The Last Beatmania Game Coming To PlayStation 2

@tayaya: The timing has been adjustable since Happy Sky (12th Style)

villadelfia

I wouldn't fret about the jump to PS3. By the time SIRIUS CS comes out, a lot of American gamers will have gotten a PS3 (Final Fantasy XIII, price drops, etc.) and a TV that can work well with it. Let's not forget that Konami has gotten a head start on HDTV lag since HAPPY SKY CS came out in late '06 with its callibration settings, and the same technology has worked on every Bemani title since then.

I think the PS3 switch fears are unfounded. Give Konami some time to figure it out (because they will) and watch SIRIUS CS have like 150-200 songs on it.

THECapedCaper

@AdmanCS: Your not alone on that. After I post something and check out my profile page and see if anyone reply to my post and most of the time it doesn't show up. I have to go on the bottom of the posting for that page and show all comments and then search my name.

I think the star commenter gets presidence is a joke (no offense to those who are) . I've seen some insightful posting buried in the OP's reply in the past and most of them never gets a star. I feel that people now are going to post more single post to get peoples attention instead of continuing on someone else posts that had the same topic.

That's why I'm usually never serious when I post.

Neko_Tech

@Tiger-Fever: *Hopefully* the jump to HD consoles will mean downloadable content. And if you could get all the old beatmania songs after bying a single disk? That would be *awesome*. Nevermind I'm sure the prices will be relatively high, as they don't want to cut too much into the "reissue old songs on the new disk" business model, but so far Konami has done a decent job of releasing old tracks for Karaoke Rev...so hopefully that will mean the same for Beatmania..>=)

verrius

@AdmanCS: Wow I hate this new commenting system.

@tayaya: Only since Happy Sky actually. Even then the calibration isn't exactly precise, and beatmania really needs spot on timing to be playable.

@fuchikoma: Does this remotejoy require a modded PSP? Hope not. Otherwise it sounds kinda useless =/.

SacGamer

@Billkwando bought his tickets for Hyde's US tour: I just use my ears to play music games. The eyes are just to tell you what notes to play. You gotta LISTEN to know when to hit the notes.

@tayaya: Even on a decent LCD screen it's horrible. Unless by decent you mean the super expensive ones, which aren't "decent". Decent would imply affordable yet acceptable.

But if you use an LCD at all I guarantee you that a good RB/GH player will notice the lag, especially on songs they've never played before.

SacGamer

@mintycrys is HOT for Bayonetta: They actually are changing Sirius--and I'm not sure how I feel about it. They're adding 'freezes' not unlike DJ Max, where backscratching is required. I recall one other change being made, but I don't remember what it was at the moment.

@CyricZ: To be fair, it kind of made sense for Bemani to stick with the PS2 given that their games aren't the least graphically intensive and there's some many people with a PS2, especially Bemani fans. And I'll admit that I'm not looking forward to dealing with lag between my PS3 and TV.

I have to say I'm really interested with the soundtrack. I only hope that the special collectors edition is going to have some cool swag.

@Jeff Paine: I've noticed that CRT doesn't guarantee no lag. At work I have a Samsung HDTV CRT and at home I have a Samsung HDTV CRT that is a slightly later model. The former has lag but very minimal (probably the least I've seen in any HDTV) while mine at home has quite a bit of lag.

SDTV CRT's on the other hand, those are a guarantee.

billyjr82

@tensai: If you're playing with an official monitor, it's a CRT running at 640x480 stretched.

billyjr82

@Billkwando bought his tickets for Hyde's US tour:

IIDX's arcade cabinet is played on a LCD. The ps3 won't be the source of your input lag problems, its the type of lcd you use.

tensai

@Michael Boland: If anything, EMPRESS CS is early considering it won't have even been a year since the AC version was released

@Neko_Tech: It's a combination of a few things really. First is the input mechanism. The Wii has inherent lag with any input from the Wii Remote to the Wii, but has no lag with a gamecube controller. The PS3 controller has no latency if you're using Sony's native blutooth format. (In other words, because GH and RB guitars aren't using Sony's protocol, they have lag. The 360 however, seems to be the only one I've tested that has no inherent latency in the controller 1st or 3rd party.

This isn't a fanboy post. I work for Activision and have tested all 4 (PS2 included) platforms many many times.

