You've probably at least heard of beatmania IIDX. You might not know there was also a beatmania III, and at one point plans for a non-DX beatmania II.
You'd expect beatmania IIDX to be an evolution of beatmania, and beatmania III to be an evolution of IIDX - but you'd be wrong. Kind of. beatmania IIDX releases were separate from the latest beatmania release, not sharing any theming or songs. IIDX also added 16:9 rear-projection displays (in 1999!), more powerful hardware based on the PlayStation for full motion video and additional audio effects, and two extra keys on the controls. beatmania IIDX swapped the player 1 turntable to the other side of the keys, but beatmania III kept the original layout of beatmania. beatmania completeMIX2 and later had a modifier named BM-II DOUBLE/IIDX DOUBLE/CENTER DOUBLE that allowed using the player 2 keys with the player 1 turntable to recreate the IIDX player 1 layout.
beatmania III cabinets had a foot pedal, many more sound effectors than IIDX releases of the time, and even a floppy disk drive to save your scores to! However, beatmania III sacrificed the 16:9 displays and two extra keys of II DX for a closer resemblance to beatmania. Every beatmania III release (besides the original beatmania III) shipped alongside a sibling beatmania game: beatmania CORE REMIX/beatmania III APPEND CORE REMIX, beatmania 7thMIX keepin' evolution/beatmania III APPEND 7thMIX keepin' evolution, beatmania THE FINAL/beatmania III THE FINAL, etc.
All three beatmania series were recieving new entries at the same time. beatmania III launched shortly after IIDX 3rd style, and it continued to get new releases alongside beatmania until July 2002's beatmania THE FINAL and August's beatmania III THE FINAL. Shockingly, these were THE FINAL games in the beatmania and beatmania III series. This was situated perfectly between IIDX 7th style in March and IIDX 8th style in September.
beatmania and beatmania III used 2D sprite-based animations for the most part, with III capable of limited fullscreen full motion video. IIDX displayed full-length full motion video for every track, although some songs displayed generic videos instead of handcrafted song-specific ones.
So what's so DX about beatmania IIDX? The title screen says "The next generation beatmania deluxe version", so DX must stand for deluxe. There's an extremely rare Korean release of the cancelled beatmania II called beatstage II 2nd style, and it suspiciously lacks some flourishes of IIDX - a smaller (but still 16:9) CRT instead of a larger rear-projection display, no bass shaker, weaker speakers, and a smaller footprint. Most notably to my untrained eyes, the turntable sits very close to the keys. Its title screen tagline also reads "the next generation beatstage standard version". Some of these cabs seem to have been upgraded to IIDX Lincle and Rootage (why those two? more on that later), suggesting they're similar to other IIDX cabs of the era internally. ... but my heart cries out, for the original beatstage II 2nd style ROM is undumped and they've most certainly thrown it out. :(
beatmania had plenty of home ports on the PlayStation, and IIDX followed suit on the PlayStation 2. beatmania III unfortunately never recieved any, although every PS1 and PS2 turntable has a foot pedal port. You could plug a drummania foot pedal into the port and beatmania will recognize it as an additional scratch input.
Home ports tended to be significantly delayed compared to their arcade releases. beatmania ClubMIX (Arcade) released March 2000 and beatmania APPEND ClubMIX released December 2000, for example. The gap lengthened as time went on - beatmania 6thMIX + CORE REMIX was a port of November 2000's beatmania CORE REMIX and July 2001's beatmania 6thMIX THE UK UNDERGROUND MUSIC, released January 2002 (the same day as beatmania 7thMIX keepin' evolution in arcades, and just two months before IIDX 7th style on PS2!). Later IIDX releases had it especially rough, with situations like 10th style PS2 (November 2005) having more granular speed mods from IIDX 12 HAPPY SKY (July 2005) and IIDX 11 IIDX RED PS2 (May 2006) having HIDDEN+ and SUDDEN+ modifiers from IIDX 13 DistorteD (August 2006).
