Overview
Beatmania IIDX 12: Happy Sky is the 12th game in the Beatmania IIDX series of music video games. It was released in arcades by Konami in 2005. The game features over 45 new songs, some of which are unlocked over Konami's e-Amusement platform. Happy Sky introduced several small but significant changes to the series, such as a new difficulty scale, and a new boss song.
Beatmania IIDX tasks the player with performing songs through a controller consisting of seven key buttons and a scratchable turntable. Hitting the notes with strong timing increases the score and groove gauge bar, allowing the player to finish the stage. Failing to do so depletes the gauge until it is empty, abruptly ending the song.
The core gameplay remains the same in Happy Sky. Songs are now ranked on a 12-point rating scale, with the difficulties being renamed in the process as well. "LIGHT7/14" is now Normal and "7/14KEYS" is now Hyper. All songs have been readjusted to fit the new ranking scales. A new folder called "HARD CLEAR" has also been added to the song selection screen for songs cleared using the Hard mode modifier.
Two new modifiers have been added, Hidden+ and Sudden+, which allow the user to adjust a lane cover over a specific portion of the screen. This had been popularly done with towels beforehand, acknowledged by Konami in the PS2 version of Gold, which offers a picture of a towel as one of the lane cover options.
