There's been much discussion of the death of the American arcade over the last decade.
However, the Japanese arcade giant Round 1 has run out of room to expand in their homeland
and, as such, has started making inroads into the United States.
In the last two or three years, they've opened up more than a dozen locations
in suburban malls outlying major cities,
and they've got a bunch more planned for 2017 and 2018,
in places as far afield as Salt Lake City and Peoria.
Yeah, that one's kinda weird to me too.
Round 1's entry into the US market has been a boon for fans of Japanese arcade games,
particularly rhythm games.
Most modern Japanese arcade games require a persistent internet connection back to the company's servers,
and, more importantly, a contract with the publisher.
American companies generally can't get that contract, oftentimes for licensing reasons.
However, Round 1 is a Japanese company, and they have these licensing agreements,
so they are able to bring Japanese games to the US market.
One of the largest segments of the Japanese arcade market is rhythm games.
Many arcades in Japan have an entire floor dedicated to these games.
These games enjoyed some amount of popularity in the US between about 2000 and 2008,
when imported DDR cabinets were in American arcades
and the games got frequent console releases
that could be imported and played in the US with some basic console modifications.
But after the PS2 died, the home versions stopped and the market switched largely to arcades.
With the aforementioned network limitations, the scene in the US largely died as the games became unavailable.
Activision's Guitar Hero oversaturation didn't really help matters either.
Now, with the emergence of Round 1,
we're starting to see these rhythm games regain some popularity in the US.
However, these games are still made for a Japanese market.
The interfaces commonly use a surprising amount of English, but they do still have quite a bit of Japanese.
Since Japanese writing is so different from the Latin alphabet, trying one of these games can be quite intimidating.
To make things a bit easier, I'm going to walk you through how to play crossbeats REV.,
a rhythm game available at most Round 1 locations in the US.
crossbeats REV. is a touchscreen rhythm game made by Capcom,
and it's an arcade port of an iOS game named CROSSxBEATS.
(It's not too difficult to play the iOS game in the US either, but that's a topic for a separate video.)
The core idea is that lines will appear from the edge of the screen and intersect at right angles, forming a target.
Arrows will slide along the lines towards the intersection.
When the arrows reach the intersection, you touch it. So it's basically musical Whack-a-Mole.
Unfortunately, Capcom announced an interface update while I was editing this video,
so the interface you see will almost certainly be a bit different.
Most of the information in this video should remain valid.
I'll release an update video detailing any changes once they're available.
Japanese arcade games identify you through RFID cards.
Using the card allows you to sign in and track your scores, unlocks and other customizations.
This information is stored on the server, so your profile follows you onto whatever machine you play on.
If you're going to play a game regularly, you will want to get the appropriate card,
although you might want to try the game once first to see if it's your thing.
Capcom doesn't have many arcade games of its own,
so CROSSBEATS rev. uses Sega's Aime card network.
The Aime network also has compatibility with Bandai Namco's Bana Passport card.
Bana Passport cards are available at the counter of every Round 1 location in the US,
and I believe they go for seven bucks. If you're in Japan, they're more like 300 yen.
The first time you use your card, you'll have a few things to do.
You'll enter and confirm a PIN, enter a display name, and select a prefecture.
This last part doesn't mean a lot if you're not in Japan, but there is an entry for "everywhere else". (海外)
I don't have video of this exact process. It might be a little intimidating because it's in Japanese,
but it isn't anything out of the ordinary for a registration process that you'd do in English.
The most likely point of confusion is that you have enter your PIN twice to confirm it.
After you use your card for the first time, consider registering a Sega ID on Sega's website.
This will allow you to replace your card if you lose it and still keep your scores.
Because I already have a registered card, I'm going to put my card on the reader,
let it authenticate, and it's going to give me a PIN prompt.
I'm going to enter my PIN (off camera), and then it's going to recognize who I am and take me into the game.
(Side note: this video was shot at Playland King near Kyoto Station.
I was sick, so I'm wearing a mask, which is proper etiquette in Japan.)
The first thing you'll see after logging in is your user card.
There are five pieces of information here.
