Aaron Auzins has sent me a few links from Bemanistyle.com regarding some different developments in the coin-op bemani gaming sector and here is a rundown of all of them in one post – I could say to conserve space but really because I’m feeling slightly lazy at the moment, so here it goes.
First off, Konami has released Beatmania IIDX 17 Sirius to arcades in Japan. If you have a location near you that is known for importing Beatmania machines then it will probably be worth checking out to see if they will upgrade to the newest version of not. In this version it includes a new beginner mode called Party Mode where the goal is to win over as many fans as possible using the songlist provided by the game. The game does make use of Konami’s online e-Amusement pass system and in case you’re wondering what this game is all about here is a video of it in action
Next, Capcom is teaming up with Namco on the next arcade release of Taiko No Tatsujin in Japan. This is a bemani game that features a set of taiko’s (or Japanese drums) for players
to thump on(as pictured). One thing that Capcom is bringing to this release will be the inclusion of Monster Hunter characters into the game which will of course mean that there will be players who seek that game out solely for the Monster Hunter stuff in the game (since MH is huge in Japan).
Finally we have a few updates regarding the US national DDR tournaments (details here, here and here). From the information on Bemanistyle, it sounds like everything was going along just fine until the Minneapolis tournament came along and due to conflicting rules and poor pad performance, the tournament turned out to be less than stellar. Thus the outcomes in this tournament might have been different but as it stands the players have already been picked and will move on to the next round. Hopefully the remaining tournaments won’t see similar problems.
I wonder if rawthrills releases dj hero for the arcades just like what they did with guitar hero. but then again it won’t hurt konami much as both turn table controls are actually different from each other. dj hero has buttons on their turn table where as knonami’s doesn’t. I wish they would bring the taiko drum series to the west again, used to love playing that game years ago and it was taiko no tatsujin 3.