December 6th, 2025 - beatmania, CHRONO CIRCLE, maimai DX PRiSM, K-On! After School Live!
okay, this is a Really funny day to write about . while its exact release date remains unknown, this month marks the 28th anniversary of the beatmania series, originally released in... December 1997!!! and to celebrate, my local arcade is hosting this fun little beatmania birthday party to spread the good word about the game and celebrate its rich history, complete with a ps1 setup and a scoring tournament!!! now, this game predates me by 8 whole years, but it's seriously such a cool game and i love it for essentially being the origin of rhythm games as we know them today . so after doing some antics around and about, i headed down to check out the party and basically stay the rest of the night!!
ancient scores from the ancient setup: these do look really weird because of the CRT's drawing, but they're passable enough... baby beatmania in all its ancient, compressed glory :]
quick detour here to highlight that i did indeed play other games here!! nothing too big, but just wanted to get these scores out of the way so the rest could be beautiful, glorious, beatmania THE FINAL... or actually, the Credits [EXPERT Lv.13] SSS+ FC is quite good :]
alright, pivoting back to beatmania because now begins... the TOURNAMENT SAGA!!! as mentioned at the start, there was a scoring tournament for the "THE FINAL" course taking place with prizes for the winner, and even if i didn't know much about the game or how to play it... i had to test my strength and play through it!!! and in the first try alone... i placed at the very top of the leaderboard for the day, with a solid 2159 EX!!!
with such a solid score already secured, i kinda just wandered about and did nothing (except maybe a bit of homework) waiting for the results, though i did suspect my record would be overtaken... still, i paid it no mind for the moment and ran into a PSP party for a rhythm game i'd never seen before: K-On! After School Live! (2010)!!! it looked Really Damn Cool, and i was invited to join along after the little birthday song for the beatmania cab!!! missed out on some really good-looking chocolate cake as a result, but these scores more than make up for it...! (i'm the one at the bottom left in the second screenshot www)
true to my word, my course record was indeed overtaken later, and i listened to the new score live... i couldn't just stand for it, so i went back to the cab and experimented with a tool i hadn't used in my first run... SUDDEN+!!! or rather... TOWEL MOD!!! no, wait... PAPER MOD!!! there was a magnetic strip and a piece of paper available to simulate "sudden+" on the cab (whose in-game sudden option kinda sucks), and so i used that to my advantage to make some of the rhythms easier to read and time... leading to a HUGE boost in my scores!!! and after a select few insane plays, i SOARED above the competition and ended my run in the tourney with a solid 2258 EX SCORE!!! almost 100 above the score that beat me earlier... i knew this was the run . all that was left to do was lie in wait...
and after enough waiting around, the results were finally revealed... i won!!! first place, first prize pick, and i decided to go for the purple beatmania fanny pack as it looked like the absolute coolest... i even got to pose with my prize and the other top 3!!! was such a damn good time, i'm really happy to have made it out here and participated :] i might regret this later in terms of homework as i definitely should've been writing at home instead, but this whole experience more than made up for it in the long run . hoping for something like this again soon, and 'til next time...
BONUS: "Do you believe in love?" "Yes, I'm just feeling now."