First is the name entered during registration.
This can be updated on the crossbeats REV. website or through the iOS app.
Above the name is a title, and to the left is a user icon.
These can be configured within the arcade game, which I'll cover later.
My icon is one I got from visiting an arcade in Hyougo Prefecture after touring Himeji Castle.
On the right, there is a class ranking, and user rank points.
These track certain types of progress throughout the game,
and I'll explain them a little later after covering some of the other basics.
This prompt is asking me if I want to set my home arcade.
This only has a cosmetic effect, and if you're already playing at your home arcade, you won't see it.
My home arcade is back in the US, so I don't want to change it.
Up next, you will see some news screens, depending on what has happened with recent updates.
As you can see, these updates are entirely in Japanese, but it's actually not that hard to figure out from context.
This screen is telling me about an additional benefit of having an RFID card - you get one free song per month.
Not one free credit, mind you, just one free song,
and it's limited to songs on the default song list, so no unlocks, but it's still something.
This screen is detailing a limited-time event.
In April, it was the Flower Tournament, to coincide with cherry blossom season.
There are two songs to unlock in this event, along with some event-limited titles.
You might also see similar screens for other updates, such as new songs that have recently been added to the game.
Up next is mode select.
The main mode is Musicplay. You get to play three songs of your choice.
Unlike some games, you will always get to play all three songs.
I've never actually done Local Battle, but I think I saw it used once in an arcade in Tokyo.
I presume it lets you compete head-to-head with someone at the cabinet next to yours -
you both play the same songs and your scores are compared.
Note that it's disabled at this arcade because they only had one cabinet,
but most Round 1 locations in the US have two.
The last option is Challenge. This mode lets you play preset courses of four songs.
These are primarily used to determine the class ranking on your user card.
At the time of this video, I was a class III, but I've since passed the class IV course.
There are also some events that run challenge courses.
Once you select a mode, you will have a chance to cancel before you confirm your selection.
This is the play style screen. Right now, I have two options.
The one you see first is Standard. This is the basic mode, where you get three songs for 1 credit.
The one on the right is Premium.
I've never used this mode because it costs two credits instead of one, but it does confer a few benefits.
The first is the ability to retry songs up to four times.
From what I read, you get a button that you can tap twice to retry,
but you have to do it before either clearing or failing the song.
It also gives a 50% boost to REVCHIPs, which are the currency for the in-game shop.
This mode is most useful for experts trying to get Ultimate clears or full combos, which I'll explain later.
If you're a beginner, don't worry too much about this mode.
This is also where your monthly free song option will appear, to the left of Standard.
I'm just going to stick with Standard for this playthrough.
Up next is the music select screen.
This is where you choose which song you want to play,
and there's quite a bit going on here, so we'll take it piece by piece.
The top left tells you which song of your three you are currently selecting.
The player card is repeated on the top, and then in the top right corner is the timer.
If this timer expires, you will play the currently selected song with your current settings,
whether you wanted to or not.
Below that are six Difficulty tabs, representing the difficulty levels in the game.
The easiest difficulty is Easy, towards the left, and the hardest difficulty is Unlimited on the right.
There's also an All tab, which blends all the difficulties together in the same list,
so one song could appear multiple times.
The Category row allows you to limit the song list based on information about the song.
New contains songs that were recently added to the game. Pretty obvious.
License contains songs that originated outside crossbeats, such as anime theme songs.
REV. ORIGINAL contains songs that are exclusive to the crossbeats REV. arcade game.
CROSSxBEATS contains songs that originally come from the CROSSxBEATS iOS game.
Hit Chart contains songs that are the most commonly played -
although I'm not sure if this is just on the local machine or across the entire network.
Below Category is the song list. Each box represents one song.
If you're on the All difficulty tab, each box will represent one individual difficulty and one individual notechart of that song.
Each song box lists the song name and artist at the top, along with an icon on the left.
Songs that are part of the Hit Chart category will also have an indicator in the bottom left corner.
On the right is the song's BPM and Level, which is a numerical difficulty rating from 1 to 99.
In the middle is information about your previous plays of the song.