The second issue is of course, the HDTV. The problem with 'calibrating' the lag in the software is it doesn't even really fix the problem. It just makes it more playable.

(The following is a combination of online research, my personal research, and theories and I haven't found anyone who could come up with a better explanation. That said, I know there are flaws in my theory and if anyone could fill me in, that would be greatly appreciated.)

All HDTV's have what is called a 'Native resolution'. This native resolution simply means that in actuallity, the TV has this number of pixels that it can display with. If you input a signal that is different than its native resolution, then the TV must scale that image to match its native resolution so that there are no black borders. If you have a HDTV that can only do 720p / 1080i as the highest, they typically have a native resolution of 1368x768, which you may notice is different than 720p (1280x720) and 1080i (1920x1080 interlaced). Then if you feed that TV a 480i signal, it gets worse. First, because the image is interlaced, the TV must buffer the entire first field (half of the lines) and wait for the first line of the 2nd field to draw before it can scale the image and display it. This adds 16ms of latency assuming the scaler takes no time to scale (which of course it will.)

Now, all the calibration in music games does is move one or more of the different streams to make it seem synced. The problem is, in order to hit the notes on time, you're still going to have to compensate for it some how. I could go on about that, but that's another topic.

With that said, there are flaws in my theory that I can't explain and I haven't heard a better theory. Where I got the whole idea of native resolution comes from here (http://hdtvlag.googlepages.com/). And even he says on the site that doing his test through VGA shows no lag. If the theory is correct and you're inputting a resolution that does not match the native resolution, then there will be latency. Both his tests and mine show that to be false. However, I have played on different monitors both running VGA where one had serious lag (360 playing GH to a computer monitor), and the other had none (using his test) so I don't know what's going on there. The other is that if you have a TV that has a native resolution of 1920x1080 (1080p) running any current-gen console at 1080p, there should be no latency (with all the 'pretty' settings turned off on the TV). This I have also found not to be the case.

billyjr82

@tayaya: Happy Sky was the first one to allow you to adjust your timing.

billyjr82

@tayaya

Lots of TVs have A/V lag, not just an issue with scaling and refresh, they have onboard processing for video that can really mess with synchronization. Try walking through the TV section of an electronics store- you'll see that every TV has some delay, some more than others.

@lilaliendog: Sure, I'll totally believe that, considering my parents have a Samsung DLP and rhythm games play like absolute shit on it.

The only TVs that are truly lag-free are Panasonic's newer Viera plasmas, and CRT TVs.

@ubertrance: Nobody knows yet.

@Neko_Tech: I have a 360 connected to my 1080p TV directly through HDMI for both video and audio and I have to calibrate it too, you're not alone.

@Neko_Tech:
This is true. I play with component cables and game mode on a Samsung... I think it's an LN-S3141D TV, but I find IIDX to be very playable.

On the other hand, I'm less sensitive to lag than most music gamers because I use my ears as opposed to my eyes - usually I'm looking about halfway up the screen to "precache" the notes before I hit the buttons... This weekend I was playing DJ Max Portable II on my PC, streaming video from the PSP via RemoteJoy - the trick is just to avoid looking at the bottom line.

@Billkwando bought his tickets for Hyde's US tour: no need to worry. ALL bemani games support a timing adjust option. and aren't you aware that IIDX cabinets use hd monitors?

At least we're getting Empress. They had been releasing on a spring/fall cycle for quite some time and that broke this spring, so I just thought it wasn't coming. at all. Loves me some IIDX!

Michael Boland

@tayaya: Only since Happy Sky, actually.

@CyricZ: ?

Meaning what, exactly?

I think Sirius will look just like Empress. No major graphical overhaul or shell redesign.

If you mean that now, IIDX releases will be consolidated on a system that's likely already plugged in (though my PS2's still plugged in), then I guess they're catching up to the current gen in a sense. We still don't know how they're going to proceed with CS versions. They may stop altogether!

There are quite a bit of people in America who would buy PS3 for IIDX, contrary to Sony America's wishes.

mintycrys is HOT for Bayonetta

@lilaliendog: I have a Samsung 630 LCD HDTV and games like GH/RB/other music intensive game still lags even with game mode on. It's not the TV, its the calibration engine since I do better with RB1 then I do with RB2.

