this is a story about a rhythm game that is over 10 years old it's about a very unique rhythm game that took a lot of steps to innovate and be different from its competition it's about a game that over time took steps to improve itself become polished and be host to a variety of interesting ideas it's about a mainstay rhythm game that never really got the spotlight but always was there waiting for you in the background this is a story about a murder [Music] well would you look at that it's another touchscreen rhythm game it's finally time to talk about the game that i've used in the intro of about half of my rhythm game videos it's the game i think of when i think about konami innovating with their rhythm games so it ends up as a great example of a rhythm game that not many people have seen before it's a game i hold a special place for and we finally get to talk about it today so welcome everyone to reflect reflect beat is a touchscreen rhythm game by konami originally released on november 4th 2010. at this point in bamani's history the series of rhythm games had drifted away from games that emulated instruments to more abstract and innovative gameplay concepts as also seen in the rhythm game release just before this you beat the game had six location tests before releasing which is honestly kind of a lot even for a new game the mascot of the game is pastel kun a little purple mouse character that's present throughout the series the player is often able to customize pastel through different events and honestly he's one of my favorite characters we've seen in bomani the game itself has seen a wide range of artists as its director with names like dj yoshitaka crispy joy box dj toto and destro reflect beat is the air hockey game the gameplay is characterized by an honestly absurd amount of objects flying all over the screen like air hockey pucks a majority of the notes are spawned and sent in a random direction whether down toward the playfield or at differing angles bouncing off the walls this combination of random spawning notes and different trajectories creates a rhythm game characterized as nothing short of an assault of notes on the playfield with the player frantically tapping them as the notes fly toward the player's strike line the notes of the game are called objects and there are many differing types of them throughout the series we'll touch on them as they get added in the different versions but for now let's just talk about the objects seen in the base version of reflect beat i should probably also mention why you're seeing two sets of notes in reflect beat you're always playing against a rival this is a cpu opponent who uses the opposite color notes as the player we won't spend too much time talking about the rival throughout the video but just know that it's who you're playing against and who may fire more difficult notes at you from time to time generally throughout the series the rival will get harder as the player's skill rises aside from the standard objects that fly around on the screen there are also gold objects gold objects spawn more of the rival color when they're touched leaning heavily into the dueling aspect of the rival part of the game gold objects also provide an opportunity to use one of reflect beat's unique mechanics known as just reflect on the gameplay screen of reflect beat is a gauge known as the just reflect gauge this gauge builds up over gameplay and has charges seen by the segments of the bar once you have at least one segment you can perform a just reflect this is done by flicking a gold object with the perfect timing window while you have a segment of the meter this will activate a just reflect and send just reflect objects toward your rival just reflect objects fly faster than regular notes and give the player performing the just reflect bonus points not only that but if the target of the just reflect object misses they lose points this is known as just reflect damage the just reflect adds a good amount of depth in the gameplay and incentivizes players to use just reflect to score extra points outside of that you also have chain objects chain objects are used to sort of indicate standardized timing across a group of notes and also to put them close together so that you know they all have the same musical timing they they're characterized by a chain running between the set of notes that all use the same timing think of this sort of like a drill from a dance game in terms of timing in the original reflect beat the rival was a lot more important and you actually needed to beat the rival in order to have your play considered a clear this ended up being relaxed in following versions but you can see just how core to the design the rival was in the original incarnation of the game as it was a very unique aspect of reflect it wouldn't be long before this officially became a new series and so onward we go to the next incarnation of reflect up next we have reflect the limelight released on november 6 2011. aside from a few small game updates like increasing the max difficulty of the game to 10 plus the major addition for limelight was top objects fittingly to limelight's name green object fields have been placed above the standard judgment line these fields have their own exclusive note type top objects these new higher up judgment fields are reserved for this note type which unlike the standard objects always fly directly toward the judgment field they do not have a random trajectory like standard objects on hard or higher charts there are three top object judgment spots and below that there are just two this added not only a new degree of depth to reflect beats gameplay but also difficulty