Later beatmania entries never got the chance to get home ports either, the last PlayStation beatmania game was beatmania 6thMIX + CORE REMIX (beatmania (2006) is not a real game.). To this day, beatmania 7thMIX keepin' evolution and beatmania THE FINAL can only be played on real hardware or by emulating the arcade data in MAME.
IIDX fell victim to this as well for a time. After beatmania IIDX 16 EMPRESS + PREMUIM BEST in 2009, there was never another home console game in any of the three beatmania series. IIDX INFINITAS was launched in 2015 and relaunched in 2020 as an always-online subscription-based PC game, but it can only be purchased and played by those living in Japan. If you live in the West, your only official options are to journey to your nearest Round 1 (which for many is not very near...) or to import an older IIDX game for PS2. Of course, there are also illegitimate options such as cracked arcade data or ripped songs in clone engines like Lunatic Rave 2...
INFINITAS is not the only IIDX release to require a constant internet connection. Since IIDX 20 tricoro (2012), cabinets use the "eAMUSEMENT Participation" system - if they cannot connect to the eAMUSEMENT network, the game will not start. eAMUSEMENT support for tricoro ended on December 27th, 2013 - leaving every tricoro cabinet unplayable without the purchase of a IIDX 21 SPADA upgrade kit or downgrading them back to IIDX 19 Lincle (if you even still had that hardware laying around...). Some arcades tended to simply trash the entire cabinet when the games became unplayable... Konami has started selling an offline kit for IIDX cabinets, but it's based on IIDX 26 Rootage (2018) - perfectly playable, but I'm sure it will show its age in time. Notably, Rootage did not run on the Lightning Model cabinets introduced in 2019...
The beatmania releases for the original PlayStation used a system of KEY DISC and APPEND DISC games. Only KEY DISC games can be directly booted by simply placing them in the system and turning the power on, APPEND DISC games must instead be swapped to after selecting "Disc Change" in a supported KEY DISC. The original release of beatmania for PlayStation included both a 2ndMIX Arcade KEY DISC and a YebisuMIX APPEND DISC. This APPEND DISC system was also used for GUITARFREAKS 2ndMIX APPEND as well as home ports of pop'n music 3 and 4. Dance Dance Revolution had APPEND DISCS, but only for 2ndReMIX APPEND CLUB VERSiON vol.1 and 2. DDR was also unique in that you could disc change to past KEY DISC games, and they'd even be playable in the KEY DISC's interface! The only beatmania KEY DISC that could be disc changed to was beatmania 2ndMIX Arcade, all others give an incorrect disc error.
To play any of the 7 released APPEND DISCS, you would need one of the 5 following KEY DISCS:
The original beatmania release for PS1 could store both the 2ndMIX Arcade disc and included APPEND YebisuMIX in the same memory card block. However, only one APPEND disc can take that slot, which means none of the following games can be saved on the same memory card...
That's 8 memory cards you'd need to save all your beatmania discs! ... although to be fair, 3rdMIX mini was a demo disc, so you'd realistically only need 7 - but that's still 7 memory cards! And they did this just so the discs wouldn't take up one block on the memory card...
Bonus Edit is a secret mode with exclusive songs accessed by disc swapping from the original beatmania 2ndMIX disc to 3rdMIX or GOTTAMIX and then the target APPEND disc with a Bonus Edit mode. Bonus Edits appear to run off the 2ndMIX (or YebisuMIX, I suppose) engine and interface rather than the newer engine that powers that disc's main mode.
Why do you need to start with 2ndMIX? If you use any other KEY DISC, the disc change button is just completely gone after the first disc swap. This is possibly more baffling than anything else I've mentioned on this page.
PlayStation beatmania turntables can be used in GuitarFreaks as an officially supported input method.
Salamander Beat Crush mix ~CRASH MIX~ is supposed to sound like that.
beatmania (2006) does not exist.