Follow TV Tropes

Following

Video Game / jubeat

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jubeat.png
Online matching...

jubeat (which, for the record, is actually pronounced u-beat, not Jew-beat) is one of the newer members of the BEMANI family of Rhythm Games produced by Konami. In this game, you simply hit buttons (which are transparent and overlaid atop a monitor, it's not a touch screen as some people think) on a square 4x4 grid to a chosen song when the indicators tell you to do so. In short, it's musical Whack-A-Mole. As is the case in other Bemani games, it looks easy, but can get fairly difficult once you get up to the harder difficulties and songs.

jubeat has proven quite popular since its 2008 launch, gaining sequels and becoming a mainstay in the BEMANI lineup. There's also an iOS port, jubeat plus, which had been supported by DLC. Impressively, it's also gotten an international release as Jukebeat (which has its own DLC packs as well, but with more American music, of course). jubeat plus was later abandoned, but Konami later announced on April 1, 2021 that it would relaunch the mobile version with a major update that will switch to a free-to-play model.

    Games in the series 
Arcade versions (Non-China Asia)
  • jubeat (2008)
    • Received location tests in the US and Europe as UBeat and jukebeat, but official releases never happened.
  • jubeat ripples (2009; APPEND ver.: 2010)
  • jubeat knit (2010; APPEND ver.: 2011)
  • jubeat copious (2011; APPEND ver.: 2012)
  • jubeat saucer (2012)
    • Notoriously, unlike every other BEMANI game, saucer deleted songs through online updates, though it occasionally brought back deleted songs. As of February 1, 2014, most previously-deleted songs were restorednote .
    • jubeat saucer fulfill (2014)
      • Does not have the "song swap" system of saucer.
      • First jubeat game with an extra stage system.
      • Due to tax hikes in Japan, the cost for a normal credit of fulfill as of April 2014 was raised from 100 to 120 yen, which can only be done by using Konami's PASELI currency system. Players who use 100-yen coins can still enjoy all songs and charts, but won't get access to special features that boost unlock progress and provide easier access to extra stages.
  • jubeat prop (2015)
    • Introduces hold notes.
  • jubeat Qubell (2016)
  • jubeat clan (2017)
  • jubeat festo (2018)
    • Expands the rating scale, specifically on 9s and 10s, to introduce decimal points.
  • jubeat Ave. (2022) — current version
  • jubeat (2020) — cancelled
    • Introduces a redesigned cabinet that runs at 60FPS, with larger buttons and built-in headphone jacks.
    • Music videos can now be played in-game.
    • First game in the series since the original to not include a unique subtitle.

Arcade versions (China)

  • 乐动魔方 / jubeat (2010)
  • 乐动魔方 2代 / jubeat 2 (2011)
  • 乐动魔方 全国对战版 / jubeat National Versus Version (2012)

Gambling versions

  • Beat Square (2016)

Consumer versions

  • jubeat plus (iOS (Japan), 2010; Xperia (Japan), 2012)
  • jukebeat (iOS (International), 2011)
    • Trails the Japanese versions in updates, and features different licensed songs.

Single person play.

First tune. Ready...GO.