as the player now had another aspect to keep track of amid the flurry of notes on the screen the other notable gameplay change that came with reflect beat limelight was that you don't actually have to beat the rival to clear the song you just had to get 70 score rate to have it be considered a clear sort of like a minimum required performance they probably realized that having to specifically beat the ai was either way too hard or way too easy and wasn't really a great indicator of whether you played the song well enough they did keep the rival in though as something to sort of play and score against from here reflect beat has its main mechanics established and has sort of proven itself to have some staying power at least enough to get some more versions the gameplay is being refined and the game itself is getting a lot of new content moving into the next version reflect would really begin to define what made it unique up next is reflect beat colette the third version of reflect beat would take a drastically different approach to the updates during its life but we'll get back to that in a second this version included a few more tweaks to gameplay it had a slightly tighter judgment window compared to the last version making the game a bit more precise they also introduced backward just reflects which made the note fly faster than if you did a regular just reflect going forward by the time i had tried reflect beat this feature was already in the game and for me it always felt more natural to flick the note backwards so i think this was a really smart addition to gameplay the major interesting feature for colette was that it was based on seasons the lifespan of a typical konami rhythm game version at the time was about one year or so and in this case they decided to go with a more literal approach to that and actually make the game take place across four real seasons the color of the cabinet lights would be different for each version and the game would be home to reflect beats most ambitious event series yet pastel adventure pastel adventure is a multi-event series spanning the duration of collet's life and also some future versions after it was the start of reflect beat running some of the most insane song unlock events i've ever seen since we've touched on most of the gameplay at this point in the video we're gonna shift our focus to some of the unique unlock events the game had to offer as i'd like to not only show them off but also document them since they are some very niche pieces of gaming content a lot of these don't have a lot of footage at all but i did my best to scrape together footage so you could at least see what they look like so with that out of the way let's check out the events for collette winter winter was the first season for collette and the pastel adventure for winter was at climbing call that climbing was an unlock event where you climb a mountain to unlock songs basically you'd select a mountain to climb each with specific songs attached through a few variables like your performance for that set equipment rival rating and a little bit of luck you'd gain progress up the mountain when you made it to checkpoints you would unlock a song clearing two of the three collette mountains would allow you a chance at the legendary mountain where you could unlock the final song for the event valenga [Music] this kind of unique post-game unlock event would become common throughout reflect pete's life with an emphasis on unique minigame progress over the course of sets rather than doing something like buying songs from a shop in game called winter ran from november 21 2012 to march 17 2013 and on we go to collette spring in collette spring we're taking a break from climbing and doing some gardening spring's event was called gardening they turn up the complexity in this mini-game with tons of stuff to choose from the first screen that appears gives you an option to select seeds to plant inside vases afterward you're given a set of pastel characters to choose to drag to your vases to grow them there's also a workshop you can access to craft more benches and grow more seeds in more bases at a time and finishing growing a plant unlocks a song getting all the way to the end and growing the legendary seed would present you with the event's final song stray march [Music] now that we're done doing our spring gardening let's head into summer up next is the summer season and of course with it is the third event in pastel adventure the third event is callet fishing this season's unlock mini game presents players with a selection of islands to fish at and the player is given a choice of bait depending on a few factors like bait choice the specific fish level of equipment and other factors the player will fill the meters of the different fish you can catch which unlocks the song when you fill the meter unfortunately in this game you can also catch trash which doesn't help you progress at all this minigame also had a secret unlockable song if you play three songs that have either the word black the number 96 which sounds like the word kuro which means black in japanese or the kanji kuro which is the character for black the ship you get for the fishing mini game will be black and you get access to the secret song which is a crossover from pop and music on to our last season autumn with autumn came the final seasonal event for pastel adventure call it harvest collet harvest involves selecting a basket for pastel who then navigates his way through a forest the player is given choices when pastel gets to a fork in the road and each path yields different rewards filling up pastel's basket unlocks a new song there were three