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E-AMUSEMENT
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- The correct title of this article is e-AMUSEMENT. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
e-AMUSEMENT is an online service offered by arcade game producer Konami to enable certain games to access special unlocked content, as well as providing live Internet Ranking. It is used primarily by the music games Beatmania IIDX and Pop'n Music. Currently, e-AMUSEMENT will only work in Japan and several Asian cities, as the arcade needs a subscription with Konami to activate it.
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Before 2006, every game using the e-AMUSEMENT system used its own magnetic "Entry Cards" to save data. Five cards with different designs were usually produced for each game. These were sold from an automatic dispenser, and a random card was dispensed each time. Other arcades allowed players to choose a specific design, or buy all five together. Even so, only one card could be used at any one time, as each card could hold data for only one player.
Konami also released "special" cards from time to time, usually inside the box of a home version game. For example, the home release of Beatmania IIDX 10th Style contained a special, limited edition Entry Card for the arcade version of Beatmania IIDX 12: Happy Sky. These limited edition Entry Cards would sometimes offer new features for the players who used them, such as unlocking secret songs.
In 2006, Konami replaced the old Entry Card system with the "e-AMUSEMENT Pass", a contactless smartcard. Konami has since upgraded all e-AMUSEMENT arcade games to use this pass. The player now only needs one such card to store data for all e-AMUSEMENT games. Additionally, the card is protected by a PIN, which is required to be inputted into the arcade game before it will start. The e-AMUSEMENT Pass can also be linked to a mobile phone "Konami NetDX" account, allowing players to access their scores and other data on their mobile phone. Recently, players have also been able to customise the arcade games to their liking, using their mobile phone.
Beatmania IIDX is one of the prominent games using the e-AMUSEMENT service. It allows players to register scores and records, use a live Internet ranking system, and unlock new songs.
When registering an e-AMUSEMENT Pass for the first time with a Beatmania IIDX machine, the player is issued a "IIDX ID". The IIDX ID can be used to select other players as rivals and track your progress compared to them.
Users subscribed to the Konami NetDX service can also customise the game, by changing the graphics, system music, displayed categories and combo counter.
Beatmania IIDX 9th Style was the first version to use e-AMUSEMENT, and is the only version which allows use of the card readers without a live network connection. All subsequent versions require a direct connection to Konami's e-AMUSEMENT service for the card readers to function. Various attempts have been made to overcome this (mostly by US arcades), but so far no attempt has been successful, and card readers continue to be useless outside of Japan.
Beatmania IIDX 13: DistorteD was the first version to use the new "e-AMUSEMENT Pass", previous versions used the Entry Card system.
Pop'n Music uses e-AMUSEMENT extensively throughout the recent releases. Since the release of Pop'n Music 9, unlocks have been exclusively remained available to arcades which subscribe to the e-AMUSEMENT service. It allows players to save scores, unlock new modifiers, songs, and characters, all varying from one card to another.
Pop'n Music 14 (Fever) was the first version to use the new "e-AMUSEMENT Pass", previous versions used the Entry Card system.
GuitarFreaks and DrumMania also use e-AMUSEMENT in a similar way to Beatmania IIDX. In GuitarFreaks and DrumMania, users can select an avatar to represent them during the bonus game presented at the end of each game. This bonus game is used to unlock new content.
GuitarFreaks and DrumMania V3 were the first versions to use the new "e-AMUSEMENT Pass", previous versions used the Entry Card system.
DDR SuperNOVA is the first ever DDR title to have e-AMUSEMENT support.
E-Amusement is used for a Rival system and for automatic uploading of scores to Internet Ranking. Although e-Amusement will still only be for Japanese players, you can still manually use the password system anywhere in the world, so the US and Europe aren't missing the password system.
The boss songs Fascination MAXX, Fascination ~eternal love mix~, Healing-D-Vision and CHAOS were unlocked to machines with access to E-Amusement. This means these songs are unavailable to American and European machines other than the Extra/One More Extra Stages. The song Beautiful Life by ARIA and the Nonstop course Back Dancers were also E-Amusement exclusives, only appearing from September to October to promote the release of the film Back Dancers.