is just so much fun that the difficulty spike doesn’t matter.
In general, yes, the skill ceiling is lower on the newer games than on the older ones. I’ve been stuck on the edge of the 10-11 wall in IIDX for the last five years or so (and had to give it up because of repetitive strain injury unfortunately) but I can beat a handful of 15s in SDVX. If you look at my skill relative to the difficulty scale, I’m technically “better” in SDVX than I am in IIDX, but I don’t really see that as a problem. (15s and 16s are kind of a nightmare because there are so many that they need to be subdivided again, which is exactly what they’re doing in Sound Voltex IV.)
If anything, the lowered skill ceiling and skewed difficulty curve in SDVX offers even more songs for players at a IIDX level similar to mine to play while they’re banging their heads against the 10-11 wall in IIDX. That coincides really well with the 7th-8th dan tiers in IIDX which is where most of the active player base lies. If you’re tilting hard and need something else to play, go actually make some progress in this other game for a week or two and come back with your mind refreshed. Chances are there’s a multi-game event live anyway so why not.
To be fair I was also stuck at the 10/11 wall. I only had 5 11s Passed: Colosseum, Erosion Mark, Harmony and Lovely, Rock da House, and New Sensation. I had gotten 7th Dan about 2 years ago now. There was a fun story about how I would go into The Safari with 80% and fail, but the one time I went in with 82% I passed with 2%. I fell to my knees and started crying. Fuck The Safari and the mess of notes it calls a chart. (This was for Pendual)
I’m sure my skill decreased since no reliable access for 2 years, but I’m trying to keep strong through the access I have to in Pop’n. Your SDVX break is my Pop’n Break tbh. Not that SDVX is bad, while easier then the older games, thats oddly not a slight against it. I just prefer the lightheartedness of slapping colorful hamburgers with bright colors. I’m sure I’ll play more SDVX once I get my home setups complete
what forum is this where there are multiple iidx players
i passed 7dan on my first try the last time i was at an arcade (half the world away in akihabara) and that was nice. i had been scared to try it because of all the horror stories i’d heard but i knocked it down easy! 8dan is gonna take me a while tho
the 10/11 wall is so real. i’ve only cleared two 11s, but i can clear 90% of the 10s i try. so now i’m just working on aaa-ing easier songs to improve my accuracy and working on hc-ing the 10s i can do. i managed to hc mei and red by full metal jacket last time i played infinitas so i’m real stoked on that. making progress bit by bit. i realllllly wanna pass a 12 by new year’s and i’ve narrowed it down to either gigadelic hyper or innocent walls hyper but idk, gonna be a high wall to climb
I know, what is this magical place? This isn’t Pigland, why are people talking about IIDX, how do people even know???
I was unable to do 8th Dan mainly because my weakness is Scales.
Back when I visited Boston I went to Round 1 and played Sinobuz. I was able to get 5th Dan after a two year Hiatus and an awesome good attack on Garden Normal. Super offbeat, but it’s my fucking jam.
Bemani isn’t like it was ten years ago; the scene has expanded massively and I still can’t quite grasp how it came to be this way.
I’m gonna be in Japan for a month and a half in a couple weeks and I’m very much looking forward to getting to finally play Chunithm. Sega has really been knocking it out of the park with Chunithm (mechanically) and maimai (musically) recently, which is refreshing since Konami’s output has been kinda lackluster. Sound Voltex IV is also due out before the end of the year, so I will probably be hugely into that if my muscle memory for beating early 15s has managed to survive two years of inactivity. (Probably not.)
I honestly want to say that an arcade by the name of TGA (Tokyo Gaming Action) likely started the scene expansion in the states at least. (It’s been closed for years due to acts of god. Game Underground seems to be it’s spiritual successor however. It’s a good arcade with an amazing community, if you’re in Massachusetts I highly recommend going there. The owner is very community driven, and while he knows little of the machines, the machines are actually owned by community members so they do the upkeep. DDR pads get cleaned out weekly type of upkeep.)
All the oldschool Bemani members I know used to frequent that place. Which includes Anthony, he used to work there. He now owns Tokyo Attack which was formerly known as Bemani Invasion, and he brings Japanese Arcade Machines to conventions with a very heavy lean on Bemani Games. He’s probably helped out a bunch too by bringing these games to the general nerdy public. It also includes sherl0k who created the place where the online community can talk to one another.
The IIDX machine I learned to play on was the one that used to belong to TGA, it was signed by kors k as he did a couple of performances there. In fact if you listen to the song Icarus from DJ Troopers, you’ll hear some speaking in the background in the very beginning and in the middle. Thats actually taken from one of the times kors k preformed there. He recorded people using the microphone to talk to the general group, I know one of the phrases was “And where the hell is chef”. It was mostly voice clips from when Anthony was talking iirc.
What I’m guessing is that the people that formed the community from that arcade refused to let it die, and thus we are where we are today. I feel like Anthony has done the most legwork in bringing it to be more well known because of Tokyo Attack.
I went to Game Underground two days ago when I was in Boston to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Was just around the time the first event on Pendual went live and a bit before Programmed World was shut down. It was pretty neat, but I’ve never been comfortable with how reliant the Western community has been on piracy, especially now that Konami is starting to open up distribution of cabinets that are actually on the official e-amuse network.
I honestly think YouTube and social media played a big part in the popularization of music games once the home releases of the games died off, just because it became trivial to share music with other people and propagate original songs from the series we love. And in more recent years, music games have been more reliant on things like Vocaloid, Touhou, and the doujin music scene, so that also attracted people from those scenes.
I think youtube helped out a little bit, but like, it hasn’t had that much of a big impact. If it did I would totes expect to see more Sound Voltex players thanks to Brainpower, song became a fucking memel. Not to mention videos of IIDX and LR2 have existed on Youtube for years.
Also god damned do I miss Programmed World. 2 and a half years of progress gone c’: I remember when I unlocked tripping contact and it turned out I already had a clear lamp on the normal because I played it before they removed it. Thats when I knew I was now an “older” player.
Vanilla jubeat isn’t worth it, if only because you can buy the whole thing for jubeat plus rather cheaply, and it wasn’t that impressive musically to begin with. copious is when the game started getting really good.
Also,
Chunithm is hella dope. The website says I played 128 credits of this thing during my Japan trip, and it doesn’t feel like enough. (There are two more videos on my channel if you are that bored.)
Yeah, I used to watch videos of some guy in a bear suit play Chunithm and it looked fun. I like the emphasis on sliding your hands across the flat plane (does you have to physically touch the panel for slides? does your hand glide easily on the surface?) but the motion control aspect looks a little funky. I had originally thought it was to emulate banging you hands down hard on the “keyboard” but that doesn’t seem to be the case since there are a lot of parts where youe essentially just wave your hands in the air.
You do need to physically touch the panel for slides. It glides better than maimai’s touchscreen (this is probably a bad reference if you haven’t played maimai), but not by much, so most players resort to wearing gloves.
The way air notes is as follows. There’s an invisible line at the midpoint of the sensors, and each of the three air note types involves crossing it in some way:
Green up arrows require you to cross them from the bottom up
Purple down arrows require you to cross it from top to bottom
Purple “wave” notes require you to cross the line in any direction
To give you visual feedback on your positioning relative to the sensor, a visual representation of your position relative to that line is shown on screen during long air notes. You can see this in action at 1:47 in Hand in Hand MAS.
In some contexts, it is totally viable to use purple down arrows as a keyboard bang of sorts, but it’s important not to think of it solely as that otherwise it can hold you back from being able to clear harder charts.
