One thing about Beatmania is true, you either love it or hate it, there is really no in between. Unfortunately, I have a hard time believing that even fans will be all that excited about this port, as the music selection is terrible. That’s not taking into account that the controller itself has a high learning curve and cumbersome button arrangement. Even that could have all been tolerable if the song variety and list were better.

Visually, Beatmania does little else to improve upon the typical menus and spectator screens of the rhythm and dance genre. It is just a bunch of bars moving on screen that you time to the beat, as in the background all sorts of flashy colors and low-res videos play to try to provide entertainment for onlookers. In Beatmania, it is even worse than most and looks much like a PS One title when it comes to visual flair and menu fonts. If I’m being honest, I get more out of the visualizer on my PC’s music player than what is displayed in Beatmania.

Audio is really what kills the game here. Not that the bass samples or house beats don’t fit this game, it is actually as appropriate as ever here, but the song selection is very weak and uninteresting. Sure, there are over 50 tracks that cover pop, techno, drum ‘n’ bass, trance, and house, but there are no real hit makers that draw people into dance clubs night after night. What is worse, even if you find a song worth listening to in the bunch, they have been edited to be so short that by the time you are into the song, it is over! Everyone knows that you need to work up the crowd and 2-3 minute variations of a song aren’t going to cut it in this genre.

Gameplay is fair, but as cool as the controller is, the buttons are quite large and unless you have hands like a basketball player, you may find yourself stretching it a bit to become successful. This is evident when you are playing the songs that use all eight buttons and the scratch pad. If you do become comfortable with Beatmania, you will soon find out that you’ll feel less like a DJ and more like a game show contestant, as the game uses simple timing methods that really do not give you the feeling of being in total control of you turntable and its abilities.

Beatmania offers a two player head-to-head mode, 50 songs, and a few modes and variations. To this reviewer, none of it was entertaining for too long and unlike Konami’s past efforts, I can’t see the replay feature lasting even for the most die hard fans due to the shabby and forgettable song selection.

Kudos to Konami for answering the calls of many fans by bringing Beatmania home. The translation itself is fine and will be both well received and familiar to fans who loved it in the arcades. However, the weak song choice and length of the songs kill the game for casual fans or those trying to find out what it’s all about. This is disappointing, as now only the die-hard fans will understand the sensation that is Beatmania. The rest of us will be scratching our heads more than the turntable in wonder of what the big deal is.