Drummania

Drummania is a video game created by Konami as part of the Bemani series. The player uses a simulated drum controller to play the notes of a chosen song's drum part as they are displayed on the screen. The game's music consists largely of rock and roll and J-Pop, though other types are used occasionally as well.

Since another company holds the patent in the USA for "Drum simulation games", Konami is unlikely to be able to produce an American version of the game for a long time.

Controller

Drummania, as the name suggests, is played using a controller designed to imitate a drum set. Five pads are arrayed from left to right for the hi-hat, snare drum, high tom, low tom and cymbal. There is also a foot pedal for the bass drum near the snare and the high tom. During play, the player depresses the pads and stomps the pedal.

More recent releases of Drummania include a floor tom and hi-hat pedal.

To the right of these pads, there are three buttons, Left, Start and Right, which are used to select and decide in the selection screens. In those cases, the Left button is assigned to the snare drum pad, Right to the low tom, and Start to the cymbal.

Gameplay

The screen setup is simple. Left side, a vertical note scrolls is displayed. Colorful animations for each song are displayed in right side of the screen. Each note scroll consists of 6 or 7 columns: one each for the Hi-hat, Snare-drum, Bass-drum, High-tom, Low-tom and Cymbal, plus the Floor-tom on later versions. 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 stomp the pedal when the note bars reach the yellow picking 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 Groove Gauge, while correct play will replenish it. If the Groove Gauge is emptied completely, the game ends. Players will be able to play anywhere from one 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, Guitar Freaks. This allows up to 3 players to get together for a virtual jam session. When set up correctly, the music will play from both games, and the players' guitar and drum sounds will be relayed between the two games as well. This is known for being quite loud and extravagant at times.

Konami's numbering scheme for the Guitar Freaks and Drummania series is such that the current release of Drummania is numbered one less than the current release of Guitar Freaks. For example, as of this writing, Guitar Freaks 11th Mix can be linked with Drummania 10th Mix, as those two are the most recent pair.

Super Session

Seen only in two releases each of Guitar Freaks and Drummania, Super Session (or Multi Session) allowed the games to be linked up with Keyboardmania 3rd Mix as well. In addition to having three players controller the guitars and drums, two more could be added playing along on keyboards. However, when linked with Keyboardmania, only about a dozen songs are available to play. Keyboardmania 3rd Mix can be linked with Guitar Freaks 5th Mix and Drummania 4th Mix, or Guitar Freaks 6th Mix and Drummania 5th Mix.

Availability

Drummania is currently only developed and released in dedicated arcade cabinets. Some versions of the game have also been localized and released for Korea and other Asian countries. Three home versions were released for the PlayStation 2 game consoles from Sony, though the home line was ended at 3th Mix because of unimpressive sales.

Drummania simulators

The most well known simulator for Drummania is called DTXMania. It also supports Guitar Freaks. It can be controlled using the computer keyboard, any USB device that can act as a joystick, or any MIDI instrument such as a MIDI keyboard or professional quality electronic drumkit. It was written by a Japanese team so little English documentation is availible outside of forums such as .