[EU03]

Man, has it already been almost a decade since I first found out about Bemani?

I remember when DDRUS was out and I watched in amazement at an arcade in Sunnyvale as a guy was doing a 7-footer Paranoia. A freaking SEVEN-footer. I tried it once or twice. Failed miserably.
In the same arcade, there was a hiphopmania machine and there were two guys with huge bags of quarters. Holy shit, they were good, going through Attack the Music, a FOUR-STAR. Damn, there was always a huge crowd around them. Forget about the MvC2 crowd, it was all about the hiphopmania machine. I aspired to be like them.
BM'98 got popular around then; I downloaded it. Forgot about it. I got into a little phase with DDR, trying to get past 3-4 feet.

I pretty much forgot all about bemani until one day I saw a DDRMAX2 machine years later. Holy crap, did I find out that I missed a whole bunch. I went to the arcade whenever I could; worked myself up to passing catas. I got into the whole Stepmania craze, too. But soon enough, I found out that there were too many bad stepcharts and even more elitists and wannabes. DDR was dying, too. Freestyle was dead, DDREX looked like the end of the line.
But as soon as that happened, I found out about bemanistyle and the IIDX 9th style test location. Boy, the music was awesome, the graphics looked awesome, and the pros playing were awesome. I vowed to myself that I'd get a PS2, mod it, get a controller, and get myself into the scene.

9th style was out. 10th style was out. 11 and 12 followed soon after. I still never played IIDX, even though I bought the OSTs and kept up with each new bit of information. It became sort of a wistful wish, probably never to be fufilled.

Then BMUS came out, almost 3 and a half years later. I was given an old PS2. I got myself a fliptop. I'm passing 10 stars now.

I just got into pop'n recently, too! I bought a Desktop Arcade controller in December and I'm in the 35 range.

God, do I love Bemani.

...

So, uh, share your experience! Talk about your favorite artists! And set yourself a plausible-but-maybe-impossible goal for the week!
Mine is to pass 8-dan on Happy Sky. Sync [a] is killing me.
_________________

[EU03]