In 1998 Edge set its readers a quiz: what was the most popular arcade game that year for Konami, one of the world’s biggest arcade makers? The clue was that it ran on “ten-year-old technology”, and the answer, “few westerners would” know, was Beatmania, a game in which the player is a club DJ. The cabinet had five keys and a record turntable. Notes fell down the screen in time with a dance track, and the player hit the matching key, or scratched the record, as each one arrived. Crowds gathered to watch. Konami named a whole family of music games after it, Bemani, and in Japan it is still running.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Konami.
- Arcade release: Japan, December 1997, after a showing at the JAMMA trade show that autumn.
- Controls: five keys and a turntable for each player; the cabinet takes two players.
- Home versions: PlayStation (Japan, 1998, with a turntable controller); a Game Boy version in 1999; a European PlayStation edition in 2000.
- Successors: yearly “mixes”, then Beatmania IIDX (1999), with seven keys; the original series ended with Beatmania The Final in 2002.
- Its name lives on in: Bemani, Konami’s label for its music games, from Dance Dance Revolution to Guitar Freaks.
A DJ in the arcade
Konami showed Beatmania at the JAMMA arcade show in Tokyo in the autumn of 1997, where Edge noticed “the first game based on - get this - DJ mixing”. It went into Japanese arcades that December. The man in charge of its music, Hiroshi Takyasu, manager of Konami’s sound development department, told Edge he had not expected much: “I didn’t think Beat-Mania would become as popular as it is now. It is much more than I expected.”
The idea was close to Sony’s PaRappa the Rapper, which had been a hit on the PlayStation in Japan the year before: match the prompts on screen in time with the music. Beatmania gave it an instrument. The prompts scroll down five lanes towards a line at the bottom of the screen, like “digital sheet music”, and each lane belongs to a key. Every so often a note calls for the turntable, and between the set notes the player is encouraged into short “freestyle” scratching. “Needless to say,” Edge wrote, “early attempts can get quite messy.” Takyasu’s team wanted the music played in clubs, and the first game’s tracks had titles like “Overdozer” and “Love So Groovy”.
Players show off
Takyasu thought he knew why it caught on: “players can make a good-looking performance in front of other people looking on. Players can show off. This is very important for Beat-Mania.” And the audience mattered more than the pictures: “The players themselves aren’t watching the graphics - the gallery is watching.” Koji Okamoto, general manager of two of Konami’s research and development departments, agreed: “Graphics are important, but we do not believe that they are a crucial factor to a good game.” In Tokyo’s Shibuya district, Edge reported, “large crowds gather around experienced players”, and some used the game more to show off their DJ technique than to play it.
Konami kept the game fresh with new songs. Beatmania 2nd Mix followed in 1998, and 3rd Mix added a battle mode in which two players compete for the higher score. Britain saw 3rd Mix in its arcades in early 1999. Arcade magazine’s reviewer found “crowds of people watching the coin-op DJs torture the turntables” at his local arcade and called it “definitely a chart topper”.
Its success changed Konami’s arcade business. By February 1999 music games were the leading genre at Japan’s AOU show, “inspired by the success of Konami’s Beat-Mania series”, and Konami had a name for them: Bemani, from Beatmania. Edge later reported that the company had coined the word and copyrighted it, to claim the genre as its own. Konami’s Games & Music Division was renamed the Bemani division. Its next games put other instruments in the arcade: Pop’n Music (1998), with big buttons for younger players; Dance Dance Revolution (1998), played with the feet; and Guitar Freaks and Drummania (1999), which could be linked for a two-player band. In December 2000 Newsweek reported that Konami had sold 25,000 Beatmania machines in three years, in an industry where selling 1,000 counted as a success.
At home
A PlayStation version of 2nd Mix came out in Japan in the autumn of 1998, with 27 tracks, 19 from the arcade and eight new ones, a training mode and a “DJ demo” mode for recording a performance. ASCII made a turntable controller for it, sold separately at ¥5,800. Edge reported that it “sold like hot cakes”. Append discs of new songs followed, and a Game Boy version, Beatmania GB, was fourth in Japan’s all-format sales chart in the spring of 1999. Edge counted more than 40 home versions by 2003, “from PSone to WonderSwan”.