  • Aborted Arc: The "Smith no kimagure gentle" event in prop looked to be a large crossover with other arcade games, but it only ever introduced two new songs (one with SOUND VOLTEX and another with Gitadora) before the event went dormant. It quietly ended about a year later in Qubell, with nothing else to show for it.
  • all lowercase letters: All of the titles in the series (except jubeat Qubell and jubeat Ave.), not counting the "APPEND" versions.
  • Allegedly Free Game: jubeat plus is "free" insofar that the base game is free to download...and comes with only three songs. The rest have to be purchased through DLC packs.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • Following a mid-December patch to Qubell, if a Key Qube (stage objective) required the clearing of a particular song or chart, accessing the Key Qube list from the "Concierge" and selecting any such Qube would immediately highlight the required song or chart for selection. This greatly eased finding the particular song or chart.
    • Unlocking older songs became significantly easier in clan. First, online matching now matches you with players playing songs with similar song lengths, instead of the exact same song. With the Song Conduction mechanic retained from Qubell, if any of them are playing an older song you don't have unlocked, you get that song unlocked too. Secondly, the version's unlock tree has a section dedicated to unlocking older songs, where up to nine (11 in festo) random locked songs from previous versions will be made available to unlock with relatively limited grinding - and you can choose which ones to unlock first.
    • After a late March patch to clan, the exchange rate for producing higher grade "omiyage" was dramatically reduced, with the requirements to produce silver, gold and rainbow grade "omiyage" cut to half, one-fifth and one-tenth their previous exchange rates respectively. Furthermore, lower grade multi-coloured "omiyage" could now be exchanged for higher grade multi-coloured "omiyage".
  • April Fools' Day:
    • On April 1st, 2013, the jubeat e-amusement website was redecorated to promote "Wow Wow VENUS", with the unlock condition for the song requiring tons of Level Grinding, and reverted the day after. Subverted when the song became available for real the following day, as a simpler "Only Now" unlocknote .
    • For 2018, the official Twitter account "announced" a pocket LCD version of jubeat.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing:
    • Despite being very lighthearted and happy songs, "concon" and "yellow head joe" are definitely not for beginner players, even on the Basic difficulty level.
    • Qubell presents "負けないよ… -Runners High-", a licensed song. Normally, licensed songs that aren't TouhouProject remixes or crossovers from non-Bemani music game franchises aren't generally that hard for their level, even if they're level 10. This song falls into neither of these categories, but packs a level 10 Extreme chart with patterns rivaling those of top-tier level 10s.
    • The final unlock of the jubeat daikaikoten event in festo, "pedigree", is a pleasant, nostalgic song by the same artist as "concon" and "yellow head joe"... packing an Extreme chart harder than both those songs (rated 10.7). To make things worse, the Advanced chart, ostensibly rated at 9.6, has a final 30 seconds worthy of a low-mid level 10 chart rating, and the Basic chart, rated at 6, contains a tricky gimmick hold sequence at the end that spells out the letters in "jubeat".
    • "Beyond the BLUE", a new SDVX crossover. A slow 132 BPM song with vocals, with the only bit that sounds like a boss song being a brief jazzy interlude. The EXT chart, however, is an extremely technical hold-centric chart rated at 10.4 and generally agreed to be harder than that rating suggests.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory:
    • Box Mode, which gives you the same number of songs as the standard mode, but usually costs more credits or PASELI to play and pays out three times as many Tune Points.
    • In jubeat Qubell, when digging Garnet cubes to unlock old songs, you could use the "dig dig radar" once every day to specify an older song you want to unlock in the course of your digging. Use of this feature requires a paid e-amusement subscription.
  • Do Well, But Not Perfect: Discouraged by the pass/fail system in this game; see Life Meter below.
  • Earn Your Fun:
    • Level Grinding is forced to unlock most of any particular version's new Konami original songs. This has got to the point where in newer versions, the last few unlocks of most events are massive credit sinks requiring dozens of games, even hundreds of games at times, to grind through.
