Remember Frequency/Amplitude? Was it your first music game besides DDR?

I was actually introduced to all of Bemani before FreQuency was published. I was lucky. Although I didn't get to play most of them in the arcade until TGA got them. There used to be console parties at the Marlboro Lazer Zone whenever they hosted a DDR tournament and everyone would bring their imported games and controllers. In 2001-2 this was wicked awesome!

I have good memories of FreQuency and I was super excited for it when it came out. Amplitude, yeah, same here. Having to "return carrage" whenever you unlocked every lane pissed me off. Although that didn't stop me from playing it after I unlocked everything. I can't remember if I ever "4-barred" everything, but I remember trying.

The "return carrage / line feed" thing I'm talking about is this:

1. Start in the middle of the board. Clear lane 3.
2. Jump over a lane and clear lane 2.
3. Lane three ain't there, so you might as well clear lane 1.
4. Now you're screwed. Tap d-right three times and clear lane 4. You probably broke your combo.
5. Clear lane 5.
6. Clear lane 6.
7. Now you're really screwed. Lanes 1, 2, and 3 are open. So do a "return carrage" and clear track 1.
8. Now you can do 2-6 in order! Wonderful.
9. Goto 7.

Doing the tracks 2-4-6-5-3-1 is a pain in the neck because you need to mash d-right or d-left twice after each measure. And sometimes you hit it three times and break your combo. And that's why FreQuency was so much better. After every measure it was just "tap right". And if you were stuck, tap right again. Hate the drums? Skip them. I know their reason for opening up the "tunnel" into the "highway" - focus testing. People were intimidated by the tunnel and it was hard for non-gamers to read. But for God's sake why don't lanes 6 and 1 connect to each other? Or why isn't lane switching automatic when you clear a lane? Or why doesn't lane switching automatically jump you to the next uncleared lane? If I clear lane 1, and lanes 4-6 are playable but 2 and 3 are not, then pressing right once should take me to lane 4.

There was a cheat code in Amplitude to make it look like FreQuency. But then I noticed that there is still a "wall" between lanes 6 and 1. So you still have to return carrage around the invisible wall. Which makes the code worse than useless.

Someday when we're playing PS2 games on an emulator the same way people load hundreds of roms in an SNES emulator, someone will hack Amplitude, and it will be awesome.