phases for this event culminating in the final unlock for the final phase the song fittingly titled fallen leaves [Music] at this point a full year had passed every season had been hit and call it had run its full course as a version presenting players with new songs and fun unlock events along the way if i had to guess most people probably thought that collette was going to wrap up as a version here but we weren't done yet collette had one more trick up its sleeve the finale of reflect beat colette arrived with the release of call it all seasons this was the sort of conclusion phase for the mix that the game was changed to after the autumn phase ended pastel adventure was done at this point in the version but all seasons would not be won to be outdone all seasons concluded the mix with one of the most bonkers events i have ever seen in a rhythm game known as pastel wonder traveler after playing 5 credits of all seasons you'll be presented with the wonder traveler folder inside the folder is 4 bosses each with their own mission the bosses are themed on cards so there's a spade club heart and diamond box each boss has a mission requirement before you're able to face off against the boss the missions were things like playing 15 songs in all seasons or playing a set with the first characters of the song you play being ha a toe in order which sounds like heart in japanese doing the mission will give you access to the folder again to face off against the boss of choice during the boss fight song your clear gauge is replaced with a health meter which will go up and down depending on how you perform if you run out of health and fail the song the hp damage you did to the boss remains and you can challenge the boss again on the next credit once the player has defeated the spade club heart and diamond bosses each one will leave behind an orb this is phase two of the event in which you rebuild the wonder clock once you have an orb you need to go back and play the respective finale song from pastel adventure throughout collette to turn the orb into one of the hands of the wonder clock those songs being valenga stray march wadatsumi and fawn leaves once the clock is rebuilt you have a chance at the finale of the event the joker boss the joker boss throws the finale of collette at you clemare this is a brutal finale song to see if you've got what it takes to take down the joker it's a brutal event too and you better hope you can beat him in one shot if you fail to deplete the joker's health while it does remain for next time every boss revives and you must defeat them all again to try one more time a minimum of four more credits just to see the joker boss again not only that the most insane thing to me is that at the time this event released defeating the boss songs and the joker didn't even unlock them in the regular game they were added to the main game later but clamare the final song didn't even show up in the main game until the next version truly pastel wonder traveler is an insane unlock event and a great finale for a version covered in unique unlock events it really shows you what kind of interesting stuff konami was willing to do with reflect beat and i really don't think i've ever seen an event like this in another rhythm game with the joker boss defeated and the wonder clock rebuilt all seasons comes to a close and we can finally put a wrap on colette from here we're moving into what i would dub phase 2 of reflect beat we take a short detour from insane unlock events to move back more into gameplay and quality of life updates so with that let's move over to reflect beat groovin reflect me gruben takes a step back from the heavy emphasis on events and seasonal changes in favor of some more additions to the main game this far into the series and they are now just adding a song shop with a currency system something more traditional for rhythm games though unlock events were retained special difficulty charts were also added these are similar to challenge charts in ddr they are not necessarily harder charts just alternate charts in terms of game features this version also finally added dan courses to reflect the in the form of the reflect dojo for reflect beat as a series groovin marked the first release with a trend of giving nearly all the unlockable songs from the previous version to the player at the start of the new mix some of these special event boss songs had to be purchased from the new store and songs from crossover events like floor infection didn't get unlocked don't worry we'll talk about four infection later we also got one new note type vertical objects are new to groovin and fly straight down toward the judgment line rather than bouncing off the walls these can inherit any of the other note types like long objects and just reflect objects these help to add some variety to charts and are a solid edition like most note types lots of good interesting stuff in groovin and a great start to what would become a time period for reflect a very solid quality of life updates reflect b groove was also home to one of the weirdest crossover events belani has ever done there was a crossover event with coca-cola the coke ex-bomani crossover is a bit infamous for being just a super weird event basically the idea of this event was that by buying certain coke products the store would provide you with a d ticket on screen now i believe is the d ticket itself which had a code as well as a limited edition amusement pass matching one of the beverages the drinks you could choose from included sprite some coffee drinks fanta grape and a few others this d ticket could be used once a day during the event to enable custom coke ex bomani