beatmania IIDX 16 Empress + Premium Best

For the price, you get nearly 200 songs! With exclusive charts, customizable skins. A must buy!

I bought Beatmania USA version and was it horrid! Since I had the special controller to play Beatmania, I came here, ordered a PS2 and Beatmania 16 and I loved it. I am still pretty bad at the game because I am learning it, but all the music is freaking amazing!! All the game modes are there unlike the USA version. You can do beginner, standard (like the arcade), freeplay (play until you are done and no Game Over screens), expert mode (haven't tried it yet, I'm not that good), and can have tons of options. Also, you can play this game on 5 key or 7 key at any time.

This game comes with 2 game discs because there is so much music. You have IIDX 16 music and the "best" music of the series. The nice thing is that they both use the same save file which is cool.

This game got me into a new genre of music I have never heard before called GABBA. It is definitely different and is the reason why I ordered this game's soundtrack. For those who have played Touhou before, I was shocked that a few Touhou songs were in this game like SigSig and a song from DJ Technorch who is an amazing DJ. There are some favorites from DDR on this game too like Xepher (slightly extended version), Holic, Stoic, and Sync.

The bottom line is that if you have a Japanese PS2 and like music games, this is definitely one to own! If you have trouble getting the controller, order the USA Beatmania because you get the controller with it, sell the game and come here to order Beatmania IIDX 16 Empress + Premium Best. Beatmania IIDX Red looks good too.

I played the original 5-key mixes like crazy back in grad school, but due to wrist problems had to shelve it for a while. Recently I got the Beatmania bug again and decided to up the ante with the most recent IIDX I could get my hands on, and this is quite worth it. There's an amazing amount of music, mostly available in "free" mode (so no need to tediously unlock it in arcade mode), and the second disc contains a best-of collection of all the IIDX collections I've been missing out on for all these years! Even if it's a long time before Konami finally releases another CS IIDX, this will keep me satisfied for a long time.

This is my first foray back into beatmania since beatmania 5-key / hip-hop mania. The track selection (198 tracks) is impressive, and the difficulty transition from the basic tracks through to the hard stuff is very smooth (if not exponential ;). At the current rate I'll get another year out of this game!

I love it. It has a beginner mode and a tutorial (but its in Japanese)

My only problem is there are no song previews.