    • Trying to unlock specific older non-default songs, especially those not within the "unlock tree" of that particular version (if it has old songs), is often exponentially more difficult - either you grind until the game eventually gives you one, find someone who has the song to Local Match with you and play it together, or you'll have to be at the mercy of Matching Select and pray that the game matches with someone who has a song you're looking for (and not another beginner playing another licensed song). The difficulty in unlocking old songs was partially alleviated since clan through the expanded Matching Select system (for getting old songs through Song Conduction) and a shop for directly unlocking old songs, but there is still a substantial luck and grinding element in both.note  Oh, and did we mention that about half the entire game's tracklist consists of such locked old songs?
    • In earlier versions and in select events of jubeat Qubell, one even had to grind for markers (the note animations contained within the squares), and background colors. Some unlock requirements in earlier versions, however, were much more difficult, requiring close to perfect scores on Level 10 songs - only the best of the best players could tackle these challenges!
    • Untwisted with the release of the older FLOOR INFECTION songs into the festo old song shop. After a long period of exclusivity, it seems like there was no more need to go to the SOUND VOLTEX machine to play 8 games within a specific period just to unlock 3 of these songs... except for the fact that each song now costs 600 or 800 "emo" to unlock. To put that in perspective, in every game, you earn a minimum of 15 "emo", maybe 40+ at best. To make things worse, since the shop only replaces what's available in a slot when you buy or unlock the song, this can clog up a slot in the shop and make it harder to unlock other old songs. Also, said FLOOR INFECTION editions have apparently been retired, so this is the only way to get the songs if you did not unlock them earlier!
  • Easy-Mode Mockery: In saucer fulfill, the only modes you can play with coins (rather than PASELI) under default price settings are LIGHT modes, which do not let you play Extreme charts.
  • Freemium: The iOS and Android versions themselves are free, but come with only 3 songs. You have to pay for song packs to get more songs.
  • Game-Breaking Bug:
    • To make a complicated story short, the Extreme chart for the GITADORA version of "Elemental Creation" has 1,031 notes, but the end-of-stage bonus at the time was done in a way that cannot handle more than 1,024 notes, so getting the full 100,000 bonus required a near-perfect performance. This was later fixed.
    • The Chinese jubeat versions use proprietary read-writable cards. If you use a card with National Versus data on it on jubeat 2, the machine will brick the card.
  • Gimmick Level:
    • "STELLAR WIND" on Extreme difficulty is the Advanced chart, turned 90 degrees and one less note. The kicker is that the Advanced chart is well-designed for dividing up notes between the left and right hands, but turning the chart completely messes with that.
    • "Sky High" has an Advanced chart that is designed to mimic the note patterns of its BeatStream BEAST chart within the constraints of Jubeat.
  • Harder Than Hard: The difficulty levels are labeled as Basic, Advanced, and then Extreme.
  • Hope Spot: Can be the result of the end-of-stage bonus. You finish the song with somewhere around 600,000-699,999 points, and the end-of-stage bonus (if any; it's possible to have no bonus at all) comes up just short of 700,000, resulting in stage failure.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: "[E]". In Japanese, the word for brackets is "kakko", so the song is pronounced "kakko-E". As in "kakkoii", which means "cool", hence the "kakkoii" sample heard throughout the song.
  • Instant-Win Condition: Sort of. Once you pass 700,000 points during the song, you're guaranteed to clear it, even if you decide to goof off or idle for the remainder of the song.
  • Joke Level: "Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen", in addition to its catchy memetic properties, is also the shortest song in jubeat, at only 45 seconds.
  • Later-Installment Weirdness:
    • Online matching used to match you up with other players playing the same song, which is to be expected...but then jubeat clan changes matching so that the people you match with may not be playing the same song.
    • jubeat festo finally addresses the 10-year-old complaint of "level 9 and 10 charts have really wide variations in actual difficulty" by adding decimal points to charts rated 9 and 10.
    • Had the 2020 jubeat game been actually released, it would have introduced 60 frames per second as opposed to the traditional 30.
  • Life Meter: To clear a song, you simply need 700,000 points out of 1 million. This averts the score-pass/fail dissonance seen in other Bemani games, though it does mean that an all-Good run (which would give you a score of 460K) will result in stage failure.
    "Full combo! Result: FAILED."
  • Lucky Charms Title: The song titles "Love♥km", "TWINKLE♡HEART", and "TRUE♡LOVE"