The top area displays whether you've cleared the difficulty on Survival or Ultimate, and whether you got a full combo.
Below that is your best grade and clear rate.
I'll explain all these things in detail shortly.
Below the song list are the sort options.
I usually keep this set to difficulty level because I'm primarily interested in finding songs within my skill range.
You have a few other options though:
music title, artist, BPM, clear rate, and rank point,
which is yet another way of determining your performance on a song.
At the bottom is the filter button.
Whereas Category limits which songs appear based on what the songs are,
the filter button limits which songs appear based on your previous scores and results.
Among the available filters are
full combo, no full combo,
failing a song, clearing a song,
clearing it with Survival gauge, or clearing it with Ultimate gauge.
Again, I'll explain those last two in a little bit.
Additionally, since there is an event running,
there is a banner next to the filter button that filters the list to songs that provide bonuses in the event.
Note that the first time you play, you'll only see songs up to a difficulty level of (I think) 29.
In order to earn harder songs, you'll have to prove that you're able to clear easier ones.
To unlock the 30-39 tier, you'll have to pass a song that's at least a 20,
and so on up to about level 80.
Songs harder than that are generally confined to Unlimited charts, which must be unlocked individually.
I'll explain this a bit later.
After tapping on a song, you'll see a song detail screen.
At the top, you have the song name and artist again, along with a bigger version of the picture on the left.
In the center, you can see your results from previous plays of the song.
This includes your numerical high score, grade, clear rate,
rank points, Survival or Ultimate clear, and full combo.
You will also see the total number of notes in the chart.
Below the scores, you can see the currently selected difficulty highlighted.
The other available difficulties are shown, along with the song levels.
On the bottom left is the note speed option,
which controls the amount of time between when the markers appear and when you have to hit them.
Note that this is not a multiplier - for example, +4.0 is actually double the original speed.
One thing that's counterintuitive for new players of rhythm games
is that experienced players will turn the speed up,
and you might think as a beginner, why would you want to have less time to see the notes?
The reason is that you have to play the note within a very small timing window.
In some games, this is as small as one frame, which is one 60th of a second.
Many players play best when they can react as soon as they see the note, rather than waiting for it.
You'll also notice an arrow pointing to a note speed.
The yellow and green icon is associated with student drivers in Japan, so this is a beginner's recommendation.
I tend to play a bit faster than that.
Above the note speed bar is the option button, which we'll cover in great detail in just a few seconds.
To the right of that, there are four buttons for appear, disappear, flip vertical and flip horizontal.
We'll cover those when we cover the options screen, because they're repeated in there.
To the right of the options is the song BPM,
and a banner that indicates if you're currently on Survival or Ultimate mode.
In the bottom right, there is a giant button that you can touch to actually start playing the song,
and there's a small button in the top right to close this window and pick a different song.
Now that we've covered this screen, let's take a detailed look inside that Options screen.
The options screen has three tabs, and the first one controls the appearance of the notes.
The note speed option and recommendation are repeated at the top.
The second option on the left is touch sound effect. This controls the sounds that play when you hit a note.
There's two sounds in each set: one that plays when you hit a note well, and one that plays when you hit a note not so well.
You can also turn the sounds off entirely.
I prefer to leave them on because I like the auditory feedback telling me if I'm on beat.
The bottom left option is speed fix, and it's kind of confusing.
I mentioned that arrows will slide along lines towards a target at an intersection.
If you have speed fix on, the arrows will approach the target at a constant speed, regardless of the length of the line.
This means that some arrows might not be on the screen for very long.
If you have speed fix off, the arrows will take a constant amount of time to move from the edges to the target.
This means that they will travel at different speeds if the guidelines are different lengths.
Personally, I much prefer the arrows to move at a constant speed, so I leave Speed Fix on.
The bottom right option is Note Support, which is new to crossbeats REV SUNRISE.
It has four options, but really there's just four permutations of two different options.
Type-1 shows starbursts where notes are going to appear in the near future.
Type-2 shows a concentric circle around the target that collapses as the arrows approach,
giving you an additional timing indicator.
