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I mentioned in my post about Final Fantasy XIV that one of my preferred genres of video games is music games. Music games, also known as rhythm games, are far less popular in the United States than they were in the mid-2000s, but the genre still has a strong presence in many Asian arcades. And in Japan, a prominent maker of music game is Bemani.
Bemani, a subdivision of Konami, have created music games since the late 1990s. Their best-known product in the West is DanceDance Revolution, a dancing arcade game played by standing on a metal pad and stepping on four arrow panels in time to music. Several similar dance games have become popular in more recent time, from the South Korean series Pump It Up to an American home game called StepManiaX.
My first experience with Bemani was with DanceDance Revolution, but when I attended an anime convention in 2008, I learned about another Bemani staple: a DJ-style game called beatmania II DX. The game features seven buttons arranged similarly to piano keys and a turntable that can either be spun continually or "scratched", similar to a DJ scratching a record.
Today music games are a great passion of mine, and there's a lot to say about them. This will likely be the first post in a series.
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[Last updated: 2021-10-28]