SOUND VOLTEX

Overview

Sound Voltex (loudly stylised as SOUND VOLTEX, abbreviated SDVX) is an arcade rhythm game made by Konami. It is the next installment in their long-running Bemani series of rhythm games and features a unique input interface, a new soundtrack, and, for the first time, user-submitted content.

The game operates on two parts: BOOTH and FLOOR. Booth is the "game" part of Sound Voltex, whereas Floor is the user-content part of the game.

It was released in Japan on January 18, 2012, with no current plans for a North American or European release.

Gameplay

The cabinet, designed to be a single player game, consists of the following controls:

• Four blue square buttons aligned in a row (officially named BT buttons)
• Two orange rectangular buttons (FX buttons)
• Two analog effector knobs on both sides - one blue, one red (analog device)

On the screen, similar to other rhythm games, a "highway" of notes are displayed.

The square buttons correspond to the four "lanes" as in other games. Most are single tap markers as indicated by a single white bar; a long bar indicates that the button is held for the duration.

The rectangular buttons correspond to orange bars that take up two lanes, either the first two or the last two. These display overlapped with other white bars, similar to FX modes in DJMAX.

Finally, the red and blue analog knobs are used to control the two cursors that reside on either side of the highway. With some prior warning, either red or blue "track" is displayed, in which the player adjusts the knobs to closely follow the moving track in order to keep the combo and increase the score.

Terminology

Judgment criteria for the notes are, from the most accurate to the least:

• CRITICAL
• NEAR
• ERROR

Also, SDVX uses some odd terminologies that differ from other BEMANI games:

• TRACK - as in, a playable song. The player selects a track from "track select" screen.
• COMPLETE PERMIT - refers to the 70% threshold required to clear a track, commonly known as "norma" in other games.
• TRACK CRASH - as in, stage failed (mid-stage)
• CHAIN - combo.
• ULTIMATE CHAIN - full combo.
• PERFECT ULTIMATE CHAIN - All notes received CRITICAL judgement; a form of S-Rank.