FAQ/Walk Through curtsey of JT. Kauffman

Compendium curtsey of JT. Kauffman

Song List curtsey of JT. Kauffman

9/10 Review by JT. Kauffman

The main thing behind the Beatmania series is the obviously the music, seeing as it is a DJ Simulation game. In this category, Beatmania for WonderSwan (or BMforWS, from now on) excels. A far fling from Beatmania GB's takes on the songs, BMforWS features near-perfect ports of the original arcade tunes. Even hard to do things like vocals are included (although a bit static-y in a few places, but it's to be expected - this is a handheld, after all), and everything is fairly true to it's arcade counterpart. The clarity, as well, is very good (sans some of the vocals) and aside from the WS's inheriant quietness, you'll be extremely happy in the category.

As for the graphics, while Beatmania is not necessarily a graphics-intensive game in the arcade or on Playstation, the WS version is able to produce these graphics impressively well. While not the exact same images that are shown in the arcade, players who are familiar with the arcade or PSX versions will find very familiar graphics popping up. Here, as with the sound, the quality is far and above that of the GameBoy version, and far exceeded my expectations for the title. Another plus above the GB version is the sharpness of the falling notes - the GB version suffers from blurriness (at least on my old-style GB) but the WS's falling notes are crisp and clear - a big, big plus.

Now for the big downfall - play control. This is an exact port of the songs - no alterations were done to make it easier to play. While this is a good thing for purists, one must take into consideration that this is a very small, portable system that you need to hold while playing. Thus, when three notes and a turntable scratch all come up at the same time, you find that you're either going to miss some notes, or find some unique way to hold the system. Here's some quick background for those who aren't familiar with Beatmania, or the WonderSwan. The arcade version of the game has five action buttons that correspond with falling notes on the screen, and also has a turntable (record player) that also corresponds with falling notes (or scratches, if you will). The WonderSwan (in the vertical configuration, which BMforWS uses) has four buttons arranged in a diamond pattern on each side of the system, and two buttons in the top right. For Beatmania, the left, up, and rigth buttons on the left hand side correspond with the left-most three action buttons in the arcade, and the left, up, and right buttons on the right side correspond with the right-most action buttons, meaning that the middle action button is playable on either set of WS buttons (man, this is hard to explain assuming that you've never seen the system... just trust me, ok?) The turntable is delegated to the buttons in the upper right. This is all well and good, except for a few main problems: Even with the included turntable that attaches to the top right of the system, hitting the turntable while playing notes on the right hand side is tough. Very tough, in some cases. And even more of a challenge is trying to hit notes on both the left and the right, while scratching. A song that you might be able to ace in the arcade requires almost total re-learning sometimes to merely figure out how to hold the WS while hitting enough buttons to win. A little re-working of the notes would have solved this (the GB version does this, albeit a bit too much, making the game very easy). Just the elimination of a note here and a note there would have done wonders for the playability. As a side not, almost all of the above problems are remedied by putting the turntable on auto, but you can't get your name on the high score board or open up new modes this way.

Now for a quick look at the song selection. From what I remember, all of the songs on BMforWS are from the arcade 3rd Mix. Unfortuntely, there are a mere 11 (as well as a "medley" genre that takes bits of all 11 songs and mixes them together). This shows that you can either have quality (which BMforWS definately has), or quantity (the GBversion has about twice the number of songs, but doesn't sound nearly as nice). On the other hand, Konami has done a nice job of using the said 11 songs in many different ways - not only do you have the normal expert mode (which uses all 10 of the normal songs in two different "classes"), but you also have the survival mode (a hidden mode) in which you have a single full groove gauge to go through the entire 11 song playlist, in order of difficulty - no continues (this is near impossible, folks). You also have the bonus "medley" genre, which is purely for fun (no score is kept). In all, while 11 songs isn't that much, they're used well, and they sound nice, which is the key.

In the end, you have a very good sounding, very impressive, but short and occasionally hard to control, game. I can easily say that the graphics and sounds are the best that I've ever seen or heard in a portable game, and the fun factor is up there fairly high as well. If it wasn't for the play control difficulty and the lack of songs, this game would have gotten a perfect score. As it is, if you're into music games at all, or even just into music, this is a must-have for WonderSwan owners.