Type-3 shows both, and Off shows neither.
I usually leave this on Type-3. It looks like I turned it off by accident here.
I don't think they make a noticeable difference, but they don't hurt, and probably help subconsciously.
The second tab contains guideline and movie options.
The top option controls the brightness of the movie behind the notes.
I turn this all the way down so that I can focus on the notes instead of the movie.
The bottom option gives three possible appearances for the note guidelines and targets.
I leave this on Default.
There's an alternate skin named Purple, and a Classic skin from the original CROSSBEATS rev.
The middle option controls guideline transparency.
I've seen Japanese players turn down the opacity because it helps you see when multiple successive notes are using the same guidelines,
but it also makes it harder to see those guidelines in the first place.
The third tab contains a bunch of miscellaneous options.
The first one is gauge type, which controls the behavior of your life bar.
The default is normal.
In this mode, you start with a little bit of life. Your gauge fills as you do well and drains as you do poorly.
Your goal is to finish the song with at least some life visible in your life bar.
If your gauge empties during the song, your song will NOT end immediately;
you will get to finish, and if you bring your life bar back above zero, you can still clear the song.
One thing that's weird about the normal gauge in crossbeats
is that the visual range of the gauge is smaller than the actual range.
If you bottom out the visible gauge, then start doing better immediately,
life will become visible in the gauge very quickly.
If you miss a bunch and then start to recover, it will take a while to become visible again.
Passing the song is based on having at least a little life in the visible gauge.
The other two options are Survival and Ultimate.
Both of these start you with a full gauge, but mistakes remove a lot of your life,
and it's much harder to regain life by doing well.
In these modes, if your gauge empties, your song ends immediately.
Compared to other music games, Survival is not too difficult,
but Ultimate is one of the harshest gauges I've ever seen in a rhythm game.
It's difficult to the point where you can fail a song while maintaining a full combo -
a trait it shares only with the hardest levels of Elite Beat Agents.
Another thing to keep in mind is that these gauges subtract the same amount of life when you miss regardless of the number of notes in the song,
so the more notes a song has, the harder it is to clear on Survival or Ultimate.
So why would you make the game harder on yourself?
Well, bragging rights is one thing, but there is a tangible benefit.
If you clear a song on survival gauge, you get a 10% bonus to rank points,
which are the primary means of tracking your skill at the game.
If you clear a song on Ultimate, you get a 20% bonus.
Timing Adjust changes when the notes appear relative to the music, if they don't feel in sync to you.
Game Field Type allows you shrink the gameplay area down to the size of the iPad
if you're used to playing CROSSxBEATS on that device.
Appear causes the arrows that slide along the guidelines to appear about halfway down the guidelines,
rather than at the edge of the screen.
It doesn't affect the appearance of the guidelines themselves.
Disappear is the reverse - the arrows appear from the edge, but disappear about halfway down the guidelines.
Lastly, flip-vertical and flip-horizontal have pretty obvious behaviors -
they just mirror the screen in one direction or the other.
So now that you've seen all the options, let's go ahead and play this song.
First, there's a loading screen which recaps the current song number and pertinent information about the song you just picked.
You get one final chance to confirm your speed mod, or change it if you forgot to before picking the song.
There's also a tip, but it's entirely in Japanese.
Lastly, the banner indicates that this song is part of the current event.
Once the song loads, you'll see the actual gameplay screen.
The stage indicator is at the top left of the screen. To the right of that is the song name and artist.
Below that is the lifebar, and your current score is in the top right.
Your player card is also on the top right.
If you're playing on Premium, the Retry button appears below the stage indicator.
The bottom of the screen shows the difficulty, music level and current BPM.
Next to the BPM is a gauge that indicates how far through the song you are.
The bottom right corner shows your note speed and the four basic appearance modifiers.
If you touch the note speed indicator, a window opens that allows you to adjust your speed mod mid-song.
However, you cannot toggle the other appearance mods on and off in this manner.
Before the song starts, the game also gives you an indicator of where the first note is going to appear.
I'm going to go ahead and play this song.
