DrumMania XG

DrumMania XG
Developer(s)	Bemani
Publisher(s)	Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc.
Platform(s)	Arcade
Release date(s)	2010
Genre(s)	Music
Mode(s)	Single player (Can also have 1 or 2 more players but other players must be connected to GuitarFreaks XG and the machines must be linked.)
Arcade system	Windows XP-based
Display	Raster, standard resolution, horizontal

DrumMania XG (ドラムマニア^?) (abbreviated DMXG) is a music video game series produced by Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc., where colored notes travel down the screen which correspond with color coded parts of an electronic drum set. The player must hit the drum parts when the notes reach the bottom of the screen in order to fill in missing drum parts from a song.

Controller

DrumMania XG is played using a controller designed to imitate a drum set. Upgraded from the old set -which consists of hi-hat, snare drum, bass drum, high tom, low tom and cymbal, a second bass pedal, a floor tom and a left cymbal are added, resembling a professional drum set.

The pads are actually a modified version of the DTXPRESS electronic drum kit made by Yamaha Corporation which is available in almost any musical chain store.

To the right of these pads, there are six buttons, Up, Down, Left, Right, Start and Help which are used to select, decide or request for help in the selection screens. In those cases, the Left button is assigned to the snare drum pad, Right to the floor tom, and Start to the left cymbal.

Gameplay

The screen setup is simple. On the left side, notes scroll vertically downwards and a short video clip for each song is displayed in the right side of the screen/the back of the note chart. Individual notes are represented by small colored bars that scroll downward in the columns. To play the correct note, the player must hit one or two of these pads and/or step the pedals when the note bars reach the yellow line.

The player's accuracy is judged for each note played, and while the individual note judgments have changed throughout the series, the current system uses Perfect, Great, Good, Poor, and Miss to evaluate performance of each note. Ratings of Poor or Miss will deplete the player's "Excite Gauge", while accurate play will replenish it.

If the Excite Gauge is emptied completely, the game ends. Players will be able to play anywhere from three to five songs depending on the game's configuration, with the potential to earn one or two additional stages in certain versions of the game if performance is good enough.

At the completion of a song, players are given a letter rank for their performance which can range anywhere from E to A, as well as S and SS depending on how well the song was played, and how the particular release of the game being played computes ranks.

Session Linking

One of the major selling points of DrumMania is its ability to be linked to another of Konami's Bemani games, GuitarFreaksXG. This allows up to 3 players to play together, the music will play from both games, and the players' guitar and drum sounds will be relayed between the two games as well.

Hardware

DrumMania XG runs on Windows XP Embedded based hardware (which has also been adopted by other Konami arcade games).

List of DrumMania games

Main article: List of GuitarFreaks & DrumMania games

e-Amusement

Main article: e-Amusement

Soundtrack

Main article: List of GuitarFreaks & DrumMania songs

See also

• Konami
• List of Bemani musicians
• Rock Revolution
• Yamaha Corporation
• List of GuitarFreaks & DrumMania songs

References

External links

• Konami Digital Entertainment Limited (Hong Kong)
• GuitarFreaks & DrumMania OFFICIAL SITE MAIN TERMINAL GATEWAY (Japanese)
• e-AMUSEMENT PASS (Japanese)

Simulators

• DTXMania, a popular simulator for DM/GF. (Japanese)
• DigiBand, another simulator for DM/GF, currently the only one available for Linux.
• Drum Trainer, a simulator that works with MIDI files.

Community

• GDAmania, a Drummania/Guitarfreaks community website.

Hardware information

• Windows XP Embedded