BEMANI milestones, step 2: GuitarFeaks & drummania

Ah, yes, the pinnacle of arcade gaming....a timeless hobby that never got me bored...and the epitome of entertainment....allow me to introduce BEMANI's twin children, the GuitarFreaks and DrumMania series. This is another type of music simulating games BEMANI added to its arsenal not long after beatmania was released in 1997. This time, it's simulating a drum and guitars.
Frankly speaking, GuitarFreaks was born earlier, around spring of 1998, if I'm not mistaken. There is still a copy of the machine left at one of the malls in Jakarta, as far as I could remember. There were only as many as around 10-12 songs at first, completely original from artists that would make BEMANI's exclusive line-up for this series. And shortly after that on the same year, the second mix, GuitarFreaks 2nd Mix, was born, and along came its other twin, the first drummania series. They're relatively cheap, so they can be found in arcades of middle to lower class malls, since those in big malls (like in Karawaci Supermall) upgraded them from 1st to 3rd mix and jumped to 10th mix, so the rest of the machines either got sold or simply transferred somewhere else.
Before I say anything else, let's examine how they are played.


Perfect! Now, if you refer back to the first picture that shows both of the consoles, I'll elaborate on Drummania, which is the left one in the picture and the left picture just on top of this paragraph. Now, there are 6 columns for different pads to drum on. Starting from the leftmost, the hi-hat, snare drum, bass drum (only a foot pedal), a hi and lo tom, and a cymbal. An animation video will play to the right, depending on what song you choose, similar to beatmania. See those tabs, blue for cymbal and pink with foot for bass? all you have to do is to time your drumming so that when you hit it, it will be hit close to the bold yellow line, which marks if you have missed the timing to hit the correct pad or not. The same goes for each of the other columns there. The drumming tablature will scroll vertically, and to pass a song, you have to get the red bar on the very left end full, and once it's gone, it's game over. In other words, you will have to time your drumming in order to get a good song running. There's a beginner course for beginners, obviously, a standard mode to play any 3 songs you like, and an expert mode that lets you play one packet of four songs, usually themed, continuously with little time to rest.
Now the guitarfreaks machine is a bit different, if not almost different.
A close-up look of the home version of the guitar controller (it's basically the same) shows that there are three buttons: red, blue, and green, and some sort of picking thingamajigger at the body of the guitar. If you refer back to the above picture in the right, there's a tablature similar to drummania, theres a bar for the three buttons and another one for a Wailing Bonus column. when either three of the first tabs appear and start scrolling vertically upwards (not downwards unlike Drummania)you have to hold the button corresponding it and then pick the strum when it reaches the yellow bar (better yet, right before it hits the yellow bar.) It's similar to drummania and beatmania, you have to do it in order to get a proper song running and not a musical fiasco which results in a game over.
Both have the same performance grading systems at the end ranging from a godly SS to a lousy E. So far , there have been 14 releases for Drummania and 15 from Guitarfreaks because it came out first, and the latest one is called version V4, the V signifying 5 years of their existence on the arcade market.

One of the unique features of this duo is the ability to to a jam session with 3 players, 2 on guitar and one on drums, via what is called Session Linking, so you can play songs together with friends and either ace together or fail together, which is obviously much more fun doing. there will be a separate combo display for a each machine and also a combined combo for both. Perhaps that band Muse could order those machines specially designed for them, since they're only 3 personnel in the band.....

There are also settings that you can choose from, altering the speed of the scrolling like beatmania, make it partially hidden, set the position of the combo display, or even omit the bass drum, hi-hat or cymbal part and let you focus on other parts of the set. Personally I'd set the scrolling speed to 3.5x faster, set the combo display in the right, overlapping the movie display, and omit the drums (yes, I'm a loser, but thanks to that I can pass the hard songs reasonably)

The music itself is like beatmania, a whole different dimension. the scoring system also varies through the times, from a star rating of 1 to 9 to a rating of 10 to 99. The songs have three difficulties: BASIC, ADVANCED, and EXTREME, with the latter being the hardest. There are exclusive artists who make songs especially for this series, although they have songs for other machines as well, and there are also licensed songs from outside artists, like, say, Earth, Wind and Fire, Sum 41, Deep Purple, KISS, Black Sabbath, and The Dillinger Escape Plan, among the some to name. There's even an artist by the name of ASMAT who offers what I coin the phrase "Indian Rock" genred songs. Pretty darn crazy, those Japanese.

Artist of the day: Hirofumi Sasaki (佐々木博史)

Ah, my hero. He, in my opinion, makes both the hardest and coolest songs I've ever seen in the entire Drummania/Guitarfreaks series. Starting with "The Least 100sec", which has an EXTREME rating of 99, the highest of its kind and still retains its glory even today. It's coined as the hardest song ever in the series because of its merciless drum tabs that keep on rolling and don't give you even one full second to rest and also a ridiculously nauseous drum solo halfway, a common trap for failing the songs. And yes, the song DOES go for exactly 100 seconds. There is also a long version of it, called The Least 33sec, which also goes for exactly 333 seconds, 5 minutes and 33 seconds. Ironically, the song has also been acclaimed to have one of THE lamest video accompanying the song even till today, featuring near monochromatic images of wire-design churches, 3D square grids and random numbers. They've revised it to make it look less pitiful in version V4, and although it still looks lame, I'd have to say it gotta be the trademark of the song.
Other songs from his creation are Children's Sketchbook, which is a rock version of "Jesus, Joy of Man's Desire", which is not quite as hard as The Least 100sec but it features tricky cymbals, annoying snare rolls and crossovers (constantly move your right hand to hit the hi-hat and cymbals while hitting the snares with the left hand, the right hand crosses over the left). There's also Tamayura, with even more annoying snare rolls, crossovers, and incessant hi-tom rolls. After that there's Concertino in Blue, which is more fun to play but still challenging in the hi-hats and cymbals, and Timepiece Phase II, his last song to date in the series, with simple but constant drum rolls and crossovers, an one thing to note is that the music arrangement is such a way that he makes it the grand finale of his songs. Maybe to signal his farewell to his fellow fans, but I'm still convinced that he'll return to make a song for the series once more.

There's still another milestone of BEMANI, coming right after this.

Regards from the schizophrenically psychotic retard,
Yoga Pradana A.K.A. Dr VoltsPerSecond