You'll probably pick up a lot of the basic gameplay just watching it,
but I'll cover the details when the song is over.
So now that you've seen me play a song, let's talk a bit about what just happened.
There are three types of notes in CxB.
The first type is a basic touch note,
which consists of two guidelines intersecting at a right angle to meet at a target.
Arrows will slide down these guidelines towards the target; you tap the target when the arrows reach it.
The second type is a hold note.
These are indicated by not two, but four guidelines. They are also colored differently.
You still touch these notes when the arrows reach the target,
but you hold the target until the entire guideline is absorbed into the target.
Note that you do not have to release the target with timing at the end;
you just have to hold the target all the way through.
The third type of note is a flick note.
These have two guidlines like the touch notes,
but unlike the circular target of the touch notes, these have an arrow that is pointing in one direction.
The guidelines are yet another different color.
To play these notes, slide your finger through the arrow in the direction it's pointing.
Unlike tap and hold notes, you do not have to remove your finger from the screen and then touch the screen again to hit these notes.
Instead, you can leave your finger on the screen and just slide through them.
This is a necessary technique for advanced songs,
which will often include chains of flick notes that you hit in one motion,
and touch or hold notes that you flick away from in one direction or another.
Sometimes hexagons will appear around the targets as well.
This is not a different type of note, but an indicator that you have to hit more than one note at the same time.
This is usually two on easier songs, since you have two hands.
But on harder songs, it could be three or four, requiring multiple fingers per hand.
You might also see more than one set of hexagons on the screen at once on advanced songs.
In that case, there's no further differentiation between the different sets of hexagons,
so you'll have to rely on the other cues to figure out what to hit when.
When you touch a note, there are a number of judgments you could receive based on your timing.
The best is Flawless.
I can't find exact data on timing, but it appears to be either 1 or 2 frames,
which is somewhere between 1/60th and 1/30th of a second.
This is worth 100 points.
The next best is Super, which is worth 50.
Both of these are "good" judgments.
The next judgment is Cool, which is worth 10 points and should be considered a neutral judgment.
After that is a parallel set of judgments named Fast and Slow.
These judgments are slightly bad.
They are worth 0 points and decrease your gauge, but they still maintain your combo.
They also make a different sound effect so you know you're getting offbeat.
Worse still are Fast² and Slow². These judgments reduce your gauge even further, and break your combo.
The worst judgment is Fail, which occurs when you either do not hit a note at all,
or when you start holding a hold note, but release it very early.
Both of these combo-breaking judgments are worth 0 points,
but unlike certain other games, they do not take points away.
On a normal gauge, Flawless and Super will raise your gauge,
Cool will leave it unchanged, and anything worse will lower it.
On Survival gauge, only Flawless will raise your gauge.
Super is neutral, and Cool actually lowers your gauge a bit.
On Ultimate gauge, Super actually lowers your gauge a bit,
and Cool lowers it quite a bit.
It's hard to clear a song on Ultimate with more than about 35 Cools,
and this doesn't change depending on the number of notes in the song, so it gets very difficult very quick.
After the song, you get a results screen. There's a lot of numbers here, so we'll break it down.
This screen repeats the basic information yet one more time:
the current song number, the user card, and the song info.
In the top left, there's an indicator of whether your cleared the song.
It's gigantic and in English, so I don't think you'll miss it.
The bottom two thirds of the screen show your performance on the song.
Let's start with the right column.
Your score appears first, and as I mentioned, it's 100 points per Flawless, 50 per Super, and 10 per Cool.
Below your current score is your best score.
Since this is my new best score, there's a banner telling me how much I improved by.
In the bottom right is a breakdown of your judgments, split out into the six categories I mentioned earlier.
Fast², Slow² and Fail are separated at the bottom because they break your combo.
On the left you can see your grade.
This is determined entirely by the percentage of notes you hit at a Cool judgement or better.
S++ is the best grade and requires 100% Cool or better.
98% will get you an S+, which is what I got here.
95% is an S; 90% is an A+; 85% is an A; 80% is a B+; 75% is a B; 70% is a C; and 65% is a D.
