Jubeat ripples notes

Maybe older jubeat notes will be helpful for reading this. If you can read Japanese, jubeat@wiki will be extremely helpful.

Major Changes

The game method and mechanics remain same, but there are major changes from jubeat to jubeat ripples. The first important thing is update on rating system: SS rating is divided with three ratings – SS (<980k), SSS (<1000k) and EXC (1000k exactly).

Achievement system is new in jubeat ripples. Technically achievement is another name of title: getting each title gives class points up to 4000. (This is called “achievement points”, besides from regular “tune points”.) Category of titles is broad, including “played in this month” title (named after birthstones), “played/cleared XXX songs”, “XXX B/A/S/SS/SSS/EXC ratings”, “win/lose with very slight score difference”, or even “cleared every songs which title contains special characters” (named ☆↑～＆…()./！).

Members website also has principal roles in jubeat ripples. This website is intended to give three important features (and replace jubegraph etc I think):

• Competitions: One can participate in competitions initiated by other players. There are several kinds of competitions (most popular kind is competing total best score for given songs) but they also give class points nonetheless – raging from 70 points to 700 points (if you won in competitions with 10+ persons).
• Friends: One can add friends in website, so he/she is notified friends’ news (e.g. won in competition etc.) before the game play.
• Rival: One can add one rival in website, so in the song select screen both the best score of oneself and rival is displayed for comparison, and gives additional titles (thus points) in certain cases.

Note that initiating competitions and setting rivals requires fee, which seems hard to pay for non-Japaneses. *sigh*

Music bar does not show the best result; rather, it now shows the combined result. If you got perfect in the first half once and the second half later, combined music bar is filled with only yellows although you didn’t achieve EXCELLENT yet. (“NO GRAY” and “ALL YELLOW” titles refer this, not the individual result.)

There was revamp of game UIs: before the mode select current news for player, friends (if any) and participating competitions (if any) is displayed, and list of next achievements is also shown so one can try to get them. There is sorting and filtering option in the song select screen and player now can select random songs or random battles for convenience. Sometimes random battle allows one to play not yet unlocked songs…

Older jubeat data is automatically transferred into new data, but class points is recalculated according to then-best scores and results. (To be exact, achievements are recalculated and points are set to sum of points given by those achievements.) For me there was almost 40k points decrease (130k to 92k), though I recovered that points in a day.

Classes and Songs

There are now 43(!) distinct classes in jubeat ripples. First 18 classes are same to those of older jubeat, albeit requirement is much easier to fulfill. Next 24 classes are divided into three 8 classes (Bronze, Silver, Gold) and each classes are named as Squirrel, Rabbit, Ocelot, Fox, Deer, Wolf, Tiger and Lion. The last class is named Platinum. Thus its order is like this: White D, White C4, …, White S1, White SS, Bronze Squirrel, Bronze Rabbit, …, Bronze Lion, Silver Squirrel, …, Gold Lion, Platinum.

There is no class requirement other than points, but the very last class requires vast amount of points (718k) compared to older jubeat (223.6k).

The classes are as follows:

