Now that DrumMania V (that seems to be the new official capitalization) has been out for a few weeks, it's time to clear up some confusion. Almost all this information is gathered from Konami's official V site, and while this stuff probably applies equally well to both DrumMania V and GuitarFreaks V, I'm going to mainly concentrate on DMV. Also, I want to thank Meiko for helping me translate a lot of the rules and information on that site. However, I didn't consult her for everything (in particular, the comments of the music artists like Jimmy Weckl), so if you spot any mistakes here, it's probably my mistranslation and not hers.

First of all, there doesn't seem to be any changes in gameplay since DM10GF11. The codes are the same, the gameplay modifiers are the same, and so on. Story-wise, What was called "GitadoLand" in DM10GF11 is now called "GitadoTower". Instead of having 5 teams trying to conquer an island, 5 teams are now battling it out in a tower. How this works, and what this "floor" system is, we can't really figure out from the description on the website. I might be able to give more details when/if I actually get to play on a DMV machine.

One small change is the addition of "tickets". In DM10GF11, after you've played all your songs, you get (metaphorically) spin a roulette wheel, which gives you a number between 1 and 10. This number becomes your combo multiplier for contributing to your team's GitadoLand score. In DMV, you still have the numbers 1 to 10, but you also have special panels with tickets in them. In this example, the player has gotten an "Encore Ticket" which lets the player play the Encore stage for free (as opposed to requiring the player to get S on the extra stage, for example). These tickets are one-time use, so you lose it the next time you use it.

Internet Ranking only works if you use e-Amusement (i.e. if you get a card and create an account on it.) Score submission is automatic. All you gotta do is play well, and at the end of every game, your score is automatically sent to Konami's servers. There's a special Internet Ranking competition called GitadoKing. Every month or so, a new GitadoKing tournament starts. During the first two weeks, a list of five songs is published, usually with a theme. For example, the first week's contest was called 「泉陸奥彦杯」(Izumi Mutsuhiko Cup), and the five songs were "RIGHT ON TIME", "Destiny Lovers", "YARATUM KAHAN?", "NO MORE CRYING" and "AFTER A HARD DAY". After two weeks, the first round ends, and the top 100 players are allowed to enter in round 2. In this round, 3 new songs are provided, still with the original theme. For the 「泉陸奥彦杯」, the 3 songs were 「タラッタダンス」 (Taratta Dance), "LUCKY?STAFF" and "MODEL DD2". Two weeks after that, the 2nd round ends, the top scores are posted, and another contest begins. The next contest is called 「ANIMAL A GO!GO!杯」 (Animal A Go!Go! Cup), and the songlist for that one hasn't been posted yet.

That's about it for DMV info. Fun stuff you can find on the website? Click on "FROM STAFF", and you can see profiles of the people who worked on DMV, including Izumi Mutsuhiko (the main gist of his comment is "We changed the name so that GF and DM which were session-mode compatible would have the same number"), Naoki ("different people like different music, but my favorite is pop"), Jimmy Weckl (Who would have thought he was black? "Hi! I'm Jimmy Weckl! Let's celebrate! Guitar and Drum V unite! But why did we name the game 'V'?"), TOMOSUKE ("Carpe Diem, everyone! V is sometimes called DOKIDOKI, but will we continue naming the games W,X,Y? [other stuff I didn't understand]"), Asaki (who would have known he was a black cat? "[tries to be dark and gothic in a funny way]"), 小野秀幸 (Ono Hideyuki, "I've tried my hand at just about every musical genre out there, so I hope you enjoy this.").

If you click on the "V"Studio link, then, under "DESIGNER'S", click on 「カレンダー」, you can download monthly calendars. Each month features a different song. The "GUEST DESIGNER" part look like links to the homepages of people who worked on DMV (these pages having very little, if anything, to do with DMV or even Bemani in general). The last one, 井上和也, has some risqué drawings of girls in translucent nightgowns, for the curious.

One last note, Konami is using a somewhat lame joke to promote DMV. The letters V and B are translated to the same character in Japanese (most people are familiar with Japanese people confusing R and L; same concept). Well, Konami has some promotional material that reads 「GuitarFreaks V, DrumMania V, "V"est!!!」.

If you have any more questions about DMV, feel free to post them here and I'll try to get them answered.

Updated on 2005/04/02: Here are some more clarifications to questions I've been asked.

You very, very, very probably need the card to access the roulette thing. Since the roulette happens at the end of the game, DMV needs to somehow store what Tickets you've earned so that you can use them in your next game. If you don't have a card, you probably won't see the roulette thing at all.

The card system, known officially as "e-Amusement", and the concept of "hooking up the DrumMania machine to the Internet" are linked. I'm not sure if the card system requires that the DM machine have Internet access, but I strongly believe so. What exactly does the DM machine do with its Internet access? It sends a bunch of statistical data to Konami. For example, all of your scores are automatically uploaded to Internet Ranking if you agree to a disclaimer thingy allowing them to collect this data. Furthermore, when an Arcade owner sets up the DrumMania machine, he has to enter in the location of his arcade, and the name of the arcade. You can go to Konami's site and see, in the Internet Ranking, which arcade all the best players go to, what the most popular song at every arcade is, which arcade has the most players, and so on.

