Beatmania - Basic Rules

Basic Rules

The player is a club DJ who must manipulate the controls according to the instructions on screen to win the praise of the audience. Each game consists of a set number of songs of various difficulties, and each song must attain a certain degree of satisfaction from the audience in order to progress to the next.

The game controls consist of five plastic vertical rectangular keys that are arranged in a zig-zag pattern alike the letter "M" or in vibraphone type arranged. They resemble the layout of the keys of a piano (e.g. C, C#, D, D#, and E) and are color coded in the same fashion, with the lower row white and top row black. A turntable is to the right of the five keys, and is turned, or "scratched".

Each key has a corresponding vertical bar onscreen, as does the turntable. The bars indicate the path which rectangular icons cascade down towards a horizontal line near the bottom of the screen. The player must hit the corresponding key or rotate the turntable when the icon matches with the line, which will trigger a preset sound sample and recomposes the song properly. Players are judged for each key press for the accuracy of the timing on a scale of great, good, bad and poor. Hitting keys/scratching when corresponding notes are absent will deplete a bar indicating the audience satisfaction. The passing range is shown on the bar as a red region on the right, and green for the failing range on the left. The game may end pre-maturely if the bar is completely depleted, but this depends on individual machine settings.

The unit of score in the game is "money". A final grade (A - G) is given at the end of the game to indicate the player's performance. This grade is not directly based on the "money score", but is instead based on the player's overall accuracy.