  • Mercy Mode: If you're playing without a card and fail your first stage, you'll be "Saved" and allowed to advance to the next stage. In a multiplayer game, if at least one player clears the song, everyone moves to the next stage regardless of score.
    • If you failed a song with Hazard mode turned on, it will automatically be saved and allowed to advance to the next stage, regardless of the Hazard mode used, in a similar fashion of Beatmania IIDX.
  • Mission-Pack Sequel: Every jubeat game has pretty much been one so far, as with most music games. Additionally, recent versions have had "Append" updates, which (in a similar fashion to the old "Plus" versions of DDR 3rd and 4th Mix) add a fairly large pack of additional songs to the game.
    • Averted with jukebeat / jubeat plus, which simply use DLC packs.
  • Non-Indicative Difficulty: Higher level hold note charts since Qubell. Most hold note charts introduced on the release of prop were alternative "[2]" charts for certain songs, where the hold notes did create a new challenge by restricting hand movement. All but one set of "[2]" chartsnote  released since do indeed derive extra difficulty from hold notes. Some songs only have hold note charts, and all those released in prop also derived extra difficulty from hold notes. However, since the release of Qubell, there are now certain songs that only have hold note charts, but merely contain a very limited number of hold notes, placed to fill less intense segments with few, if any notes to hit while holding them down (e.g. "Angelic Jelly" on Extreme). At the same time, there are some new songs which only have hold note charts and heavily use those hold notes to restrict hand movement in certain sequences (e.g. "Invisible Border" on Extreme), While you are told whether the chart has hold notes or not, you're not told whether the chart will use hold notes sparingly or as a layer of significant extra difficulty.
  • Number of the Beast: Bad Apple!! in Level 8 Extreme has 666 notes.
  • One-Steve Limit:
    • Averted on saucer by the presence of "Vermilion", a new remo-con song, which is not to be confused with "Vermillion" (with two L's), the closing theme of beatmania IIDX 17. Oddly enough, it was added as a crossover on IIDX 24.
    • An even bigger aversion arrived on clan with "Paranoia" (with an upper case "P"), a new Touhou remix not to be confused with "paranoia" (with a lower case "P"), a licensed Vocaloid song that arrived with Qubell.
  • Play Every Day:
    • clan introduced a "monthly daily bonus" system, where you were rewarded with high-grade "omiyage" (the version's unlock currency) for every day that you play the game in a month. Until a patch in late March 2018 that drastically cut down the requirements, these high-grade "omiyage" were nearly impossible to produce the normal way note , and were virtually essential to progressing the unlock tree. Even after that patch, they were still very useful. Some clan limited-time events also had a similar daily bonus system (on top of the standard daily bonus), sometimes with new songs as a bonus reward.
    • festo gives you 10 "emo", the new in-game currency, on your first play every day.
  • Public Domain Soundtrack: One new song from each new installment has always been an in-house arrangement of a classical piece; 天国と地獄, ウィリアム・テル序曲, Swan Lake, トルコ行進曲, Diavolo and 運命.
  • Random Drop:
    • jubeat prop's Weekly Bonus Music system worked like this. By playing the game multiple times to fill up the Bonus Tune gauge, one will be able to play an extra song (Bonus Tune) after the Final Tune. On the Bonus Tune song selection screen, a random song that hasn't been unlocked before will be selectable, and playing it will permanently unlock the song.
    • Qubell ups the randomness with its dig dig Qubell unlock system. Choosing to dig Garnet cubes will present you with a stack of 125 cubes to dig through. Five randomly positioned cubes in the pile will unlock a random old song each, and you won't know which cubes unlock songs until you hit them!
    • "Omiyage", the in-game currency of clan, were random drops too. For a particular "omiyage" to drop, you need to match with someone from the corresponding city. However, whether it actually drops (and what grade it is) is down to luck. Playing more increased your "omiyage level" and improve the odds of "omiyage" dropping, as well as the chances of the "omiyage" being higher grade, with one randomly chosen song every day increasing the level significantly faster.
  • Recycled Title: The 2020 jubeat game is just called jubeat, although the official logo also has the title in katakana below the title in Roman characters, whereas the original 2008 version's logo doesn't.
  • Required Spinoff Crossover: As has been a tradition, many Bemani songs have crossed in and out of jubeat. It also got linking events with the recent beatmania games for cross-unlocking action!
    • 凛として咲く花の如く (Nadeshiko Rock) and SigSig, famous for being on a very large amount of Bemani titles, were introduced to Jubeat in the very first installment.