Konami probably encourages the Internet thing for two main reasons. First of all, it's to discourage illegal pirating of the game. Any arcade that obtains DrumMania illegally will not be able to hook up the machine to the Internet, or else it will connect to Konami's servers and report about this. Secondly, statistical information is just plain useful to Konami. For example, they'll know which songs are popular that they should keep for the next mix, and which songs they should drop 'cause everyone hates it. Let's hope they drop Funky Sonic World.

For the "agreeing to the disclaimer thingy" I mentioned above, there's actually a two step process to creating your account. First of all, you have to buy a blank Bemani card. When I was in Japan, you could either buy these cards from a vending machine, or you could ask "the guy behind the counter" to buy one. Usually asking the guy is better, because he'll take out a box of cards, and you can pick the one with the picture you think is prettiest; with the vending machine, you get a random picture (and it was the same price either way). Next, you have to put the card into a Bemani machine that supports e-Amusement. That means PopNMusic, DrumMania or GuitarFreaks. Then it'll ask you to choose a name and a 4 digit password. The e-Amusement system adds a numeric keypad that also have little arrows on them, so you don't have to do something crazy like using the snare and toms to input your name and password.

At this point, you have a account, but it's not "activated" yet. At the end of each game in which your account isn't active, a screen will pop up telling you go to a specific website and activate your account. In Japan, you wouldn't even have to go home: Most people use their cell phones to log onto the site and activate the account. Part of the process of activating the account is giving your e-mail address and some profile information, and probably you have to agree to let Konami collect statistical information about you. Once you've done that, the next time you put your card in the Bemani machine, it'll be activated.

As far as I can tell, all 3 games (PnM, DM and GF) use the same kinds of cards, so you don't have to specify to the guy behind the counter that you want a DrumMania card or anything. HOWEVER, once you first put the card into a type of machine (for example, a DrumMania machine), that card can only be used on DrumMania from then on. You'll need to buy 3 cards to have an account on all 3 games.

The motivation for you, the player, of playing on a DM machine that has an Internet connection is that first of all, you can do Internet Ranking. Secondly, perhaps the entire card system requires the Internet, so you can't participate in GitadoLand or GitadoTower otherwise. Third, it's damn hard to get the Encore stage in the new scoring system (98% perfect), but you can earn points that'll let you unlock the Extra and Encore stages. And finally, there are some songs (such as the songs from the GitadoLand Artefacts, and the songs from eeMall) which are impossible to unlock unless you have the card system.

"eeMall" is not the same thing as "eAmusement", though it uses the same card system. After you have an activated card (on DrumMania, for example), you can put your DM card into an eeMall machine. This is a seperate machine, and looks just like any other arcade game. The first time you do so, you create yet another account. In this one, you choose an avatar for yourself, by specifying male or female, choosing hair color, accessories like glasses, and the colour of your clothes. Once that's done, you'll be able to access a mall where you can buy new clothings and accessories, as well as buy new songs for the Bemani games. As far as I know, it's impossible to unlock these songs except by using eeMall. But don't worry if you don't have an eeMall machine; In my opinion, all the eeMall songs really suck anyway.

There are two ways to earn "eeMall points" to spend at the mall. The first is to put some tokens into the eeMall machine, which lets you play minigames. The better you do at these minigames, the more points you get. I don't know what any of these minigames are like, 'cause I never tried playing them. The second way is to actually play Bemani games. After you've created your eeMall account, whenever you play DrumMania using your eeMall-activated card, you'll gain eeMall points. Note that you only earn points AFTER creating an eeMall account, so if you play DrumMania nonstop for a year first, and THEN create an eeMall account, you'll have zero eeMall points.

Also, I think you can chat with other eeMall people and post on message boards and stuff like that, which is where your avatar comes in, but again I don't know much about those features 'cause I never really used them.

There's one thing that confuses me about eeMall, so maybe I misunderstood something: while shopping for songs, you'll sometimes see three versions of the same song (let's call it "Song X") for sale on each of the three machines: DrumMania, GuitarFreaks and PopNMusic. However, you'll also sometimes see a "discount bundle" version which contains all three versions packaged together. But if your DM card can only be used in a DM machine, then what's the point of ever buying GF or PnM songs on that card, since the other machines will refuse to read them anyway? If anyone understands how this works, please let me know.

The last point I want to bring up is about Jimmy Weckl. If you look at the list of new songs, there are no new songs by Jimmy Weckl (you can find a list of all the new songs, and their artist here). However, they brought Jimmy Weckl in to write some comments in the "Developer's Comment" section. This might be a hint that some of the hidden songs are by Jimmy Weckl. That would be a welcome relief because quite frankly, with The Least 100 Sec still ranked as a difficulty 99 song (meaning the scale hasn't changed), and the hardest new non-hidden, non-extra, plain-jane song is merely an 89, DMV disappoints a bit on the "more challenging songs" front. Hopefully Jimmy Weckl will have contributed a 97, 98 or even a... dare I say it? 99. In all fairness, 「鬼姫」 ("onihime" or "demon princess") is back and it's a 99, though it's been demoted from an Encore stage to an Extra stage. Of the two hidden songs, "Little Prayer" by 「土岐麻子」 is a 94 (the other known hidden song is a 57), and the Premium Encore "Die Zauber flote" by 「わんにゃん☆パニックス」 is a 95.