• White (“original” jubeat classes)
  • White D: Initial class.
  • White C4-C1: Requires 2000+, 4000+, 6000+, 8000+ class points respectively. Gives Special One, volcano marker, Jumping Boogie, gauge marker in that order. (Yes, ripples doesn’t allow user to select next features to be unlocked.)
  • White B4-B1: Requires 10500+, 13000+, 15500+, 18000+ class points respectively. Gives I Love Mami, weasel marker, Icicles, ice marker in that order.
  • White A4-A1: Requires 20500+, 24500+, 28500+, 32500+ class points respectively. Gives Chance and Dice, bubbles marker, bass 2 bass, Tetris marker in that order.
  • White S4-S1: Requires 36500+, 40500+, 44500+, 49000+ class points respectively. Gives IN THE NAME OF LOVE, kaleidoscope marker, GIGA BREAK, mirror ball marker in that order.
  • White SS: Requires 53500+ class points. Gives Evans, Ai no Uta, Crosswind and In Scottish Highlands. (These are hidden songs unlockable with evangelist in older jubeat.)
• Bronze
  • Bronze Squirrel: Requires 59000+ class points. Gives lemon (yellow) background. (Background is only shown when you fully opened shutter in the game.)
  • Bronze Rabbit: Requires 67250+ class points. Gives blue background.
  • Bronze Ocelot: Requires 75500+ class points. Gives dark (black) background.
  • Bronze Fox: Requires 85500+ class points. Gives Queen’s Paradise, the first of new unlockable songs.
  • Bronze Deer: Requires 95500+ class points. Gives… some marker. (I’m personally not interested in markers. Sorry.)
  • Bronze Wolf: Requires 107750+ class points. Gives… some more marker.
  • Bronze Tiger: Requires 120000+ class points. Gives banana marker.
  • Bronze Lion: Requires 135000+ class points. Gives Russian Snowy Dance.
• Silver
  • Silver Squirrel: Requires 155000+ class points. Gives… some additional marker.
  • Silver Rabbit: Requires 177500+ class points. Gives ECO FIGHTER.
  • Silver Ocelot: Requires 200000+ class points. Gives “painting” marker.
  • Silver Fox: Requires 224500+ class points. Gives Koi no Merry-go-round.
  • Silver Deer: Requires 249000+ class points. Gives torus marker.
  • Silver Wolf: Requires 275450+ class points. Gives SWEET ANGEL.
  • Silver Tiger: Requires 301900+ class points. Gives… some strange marker. (This is the last unlockable one, fortunately.)
  • Silver Lion: Requires 330500+ class points. Gives AREA 51.
• Gold
  • Gold Squirrel: Requires 367250+ class points. Gives INVISIBLE WORLD.
  • Gold Rabbit: Requires 406000+ class points. Gives Shining Star.
  • Gold Ocelot: Requires 444750+ class points. Gives coming true.
  • Gold Fox: Requires 485500+ class points. Gives STARLIT DUST / For Still. (Note: Still refers Jason Michael “Stillwind” Borenstein.)
  • Gold Deer: Requires 526250+ class points. Gives Good-bye Chalon.
  • Gold Wolf: Requires 569250+ class points. Gives eyes.
  • Gold Tiger: Requires 612250+ class points. Gives Sumidagawa Natsu Renka.
  • Gold Lion: Requires 656750+ class points. Gives Macuilxochitl.
• Platinum: Requires 718000+ class points. Gives stealth marker.

Among new songs, only Russian Snowy Dance, AREA 51 and Macuilxochitl has level 10 EXTREME pattern. Levels of old songs are adjusted and only those of Evans and GIGA BREAK remain same. (I can say Evans is still the hardest by my own experience…) Many people also says that level of Sumidagawa Natsu Renka¹ EXTREME (8) is very misleading, with esoteric (diagonal!) patterns even surpassing some level 10 songs. (There is Youtube movie for this song. How do you think?)

After actually playing Sumidagawa Natsu Renka, I feel I was quite wrong; it cannot be level 10, as the only challenging part of the song is diagonal pattern. But I still think it is a lot reasonable to be level 9. (For similar reason, I personally rates Russian Snowy Dance as level 9, or the easiest of level 10.) In fact it was re-rated as level 9 in the next version, jubeat knit.

Besides from class points, there is a new concept of Total Best Score (abbreviated TBS) which is a sum of the best score of each patterns. By definition it must be no greater than 330 million points (= 110 song * 3 distinct patterns * 1 million maximum points), and directly relates to total average score (which is TBS divided by 330). 330m TBS means one got EXCELLENT in every patterns; it is very hard, and for long time there was exactly three persons got 330m TBS (as of 2009-11).

jubeat ripples APPEND

Before the release of jubeat knit in 2010-07-29, the update to jubeat ripples called APPEND is released in March 2010. It is not available to other countries, since the release of the next version is only five months left and local publishers didn’t find a good reason to localize APPEND.

The update brought a new set of titles, including the title given for people unlocked new songs via a coordinated game play with Beatmania IIDX 17 SIRIUS. This particular title gives 7500 class points, which is the worthiest title so far.

The update also added 21 new songs, which means the maximal TBS is now 393 million points. This milestone is quickly achieved by three players in the 330m TBS club (that included four persons at that time), and one remaining player got pissed (in some sense) due to the unavailability of APPEND outside Japan. Meanwhile more players achieved the 393m TBS milestone, so there were six persons at the end of jubeat ripples (as of 2010-07).