IndyDDR.com

Ok, I have a question for all you seasoned Beatmania players... It's obvious from playing a little bit that the timing window for Beatmania is TINY. The Perfects seem about equivalent to DDR Marvelous. So since I'm used to Guitar Hero right now (no grading for notes, just pass/fail, so you can be sloppy as hell), I've got to get used to it.

But either the timing windows are different for different songs, or the timings are just off for some songs. Some songs I can do quite well on, but there are many songs that I just Great Attack like crazy, or even Good attack. Am I just sloppy, or are some songs off beat?

(This is Beatmania US BTW)

From what I've been told, beatmania is like pop'n music in that each song gets to specify its own timing windows. Of course, each song also gets synced individually as well, which can lead to some songs being almost impossibly hard to time (e-motion...) if they're both synced incorrectly and have small grading windows. IIDX seems more consistent from song to song in terms of timing windows (but not sync) than pop'n music does. For some real pain, go play Votum Stellarum (Anthem Trance) on pnm - it still has the IIDX timing windows.

In general, though, a IIDX perfect/just great/pgreat is a little smaller than DDR marvelous (a progressive frame or two for the window) great is between a DDR perfect and marvelous, good is about a DDR great, boo is about a pump perfect (heh), and poor is anything worse.

Thankfully for all the score trackers, the US version has the same timings as the Japanese version, but the end grading system is MUCH easier (US AAAs can easily be JP As in many cases)

Something I should also note is that the AC timings on 8th style and eariler matched the home version. However, 9th style's timing was messed up due to hardware issues which is why that particular release is never played. On 10th style and newer though they finalized the new timings to be harder than the home version, but the sync is pretty dead on.

Just be warned that Gambol 7K in the arcade is even worse than the home version of RED!

I've always really felt like I have to rush a lot when playing Beatmania. *shrug*

Something that I should mention about Beatmania US is that in the majority of songs the sync is eariler than any of the JP games that I have played. This was probably to cater to console DDR players cause unless the timing offsync is adjusted, it's early as hell to me.