Hiphopmania

To do: Add the hiphopmania title screen and develop further on the regional differences should those versions surface

hiphopmania beatmania 2ndMIX is the second in Konami's series of 5-key music games, and the first to be released outside of Japan.

Unused Graphics#

Stored at offset 0x28000 of the third graphics ROMs (853jaa07.22d and 853jaa08.23d), alongside some of the gameplay HUD graphics, are squares. These were part of an audio visualizer graphic which was seen in an early mockup screenshot of the original beatmania.

Song Selection#

A hidden debug feature allows the player to freely select a song by holding down the Test button and pressing a combination of keys at the same time in the song selection screen. It should be noted that this doesn't work while Event Mode is turned on.

List of Combinations#

Game ID#

At the beginning of the game's HDD data, a string containing the game's ID and version can be found. This string is also present at offset 0x22A56 of the program data (853jaa01.6a/853jaa02.8a in ver.JA-A, and 853jab01.6a/853jab02.8a in ver.JA-B).

 GQ753   BEAT MANIA    VER 1.10 

Regional Differences#

After its initial Japanese release, beatmania 2ndMIX was released in the United States and Europe under the name hiphopmania, and in Korea under the name beatstage. While these localizations are currently not preserved, the latter is known to have differences:

• The song tokai is missing.
• A background animation in the song Salamander Beat Crush mix, which depicts the Rising Sun flag, was removed.

References#