related frames lane covers and songs for reflect beat during groovin there was one song available this way a crossover from beatmania 2dx in the extend version of gruben which we'll talk about shortly two more were added later down the line after this event ended everyone got all three songs by default as well it wasn't even for very long that they were event exclusive songs it's just a super weird event those amusement passes have become super expensive and the whole event has sort of become a fabled meme in the bomani community oh and the best part of the whole event coke wasn't even a drink option you didn't get anything for buying coke in the coke ex bomani event what the hell dude after groovin came the extend version groovin upper these extend versions like the others tend to add a bit less content but that's not to say there's nothing to talk about some new clear gauges were added den courses had a new highest level added as well as hard mode courses and a few customization options were added i mentioned floor infection earlier which is a crossover event many of the money games have with sound voltex since there won't be a dead rhythm games video on sound voltex at least not now let's use this time to briefly touch on floor infection floor infection is an event that allows players of other games to unlock contest songs from the sound voltex floor events which are contest events where songs are submitted by artists to be accepted into the game during the event period you have to play a certain number of sets of sound voltaics to unlock the songs in other games this event had a counterpart event for unlocking songs in sound voltex called policy break where playing sets of the other game unlocks those songs in sound voltex these floor infection events would run for about two weeks and have been run many times since the first one with different songs each time floor infection songs at least in the us and places with less access to bomani are generally considered the rarest songs to have unlocked since if you missed the unlock period unlocking the songs elsewhere is impossible a handful of them get added to a game's unlock system and occasionally there are revival events where the songs are available on for infection again but otherwise you're out of luck if you miss them it's a cool event that's a little divisive for people in situations like america where you might be near a dave and buster's that has a ddr but no some voltex cab so if you want to get floor infection songs unlocked you have to pay someone near a machine to play on your profile to unlock them reflect beat was one of the games that participated in form infection and also policy break and as far as i can tell groove and upper was the first time reflect participated in it coming toward the end of phase two we have reflect beat volts up volta was in a similar vein to gruvin having many quality of life and gameplay updates for starters they expanded the difficulty scale upwards a bit from the old max of 10 plus all the way up to 13. all the songs from bass groovin were unlocked for everyone by default on release of this version and a new gameplay object was added the slide object is a whole note that must be followed as it moves left and right some old songs even got new charts with this note type known as renewal charts at this point reflect is really solidifying and there are less drastic changes being made i'd argue that phase 2 of reflect is really the best the game had to offer and the song list was really starting to get built out after all those versions going back a bit to the colette ways voltsa had a few really unique events one of my favorites is reflect derby which was an event related to the konami arcade championship in the finals of the kac tournaments for each game a new boss song is revealed and the players face off on it for their final song if you were able to guess which two players were in the final match at kic that year you got to play the newly revealed boss song rebellio early there was also ultimate survival a sort of battle event against members of the two main record labels that produced music for rhythm games in japan that being hardcore tano c and beat nation rise reflectbeat has been running for five years at this point showing its staying power and ability to be an innovative rhythm game with unique gameplay events and songs before we move on let's take a quick detour over to the home versions of reflect beat as you probably expect the home releases of reflect beat were on mobile devices on ios in japan reflect b plus was available it was released in 2011 as a free download with song packs you can buy as it went on a lot of the new versions features were added to the game as well as themes to match the jp version of the game has an absolute ton of packs and got support for new content until about 2014. there was also a us version of this game known as reflect b plus but with a plus sign instead of the word plus this was the only official release of reflective for the us and was also an international release it had a similar packed content style to that of the japanese version however it had a lot less packs it also didn't seem to get the same quality of light features the japanese version got at least not all of them classic n a getting left in the dust as usual this game also continued until around 2014 stopping with theme updates at collette with that we've covered the home releases for the game and we can move on to the final act up next is volta's extend mix valza2 yet another update providing high amounts of quality of life and extending the now very large song list right off the bat the biggest update to gameplay was