On the strength of “this review”:http://arstechnica.com/reviews/games/beatmania.ars, I picked up Beatmania from my next-door Best Buy during lunch. I’ve always wanted a rhythm game to master (ever since my Taiko No Tatsujin story (but that’s another story)), but never got around to acquiring one.

So anyway, my main criticism of the game is that there’s way too much temporal space between the notes. If I were programming rhythms into a game like this, I would create a steady beat with one key, then start embellishing it by gradually adding more keys, but with each new key, establish a repetitive rhythm. Like a percussion ensemble where the first player starts hitting a simple rhythm, then after a minute the second player comes in with a simple rhythm of her own that meshes with the first player’s rhythm, and so on until the whole band is playing. Likewise in the game, I would add new keys in the same way. Pretty soon someone playing the game would be pounding out an incredibly complex beat without any sort of frustrating learning curve, and the game would be much more energizing and fun. If the gamer starts missing notes, remove keys until all the notes are being hit, and then start adding keys back. Eventually, start adding in small variations between one measure and the next, or start slowly speeding up the tempo, or little-by-little transform into a different rhythm (mix into a different song). I’m all about incremental learning. On the other hand, this wouldn’t be as much of a challenge, and maybe I’m just reacting to the beginner-most levels, at the moment. We’ll see. But my idea would be fun, at least.