What is BMS?

What is BMS?

BMS is originated from Konami's successful music video game, Beatmania. First released in December 1997, Beatmania was so influential in the music video game genre that lots of clones (and especially PC clones) have been produced. One of such clone, BM98, was developed as a simulator for practicing Beatmania charts. Since the game lacked the actual game data, and it is no way to legitimately get it, BM98 devised its own data format so anyone can make the charts for BM98. This formed the basis of the modern BMS^[1] format.

^[1] It is obvious that the "BM" of BM98 alludes Beatmania, but it has explicitly backronymed to "Be-Music" to avoid the trademark problem. BMS thus stands for "Be-Music Script" or "Be-Music Source".

While BMS originally targeted the reproduction of commercial music game, it has much more used as a medium of amateur or free music accompanied by music game element. It has survived the initial demise of BM98 (Urao Yare had to stop the development due to the legal and personal concerns), and its plain text nature allowed other programs (now called "BMS players") can use and extend it at their own needs. The entire BMS subculture has emerged (this is comparable to the modern demoscene), and it was a de facto gateway for amateur musicians until mid-2000s when the websites like Nico Nico Douga have taken this role. Nevertheless, the BMS scene is very much alive to this day, and thousands of original BMSes are produced every year.

As a music video game, BMS is a reproduction of Beatmania which used five keys and one turntable ("scratch"). There are now dozens of other modes of BMS, of which the following are widely used:

• "BME", which uses seven keys and one turntable. This is a reproduction of Beatmania IIDX which is a sequel series to Beatmania.
• "BML", which introduces a long note which forces the player to input the key (or spin the turntable) for given duration. This is a reproduction of EZ2DJ, the South Korean music video game which has similar elements to Beatmania but turned out to have different gaming experience at the end. Beatmania IIDX has introduced this very element later in 2009.
• Double play (DP), which uses the both (1P/2P) sides of controllers at once. Often called as 10 keys and 14 keys modes, it is now an integral part of the BMS format. Normal play mode is now called Single Play (SP).
• "PMS", which uses nine colorful keys. This is a reproduction of Pop'n Music, and technically same as 5 keys DP but requires wildly different UI.

The maturity of BMS scene made easy to get quality BMSes. The followings are common methods:

• If you are new to BMS, I recommend you to search for "BMS starter pack" which contains several BMSes and default player software. (This does not mean that the player is required for them, Angolmois will normally play them flawlessly.)
• Every year about a dozen BMS events are open, where the creators submit their BMSes according to the event rules. In Japan the Digital Emergency Exit 2 has provided a room for many BMS events, and there are similar events in other countries (e.g. KOREA BMS PARTY).
• For more advanced players, there are plenty of "delta" patterns for existing songs that have been created separately.