However if I use component or standard A/V including the audio I get no lag on any of them. It's the HDMI latency that causes the problem and I don't think the auto cailbration (on games that have them) compensate for that issue, then you also have to calibrate the audio delay also. I just missed the good old days where music gaming works without fiddling around and fine tuning stuff.

Neko_Tech

@Billkwando bought his tickets for Hyde's US tour: Some HDTVs have no lag. Usually the older LCD hybrids. It's kinda like how I have to plug in my PS2 into a tube TV because 8th and 7th style leaves nasty after images on my LCD screen.

mintycrys is HOT for Bayonetta

8000 yen? That's not how much the Konamistyle LE version is going to cost.

And true IIDX fans drop 200 bucks on Konamistyle LE versions amirite?

I missed out on Happy Sky and Distorted LE and regret it often. I hope the premium best disc is as awesome as the Cardinal Gate album I DON'T have. :(

mintycrys is HOT for Bayonetta

Would be kinda nice to have another US beatmania game so I can use that damn controller for more than just 1 game.

RiverCityGamer

This is no small news...there have already been 14 IIDX games on PS2. I hope this doesn't mean the end of console IIDX.

chardish

@Billkwando bought his tickets for Hyde's US tour: Just turn your hdtv to game mode or turn off any special enhancement options ... DDR plays just fine on my ps2 or 60gig ps3 hooked up to my 2+ year old 61" samsung DLP.

lilaliendog

For me this title always screams that old song 'Hit me with your rhythm stick'

@Billkwando bought his tickets for Hyde's US tour:

If you have a decent LCD this is not an issue. It all depends on how fast the scaler is on your LCD. I have a Philips set that I don't have to to adjust at all for Beatmania/pop'n music/Rock Band.

Even so, IIDX has allowed you to calibrate the timing for some time now... I wanna say since 6th style, but it may be 8th.... been so long since I played them.

tayaya

@Vidunder: theres a good chance it'll come out for Wii

pandafresh

@Jon: Ouch. Is Bemani that nameless outside Japan and some other niche circles?

i wish original xbox still got gaems...

asdf4321

@Billkwando bought his tickets for Hyde's US tour: I know what you mean, even Rockband 2 with auto calibration doesn't really work... the only way to minimize that lag is if I hook up my HDMI to the HDTV directly instead of my home theater receiver and even then I have to use the sound from regular A/V. I don't know about the XB360 version since I don't own RB2 for it.

The work around kinda defeat the purpose of the high def gaming IMO. Until they get the calibration right for rhythm games I don't want to even bother with it. But since Beatmania is for the PS2 it's made for SDTV so it's kinda pointless to put it on the BC-able PS3 unless you only have a SDTV using standard A/V or component hookup.

Couple things I learned that HD games this gen is that any time sensitive games are pain in the ass and lightgun games (guncon 3) isn't accurate enough.

Neko_Tech

That's gonna be really ironic when people have to plug their PS3s into an old tube TV to prevent note/chart lag.

Would it matter for the people who are interested outside of Japan? It's not like we would get a localized port or anything. I guess this news might be relevent to some people out there.

Konami had there chance to take the market away from the current rhythm games that are out now if they kept at it when it first came out. Then again maybe I should be grateful that they didn't since how DDR no longer feels the same as once was, now it's all mostly localized music.

Neko_Tech

I bet any amount of money that most of the people waiting for DJ Hero will be going "Beatmania who?" ¬_¬

@ubertrance: It's sort of a misleading title, the title implies it's the last beatmania game in general but the actual content implies it's just the last one that's coming out for the PS2

chronomasakari

WHAT?!!!

Why is it the last one?
Are they upgrading to the PS3 or something with IIDX 17?

Ok. I have to gather that SIRIUS comes for PS3 then. I wonder if it's going to be a carbon copy of the last 5-6.

Vidunder

Ah yes, BEMANI finally decides to catch up to the current gen.

CyricZ

@Kibblez: most useless comment ever.

Vidunder

Cl. Wt, wh

Kibblez

@tensai: IIDX cabinets also have +1 timing if they're using an LCD instead of a CRT. (See that "DISPLAY TYPE A" or "DISPLAY TYPE B" in the corner? Type A is CRTs with no timing adjustment, Type B is LCDs with +1 timing adjustment)

@Billkwando bought his tickets for Hyde's US tour: Find a PC monitor that has HDMI in. The 24 inch samsung I use has a beautiful 6ms lag time, and 1920x1200 resolution.