Mission Briefing In: 6 days. Your mission is about to start

I have been waiting for Konami to release their 15th release of their continuing series of Beatmania games into PS2 over a year now. The upcoming "DJ-simulation" release this time is called "Beatmania IIDX DJ Troopers". The theme this time around is about everything military, hence the post title. Βemani fans are expecting more than 90 songs to be bundled inside, including many artist collaboration songs and a few surprise remixes of popular oldies.


The mix of genres now tends to look into being more techno hardcore and gabba-ish sort of sounds. Players will still have a selection of J-Pop songs but not in the number that Happy Sky or Gold offered. Although this may dissappoint some players, I personally feel good about it.

Since this is beatmania, there is no lack of obscure or even goofy sounding songs as well. Take Do It!!! for example. As the name suggests, it's about a track full of samples that encourage you to... "Do it!" and has a very minimalistic approach in doing it (pun intended).

Equally interesting (if not a bit obscure again) is the transformation of the Extra Stage mechanism of standard (arcade) mode into a series of "Boss" songs encounters. This sounds like the Cardinal Gate system used in IIDX DistorteD but this time it becomes even more literal. The videos used in each of the so-called Military Splash songs are of actual boss type characters (scorpion, humanoid, eagle etc) that move around the video screen, prompting you to shoot at them. Shoot you say? Yes, the player actually shoots the bosses by making the correct button presses. This makes for a refreshingly original experience that may only wear out quickly for hardcore players who focus on playing only the most challenging songs (and all military splash songs are very challenging).

That said, I'm really looking forward to this release, because there is a number of songs I've really fallen in love with and accompany me in my trips round the Athens metro. Those are Anisakis, Sat Final, 2 Tribe 4 K, Avant Guerre, Time to Air, Icarus and more.