that you could now turn off the rival objects this is easily the biggest quality of life update the game ever got it makes gameplay significantly clearer without removing the functionality of the rival this is huge and showed konami's testament to keeping this game up to date with quality features that make the game better to play they put a lot of good effort into volta 2's songs as well with every volsa 2 song getting a special chart unlocked with a certain rank on the hard chart it had new floor infection songs a bonus song for the previously mentioned ultimate survival event crossovers with beat mania 2dx copula and more this was a super solid extend version with more quality of life improvements and new songs to boot at this point reflect is a well established series it was bringing consistent revenue for konami being one of its longest running active rhythm game series at this point nearly 7 years of solid releases improvements and the weirdest unlock events you could find the series was by all accounts peaking at volsa and surely this was a sign of more good things to come what came next was nothing short of murder a murder in which reflect beat was taken out back with a shotgun and put out to pasture released in 2016 was the final version of reflect beat reflect beat uq no refresia translated to the reflection of eternity this was a rework of the entire game the game's difficulty scale was changed to that of 1 to 15. the timing window of the game was loosened slide objects were removed and replacing it came two new node types first was the switch long object this is a hold type note where you had to hold it while it was on and avoid the note while it was off this note type is fine i feel this fits reflect beat pretty well although i'm not sure why slide objects were removed in its place the second note type is pretty infamous big bang notes are the second note type added to reflection these are just like wide notes they're really long bars and you can hit any part of them they cause a big screen shake effect they're basically a cosmetic note and don't really fit the game at all the note type changes were needless to say confusing a game that had been adding and refining its gameplay for over five years only to do a big 180 and change some stuff was pretty egregious to say the least but what really put the nail in the coffin or the bullet in the head for reflect as a series was the consequence of changing node types so heavily at launch almost every konami original song was removed along with a ton of others the problem was the new note types and also the removed ones to accommodate the new notes almost all the charts had to either be redone or removed here's a list i'm not kidding konami all over the seven years of content they've built up at this point in reflects history its songlist was considered one of its best and most defining aspects and now a majority of it was just completely gone what came next i can only describe as a complete backpedal and waste of time and money konami would go on to spend the next four years redoing charts for removed songs and adding them back in in batches of song revivals the process went well past the event window for the game with the last events for reflection ending in 2019 the most recent song revival was in march of 2020 the game is basically on life support now it's still on e amusement but it hasn't gotten an update in a year and a half due to the complete and utter lack of awareness on what this whole thing would cause reflect beat declined in popularity quickly due to severe lack of content and confusingly pointless direction change reflect is now a shell of its former self a well-established rhythm game boasting unique events songs and gameplay killed off in its prime if you've been following along throughout the series you'll know that some of konami's most infamous moves and misplays when it comes to rhythm games were knee-jerk reactions due to competition so here's my theory this is all speculation based on what was happening in the rhythm game scene at the time as well as before and since this has happened in my opinion and the opinion of some others this was a lazy effort from konami to take a shot at sega and shoot them for those who don't know around this time there was a ton of traction for two of them gaining popularity i had heard stories around this time of arcade owners in japan getting rid of their other machines to make room for more tune to them historically konami hadn't had too many direct competitors when it came to rhythm games up to this point this was a shitty effort to make the game play flashy and similar to tuna them without taking any time to innovate if you're not seeing it by the way switch long objects create gameplay similar to lifts in tune of them and bigbang objects create gameplays similar to the crit objects seen in two of them while their goal was to create a similar gameplay experience in reality they took a huge dent out of the uniqueness of the game as well as literally deleting years of content for no reason reflection was likely one of konami's worst series moves ever in the history of bomani and a tragedy for fans of reflectbeat it's unknown what will happen from here considering that the amusement is still enabled for the game but as far as i'm concerned reflect is dead even if this isn't the last version it's dead in spirit and konami killed it with reflection thanks for watching check out my twitter and my twitch links are in the description below you can also check out my patreon if you want to support my content if you like this video don't forget to like and subscribe and i'll see you guys next time [Music] [Music] you