this is a story about a murder. *upbeat happy music*

the way my jaw dropped when you showed the list of removed songs. that's genuinely insane.

You are like Defunctland for Rhythm Games. I loev it.

I love Reflec beat so much. In my opinion the game hit its peak at Groovin Upper and honestly I wish more people could have gotten into it. I feel like a lot of people in the west never gave it enough of a chance to really see how good the game actually is.

I've always loved Reflec beat, and I'm so sad it died, as well as didn't get the love it deserved on the iPad.

An unfortunate addition to this story but quietly rolled out back in October of 2022, Konami shut down the in game music store for RB plus. This means that anyone that who still wants to buy song packs for this game are now out of luck. For those who bought content, you can still redownload songs you previously paid for so long as they weren’t delisted during the game’s run.

Imagine if Konami pulled a Reflesia type move for ddr or iidx.

I literally started this series TODAY, just because I needed some content to watch since I had my wisdom teeth removed and I wanted some content to watch while I recovered. Well. What a day to watch this particular video.

Great video, but I wanted to point out that you missed a few issues that weren't covered in your video. 1. X-Y bug, what this means is that should you hold a finger at the bottom judgement line below any 3-top note, when you tap any other 3-top notes, the 3-top note above the held finger on the bottom judgement line also gets registered. This was a hardware defect of the screen used, as AC reflec beat used infrared screens and thus had this issue that home ipad versions never encountered. For an example, the IX chart you showed in the video has the player abusing this fact for a section of the chart. Not game breaking, but it did cause a few charts in the game to be not played as intended. This hardware defect also led to the the slide notes in volzza being super abusable as pointed out by another commentator. 2. In your video, you said that groovin upper was huge quality of life update but 1 feature that got added in during that version was the upper gauge, signified by that huge circle in the middle of the screen filling up as you hit notes on the screen. This was really not a good feature, as it arbitrarily adds points to your final score at the end of the song, rewarding combo based systems rather than timing, which was the main feature that most reflec beat fans were playing the game for, since missing notes lost you upper gauge. Also, when you gained an upper gauge level or dropped an upper gauge level, there was announcer blaring that you hit a new upper gauge, making it really annoying since you mostly could barely hear the song when the announcer practically screams what upper level you were at, making it a huge detraction from the game. Luckily though, this was removed from volzza. 3. Volzza 2 first introduced a rudimentary speed mod that could only speed up the game by "50" and "100" whatever that means, I just assumed that it added 50 and 100bpm scroll speed to the actual bpm of the song, though I'm pretty sure I'm wrong on the actual mechanics of this incarnation of the speed mod. An actual multiplier speed mod was added in reflesia, when most fans have been dying to get implemented in since as early as limelight I believe, but by then, interest in the game had waned due to the reasons you mentioned in your video. 4 Timing windows are also a very interesting topic in reflec beat, primarily due to how much they have changed over versions. The hardest timing window in the entire series was during the original reflec beat, where even getting a 95% on any song would pretty much mean you were a top player of the game. This incarnation of the timing window was introduced as an option in reflesia too, forcibly using this timing window in their dan courses. This timing window was then heavily relaxed in the next version, limelight, but soon got adjusted to be stricter in colette as you mentioned in your video and has stayed that way all the way until reflesia, where timing window was so incredibly huge that rankers were getting 100% on songs that were not level 15. I feel that this was another huge downfall of the series, as mentioned before, the main gameplay draw for most fans were the huge importance of timing above all else, managing to strike a nice balance between the sadistic p-great and marvelous windows, to the incredibly lax jubeat perfect window. By expanding the perfect window so huge, the main draw of the game from a gameplay perspective was lost I feel. This also rendered a few notoriously difficult songs to time in the series to become way easier to score than in previous versions of the game, the most infamous of these being 万物快楽理論 by asaki. 5. Admittedly as you mentioned in the video, reflec beat is home to some of the craziest unlock events that any AC rhythm game has ever seen, but 1 event that hamstrung the series was the bemani music focus event. This was the event that revived a lot of old bemani songs from other series based on various bemani artists 4 song picks that they would discuss in that week's bemani radio show, when said bemani artist would come on as a guest. This raised the main issue with this event, as this timegated the song unlocks to within the 2 weeks of the songs release during the event. If you weren't around to pop in the credits during those 2 weeks, well then you would be locked out of those songs, and even the arrival of the new version didn't unlock these songs for default play iirc. Granted some sets of 4 songs were given revival periods of 2 weeks, but again, if you missed those unlock windows, too bad you couldn't play these songs until much later. The unlock window was 2 weeks precisely because the bemani radio show was a fortnightly radio show, thus they had to implement a 2 week window for all of the songs in this event. This issue of timegated events also plagued the aforementioned floor infection in the video, but was a double whammy for reflec beat since the main unlock event in the game was also a tight timegate. Also, groovin upper didn't really have any new original songs added to the series, with most of the unlocks coming from crossover events and or the aformentioned bemani music focus event, which added already well known songs to the reflec beat series. This might have been a huge issue with fans since they just came off the huge original song list bonanza that was colette. I think I may have gone on for a bit too long. :)

What a great essay on such a fan beloved franchise. The numbskulls in charge at Konami killed a perfectly good rhythm game for no good reason. I love the music of Reflasia but what a terrible game it is. Seems that Konami finally learned it’s lesson as pop’n music Wonderland would have killed pop’n music for the same reason such as drastically changing the game and mechanics for no good reason. Great essay thank you for sharing.