If you get lower than 65%, but you manage to pass, you get an E.
If you fail, you get an F, regardless of your judgements.
That's a long list, but in practice, it's actually rather difficult to pass a song and get worse than an A unless you're actively trying.
For example, if you just don't play the entire first half of the song,
and then build your lifebar back up in the second, then you can get an E.
But generally, if you're having enough trouble throughout the song that you miss half the notes,
it's likely that you'll fail and get an F.
If you get a full combo - that is, you hit every note at a judgment of Fast/Slow or better -
it will be indicated above your grade.
Below the grade is the clear rate, which is another measure of your performance on the song.
It's a bit more complex than the grade.
80% of clear rate is based on your judgments.
You get full credit for each Flawless and Super,
half credit for each Cool, and nothing for the other judgments.
Divide that by the number of notes in the song, and you get the first 80% of your clear rate.
The other 20% is based on your max combo,
which is the longest string of notes you hit with a Fast/Slow judgment or better.
This is shown below the clear rate.
Divide that by the number of notes in the song, and that is the remaining 20% of the clear rate.
Because of this, it's better to miss a note at the beginning or end than in the middle.
And to get 100% clear rate, you have to hit every note with a Flawless or Super.
There's one more scoring system not shown here, but it's a very important one, and that's rank points.
Rank points are the clear rate multiplied by the song level.
If you use the Survival gauge, you get a 10% bonus to this value.
And if you use the Ultimate gauge, you get a 20% bonus.
The game takes your 20 highest rank point values
and adds them together to make a major component of the rank points on your user card.
One caveat is that it will only take one difficulty per song,
even if you did well enough on multiple difficulties to qualify.
This means that your user rank points are determined by your best scores on the hardest songs,
and you can't simply grow your rank points by playing more easy songs.
The remainder of your user rank points are determined by your best performance on a challenge class course.
You also get 1% of the rank points of your best scores for every Unlimited difficulty chart you play.
In the bottom left, there's a reminder of your note speed,
along with the settings of the four basic appearance modifiers.
Scores from rivals appear in the top right.
You can set your rivals on the crossbeats REV website or the iOS game.
Because I played an event song, event score information appears at the bottom as well.
This event takes my best score for each song across all difficulties and adds them together to make an event score.
This was my first play of crossbeats REV. during the event,
so the current score is my only contribution to the event score so far.
The bottom right skip button lets you go back to the music selection screen when you're done admiring yourself.
For this second song, note that the BPM is not a single value, but a range.
This means that the speed could change anywhere between that range at any point in the song.
This particular song doubles and halves the BPM at various points throughout the song.
This affects the appearance rate of the guidelines and the speed of the arrows,
so I need to adjust my note speed accordingly.
Also note that the Unlimited chart is locked.
I forgot to do this on the video, but if you press and hold the lock, the game will tell you the unlock requirements.
Generally, this requires getting an S grade, S+ grade, or full combo on the Master chart.
I have a Survival clear on this song already, but I'm going to try out the Ultimate gauge this time.
Wish me luck!
Notice the life bar is now purple because I'm playing with the Ultimate gauge.
The Survival gauge is orange.
For some perspective on the Ultimate gauge, I had 3 cools in the first 15 notes.
See the chunk it took out of my gauge?
I really like this song, so I've played it a bunch, so I know where all the speed changes are,
but the first time it's pretty hard to know that they're gonna come up.
Even knowing where the speed changes are, I'm actually pretty bad at timing the notes at slow speed.
This is why most advanced players will use speed mods.
On this song there's no time to change speed up and down between the segments, so I just try to deal with it.
And here you can see what happens when you run out of life in Ultimate mode.
I was only 10 or so notes from the end as well.
You can see the big Failed text at the top,
along with the grade of F and the lack of a clear rate since I didn't clear it at all.
Other than that, the result screen is pretty similar.
Dazzling Season Master is one of the hardest songs I can do, and I definitely can't do it on Ultimate.
Maybe I could try it on Survival, but I'm just gonna put the gauge back to normal for this play.
