Beatmania - Additional Rules

Additional Rules

Various game modes are available, with different rule alterations that provide suitable challenges for players of various degrees of skill.

Practice

Featured in Beatmania 2ndMix and Beatmania, inexperienced players can go through a training stage with DJ Konami, a voice-over that walks you through the basics of the game. After the training stage players can select songs normally and regardless of their performance won't end a game prematurely. The voice over was not featured in any other Beatmania series game, although a similarly formatted Tutorial mode was recently added to the Beatmania IIDX games. Prior to practice mode players could choose to play a practice stage during normal games.

Free

Introduced in 6thMIX, Free mode is another practice mode that follows all the rules of the Normal mode, with passing and failing scores, but allows the player to play all the predefined number of songs regardless of each song's difficulty.

Expert

A mode for skilled players with courses that predefines the songs to be played. The rules for this mode have been modified throughout different versions of the game.

• Beatmania

  Players must play through all the songs in a set order, with the audience bar dropping in greater degrees and increasing less. All the other rules follow the normal mode. Continues are allowed.

• 2ndMIX

  Different themed course are given, each running five songs long. The scoring rules follow that of the previous beatmania.

• 3rdMIX

  In addition to the courses format of 2ndMIX, the audience bar is now full from the beginning, and any decrease will carry onto the next stage, where good performance does not recover the bar. The audience bar is characteristically colored in red, and no continues are allowed upon game over.

• completeMIX and after

  With the introduction of the Internet Ranking service, scores are now counted as 2 points for "Just Great" and 1 point for "Great", which makes the overall EX Score. Upon completion of the course, a password is given to the player to submit to the official website for worldwide ranking. All of the internet ranking services have ended and are no longer available.

• featuring "Dreams Come True"

  The Dreams Come True edition uses the same rules as CompleteMIX, but also features a minigame in between songs where a player can rapidly scratch to restore life.

Expert+

First offered in 6thMIX, this mode is designed for the most skilled of players. A single course is provided, featuring ten of the hardest songs in a particular version. The audience bar functions similarly to that of Expert mode, but falling to zero doesn't result in an immediate game over. Rather, "Danger" is displayed on the screen, and it will take another subsequent miss to end the game. The bar is restored after each song.

Easy

Available since 3rdMIX, the Easy mode offers simplified playing sequences for songs. The selection of Easy and Hard modes were discarded altogether from 6thMIX and after, with difficulty selection becoming options within the integrated Normal mode.