I feel that a touch screen based rhythm game is just cursed from the get go. BeatStream, DJMAX Technika, CrossXBeats, Seven’s Code, mobile versions of DDR and PIU all now dead. RB was at one point my absolute favorite BEMANI franchise the content was consistently excellent. It’s a very fun game despite being lower in difficulty than most Bemani franchises. I wish Konami would give this game a second lease on life, the mobile revival for jubeat I feel has led to the release of jubeat Ave. which was such a breath of fresh air after being stuck on jubeat festo for 4 years! Revive the RB a plus app to test out the waters, don’t put in the useless gimmicks of Reflasia and give it a bunch of new songs and crossovers. If players start playing it in droves there’s a market to bringing back AC RB.

TBH I hope the fans make their own mobile version with all note types, difficulties and songs, plus an in-game level editor and in-game level download system, and being available in any device, compressed files so no 1.5GB filesize, personalized skins, replicas of each game's skins, and even more.

Amazing video, thank you so much for putting it all together! I never played this game, but it's a shame that it died off in such a way. Pastel-kun is a really cute mascot and brought a unique identity to the game. Really the only reason why I watched the whole thing is because I like Pastel-kun's design 🐭

thank you for covering the coke event in this video, if i hadnt seen this video, i never would have snagged the grape fanta pass and d ticket for myself, managed to get really really lucky and found a pass for wayyy under its typical selling price of $500. i actually have it in my hands and ive tested it on a few cabinets, so i wanted to come back and say thanks :)

I still play this on my ipad almost every day. I still wish I could play at arcades though. Really miss those days.

For rivals, you can play against your friends or other players via the network too.

Thanks for the awesome video. I have been playing Reflec on my iPad for years, but after a longer break everything was gone when I tried to play the game again today 😢 Do you know if there is any way to play the peak version of Reflec Beat? Any emulators or... do we just have to except that we will never again play this wonderful game?

only thing i realized is these 3 games, museca, dance evo and reflec beat are still e amusement enabled, which suprises me because it changed from e AMUSEMENT to the lower case

I tried this on iPad back then. It was the shump of rhythm games

So they thought they could pull off a Drummania V to XG transition with Reflec Beat but it didn't work out in the end.

THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS!

Oh geez, I remember playing Reflec Beat (And Jubeat) back when it was an iOS app and while I eventually became aware of the game's arcade presence, I had no idea about the wild event stuffs going on, as well as the fact that a mascot existed for the game! Also learned about the emphasis on Just Reflects (something I feel like I didn't realize when I had played on iOS, I don't remember though), neat! ...And Reflection of Eternity's changes causing a heckton of older tracks to be reworked or removed...still trying to wrap my head around that one. :o Awesome overview of Reflec Beat! Now I wish I cherished it more on iOS, meeeeeeeeeeep

They just got a version of this game in one of my local arcades and I played it for the first time today (17/02/22) and it was insanely fun. I wish I could blow $100 on it but alas.

13:44 maimai FiNALE's PANDORA BOXXX sounds like exactly that.

17:24 nd here we Sound Voltex as a game about to actually crash.

This. Needs. More. Views. WTF.

Wait, so since the objects are thrown around at different trajectories, does that mean that they'll still land in time with the music but they won't land on the exact same position twice?

I REALLY hope that konami revive this game as tablet specialized mobile game(since Samsung made galaxy s8 ultra, which it's possible to give similar experience as arcade)

Finally its out🥳

My loveeee

Floor Infection Event Was An Unfortunate Event, Just because majority of states were still on lockdown 2020. Specifically In California. Fortunately, I was in Texas and Grapevine was the closest to unlocking the songs :3

This video is lit. I was wanted to try reflec beat as the only thing I could do is just listen to the music online during the time it's coming out. It is what it is lol Also what song is that in 21:08? Keep on keeping on chief 👍

Another video you can do is Neon FM, a rare rhythm game from Andamiro

Yooo I was just taking about this!

Reflec beat~~~~

This just looks like a visual overload on the senses. I'll stick with IIDX and DDR

How to disable rival objects in Reflessia? Or that is a Volzza 2 exclusive option?

pleeeeease make a video on in the groove

flower~~~

Wait is Image Material from this game ??

god i love chunithim

3:15 :)

Vocabulary auto-correct: I searched for "reflesia", but Google reads it as "rafflesia" (a type of flower). Did Konami created a new foreign word, or...?

DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION MOON

DEAD RHYTHM GAMES - JUBEAT

Is reflect still online to this day? I checked their twitter it doesn't tell any end of service but totally dead page by now.

HOW DO PEOPLE READ THIS GAME

If only they would make a jubeat mobile version of reflec beat plus!!!!!!!

jubeat festo original version

it is not dead😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Dead rhythm game jubeat