    • In a notable inversion, "FLOWER" originated as a mutual song shared between jubeat knit APPEND and REFLEC BEAT, but has since been transplanted to older Bemani games; beatmania IIDX, pop'n music, DanceDanceRevolution, and even SOUND VOLTEX BOOTH and GuitarFreaks & DrumMania as new arrangements.
    • ripples also had High and Mighty Color's cover of Hot Limit; although its a different cover, you probably remember a more infamous version which appeared on DDR 5th Mix
    • Lo and behold, V has finally arrived.
    • The recent Dig Rush Qube of Qubell crosses over a handful of songs from DDR, GITADORA and etc.
  • Scoring Points: Each chart has a maximum score of 1 million points, with 700,000 being the requirement to clear the song:
    • Each note being worth a fixed amount that is inversely proportional to the number of notes in the chart; getting a Perfect yields the full note value, getting a Good yields a small fraction of it, and any judgement below is worth none. Points from notes total up to 900,000.
    • As you play, a bonus builds up, up to a maximum of 100,000 points. Getting Perfects raises the bonus the most, and getting Goods raises it by a lower amount. Earlies, Lates, and Misses will take away from the bonus, although the bonus cannot go below 0. This means that playing well towards the end of the song is more important than playing well in earlier parts. The bonus you have so far is represented by the background; a completely black/gray background means you have no bonus, while a fully-colored background means you have the full 100,000-point bonus. If you have less than 700,000 points but more than 600,000 at the end of the song, it is possible to be pushed into passing range by the bonus points.
  • Series Mascot: The hexagon-faced gentleman "Mr. Smith" (Smith-shi) has become this as of his introduction in saucer. His likeness is used in the jubeat staff's Twitter profile pic and promotional materials, various in-game events, and generally as jubeat's "representative" character for BEMANI events involving multiple series. He even has his own theme song!
  • Socialization Bonus:
    • Through "local matching" (linked play between 2-4 machines in the same arcade), you can play songs that you haven't unlocked, but another player has.
    • If you fail a song in an online match, but at least one other player in the same match clears it, you'll be "saved" and still allowed to progress to the next song.
    • On the other extreme, if a player in an online match gets a Full Combo or Excellent, all other players will receive a significant boost to their Bonus Tune points, making it easier for them to access the Bonus Tune.
    • In some earlier versions and versions from Qubell onwards, local or online matching with a player who is playing a song you haven't unlocked would unlock them for you as well. Qubell took this to the extreme with "Qubellic Prism", which was a song only unlockable through matching with someone who has the song.note  Versions from Qubell onwards also allows you to obtain "title parts" (and very rarely, full "titles") in this manner.
    • Selecting "Matching Select" (instead of an actual song) will cause the game to attempt to match you into an online multiplayer session, including those where the song chosen is not unlocked for the player. Even if no multiplayer session is found, there is a chance that the game may still pick a song that the player has not unlocked.
  • Splash Damage: On malfunctioning cabinets, hitting one panel may cause adjacent panels to set off as well. This is a very bad thing, as it can lead to unnecessary Goods or even misses.
  • Theme Naming: Several of DJ YOSHITAKA's songs are plant-named, including "ALBIDA", "JOMANDA", and "FLOWER".
  • Uncommon Time: Shining Wizard has a very inconsistent time signature. For roughly the first half of the song, it switches between 4/4 and 7/8 every measure. Then it remains at 4/4 for a few measures, before alternating between that and 6/8, and then near the end it returns to alternating between 4/4 and 7/8.
  • Viral Unlockable: Several games allow you to unlock songs from older versions simply by playing them in local or online multiplayernote  rather than through their "proper" unlock conditions. This has been used to create songs only unlockable through matching ("Qubellic Prism", "パピポペピプペパ" and "Diastrophism") and songs with extremely difficult unlock conditions, but which can be attained by the average player through matching ("Megalara Garuda", "Roll The Dice" and "1116"). However, the FLOOR INFECTION songs always avert this - the only way to unlock those crossed over after November 2018 is to play SOUND VOLTEX while the song's respective FLOOR INFECTION "edition" is open to fill up a gauge, while unlocking the old ones requires you to pray that it appears in the old song shop and have the massive amount of in-game currency just to unlock one. In a further aversion, festo also made the songs from the last two clan events exclusive to the shop, all with rather high in-game currency prices.

Result...EXCELLENT!!

Top