I've since learned that you can turn off Survival or Ultimate by tapping and holding the banner,
but here I'm just going to go into the menu and turn it off the old-fashioned way.
It's one of my favorite charts, and it's on the iPad so I've played it quite a few times.
I've managed to combo every distinct section of the song, but never all in one play.
The polyrhythm combined with the overlapping notes at the beginning here gives me a lot of trouble.
There's another polyrhyhtm here -
an alternating rhythm on the left hand with offbeats on the right hand.
But I figured out a while back that the notes on the left hand
are far enough apart temporally that you can just hit both of them every beat,
and if you're on time you'll trigger the current note but not the next one.
My previous clear rate on this song was 72%, and this time I got 76%.
This song is a level 80, so it's now worth 60.8 rank points.
Since the new rank point score is in my top 20,
I get an increase in my user rank points.
After your last song, you'll get a summary result screen showing all the songs you've played in this session.
Next, if there's an event running, there might be a couple of screens relating to it.
The first screen is listing the songs I played that qualified for the event,
and the effect they had on my global event score.
After that, I earn a number of stamps towards event objectives.
Generally, you get one stamp per song, plus one bonus stamp for each event song.
The first time you play an event song, you get one more bonus stamp.
On this play, I got 3 stamps for my three songs,
plus a fourth for playing Spring,
plus a fifth for playing Spring for the first time during the event.
The stamps are applied to a card. Each highlighted square contains a reward.
Most are REVCHIPs, which are the currency for the in-game shop.
The medals represent user titles.
User icons and songs also appear in stamp sheets,
although it will take me quite a few more stamps to get there at this point.
Sometimes, two events run concurrently.
In this case, the game will prompt you to apply your stamps towards one event or the other.
After the event screen, there will be a screen showing the REVCHIPs earned on this credit.
I got 100 from the event, plus the 200 you earn every credit as a "game play bonus".
You can get additional bonuses for playing on consecutive days, completing hidden acheivements,
or by playing and completing a challenge course.
Next is the My Home screen, where you can manage a few different things.
First is the shop, which allows you to spend your revchips on new songs to play,
and new user icons to display in your user card.
The shop also shows you songs that will become unlocked once you reach certain milestones in the game.
You generally don't have to spend revchips on these once you meet the milestones -
they just become available.
Hervor and Dark Parashu have event-based unlock conditions with cryptic Japanese clues,
and The Sun requires me to get 1500 rank points.
Customize allows you to apply a title and user icon to your user card.
The stars attached to the titles indicate the difficulty of earning the title.
Partner chooses which character appears on the left of this screen and certain other login screens,
and it also affects the next section, story pieces.
The story pieces detail some bit of plot that is completely tangential to the actual gameplay.
As I said before, I can't read Japanese so I can't make heads or tails of them.
I do know that you can unlock them by meeting certain conditions.
The conditions have hints in the Story Piece menu, but the hints are in Japanese.
Even if they were in English, they're incredibly cryptic.
However, there is a Japanese crossbeats REV. wiki that explains how to unlock all the story pieces.
It Google translates pretty well.
After leaving My Home, you're given the option to return to Mode Select and play again without signing in again.
Or you can exit and sign out.
After playing, you're given music energy, which is used in the iOS game.
Every play gives you 50 music energy and you can hold up to 250.
In the iOS game, you can trade in 100 music energy for 5 premium tickets, which is enough to play one song.
The end result is that can get one free song on the iPad for every two credits you spend on the machine -
assuming you cash it in promptly, because of the limit.
I'll cover how to spend music energy when I talk about the iOS game.
After that, your data is saved, you're taken to a See You Next Time screen, and your game is over.
So that's crossbeats REV.
I think it's one of the more accessible rhythm games on the market if you're a beginner to the genre.
And it does a good job of avoiding the pitfalls that usually plague touchscreen rhythm games -
namely, it's not difficult to read and it doesn't assume your hands are invisible.
If you're a beginner, and this video piqued your interest,
I hope you get a chance to try it out at a Round 1 arcade near you.
And if you've already tried it, I hope this video helped demystify some of the metagame for you. Happy gaming!
No comments:
Post a Comment