The West was harder. At the ATEI trade show in London in January 1998, Edge reported, the cabinet with its “twin record deck” “failed to put many delegates in a spin”. Konami’s European PlayStation edition, released in Britain in 2000 with its own controller, added tracks from British acts such as Moloko. Edge looked back in 2004: “Beatmania did get a UK release on PSone, but players either found it too hard, too expensive or just felt stupid bashing away at a plastic turntable.” Konami tried its next music game in Britain with more caution, and it was Dance Dance Revolution, as Dancing Stage, that became the hit.
IIDX and after
At the AOU show in February 1999 Konami showed Beatmania IIDX, in a deluxe cabinet with a large plasma screen, extra speakers and “a bass vibration shaker”. It gave each player seven keys, two more than the original, beside the turntable. The five-key series ended in 2002 with Beatmania The Final, but IIDX carried on. Edge counted 39 distinct Beatmania cabinets in the 12 years to 2010, and its critics came from the West too: Alex Rigopulos of Harmonix, the studio that went on to make Guitar Hero and Rock Band, told Edge that the Bemani games were “sorely deficient in a number of key respects”, but that seeing them succeed in Japan showed what music games could do. Edge’s own verdict was that “the scrolling note charts, coloured prompts and peripherals that define modern rhythm-gaming are all Konami creations”.
The IIDX series is still going. Konami Amusement put Beatmania IIDX 33 Sparkle Shower into Japanese arcades on 17 September 2025.
Sources
- Edge issue 51, November 1997, p. 7: JAMMA show report (“the first game based on - get this - DJ mixing”).
- Edge issue 56, March 1998, pp. 10–11: Beatmania at the ATEI show in London (“twin record deck”).
- Edge issue 62, September 1998, p. 19: the PlayStation conversion (release date, 27 tracks, training and DJ demo modes, ASCII’s ¥5,800 turntable controller), the two-player cabinet, the Shibuya crowds, the comparison with PaRappa the Rapper.
- Edge issue 66, Christmas 1998, pp. 46–49: rhythm-action feature (Konami’s quiz and “ten-year-old technology”; Hiroshi Takyasu and Koji Okamoto; the audience and the graphics; the controls and freestyle scratching; the first game’s tracks; 3rd Mix and its battle mode; 2nd Mix on the PlayStation; Pop’n Music; Dance Dance Revolution and Konami’s Kobe team).
- Edge issue 70, April 1999, p. 90: AOU show report (rhythm action as the leading genre, “the genre it now calls Bemani”, Drummania and Guitar Freaks, Beat-Mania II DX and its deluxe cabinet).
- Arcade issue 3, February 1999, p. 138: review of Beatmania 3rd Mix in British arcades.
- Computer and Video Games issue 211, June 1999: Beatmania and Bemani in Japanese arcades (p. 58); Beatmania GB fourth in the Japanese all-format sales chart (p. 84).
- Official UK PlayStation Magazine issue 55, February 2000, pp. 53–54: preview of the European edition (Moloko, the controller, the two-player mode).
- Edge issue 124, June 2003, pp. 55–56: Beatmania as the first rhythm-action game in Japanese arcades; Konami’s coining of “bemani”; over 40 home and arcade versions in Japan; the keys and turntable.
- Edge issue 132, January 2004, p. 65: Beatmania’s British release and Konami’s cautious approach with Dancing Stage.
- Edge issue 211, February 2010, pp. 70–73: the Games & Music Division renamed Bemani; its games before 2000; Beatmania The Final (2002) and IIDX; 39 cabinets in 12 years; Alex Rigopulos on Bemani and Harmonix.
- Newsweek, “Kings of Cool”, 11 December 2000 (web, secondary): 25,000 Beatmania machines sold in three years. https://www.newsweek.com/kings-cool-156033
- Konami Amusement, “beatmania IIDX 33 Sparkle Shower” launch announcement, 17 September 2025 (web, the maker’s own statement). https://www.konami.com/amusement/corporate/ja/topics/20250917bm/