Pentavision Entertainment announced location tests for DJ Max Technika a couple of weeks ago, hoping to achieve success by bringing one of Korea's best rhythm games to America.

DJ MAX Technika has finally arrived at Sunnyvale Golfland and I got a chance to check it out earlier today.

The first thing that you will notice when you step up to the machine is that there are 2 screens, a 32" HD monitor above the player for spectators waiting for their turn on the machine and a smaller 22" HD multi touch screen for the player. These screens provide both the player and spectators a nice and vibrant view of all the action onscreen. The second thing you will notice is that the cab has a subwoofer platform like Beatmania IIDX, except this one is a bit smaller, but it provides just the right amount of bass for the player to feel the beat of the music. And with all rhythm game cabinets, this one has plenty of flashing lights to go with all of the sounds.

The presentation of the game nothing short of amazing. The interface looks just about the same as the other DJ Max games with a disc representing the songs on the music select screen. Touching the screen on either the left or the right side of the screen will scroll through the tracks, allowing for simple touch based navigation of the menu.

When you get into the game, You'll notice that it plays kind of like Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan on the DS, except there is a line that will scroll through the top half and the bottom half of the screen and that line shows when you need to hit the notes on screen instead of OTO's closing ring system. Besides the standard notes, there are also notes that you have to follow by tracing them, notes that require you to tap on a single spot on the screen, and notes that require you to hold the spot.

Here's some gameplay that shows all of the different notes:


Now, as awesome as this game is, there are a couple of slight problems that I had with it.
First is the location of the lifebar. When you're playing this game for the first time, you'll lose track of that lifebar because the player will mostly be looking at or near the center of the screen and not the edges. It's a small design flaw that could be easily fixed by placing the lifebar in the center so the player is constantly aware of their status while focusing on the upcoming notes on either the top half or the bottom half of the playfield.
The second thing is that this game's difficulty is pretty brutal. Miss a couple of notes and there goes a good chunk of your lifebar. For all of you IIDX players, think of it as a hard type lifebar where a single miss causes you to lose 10%.
The last thing that I had some problems with while playing Technika was that some of the songs had some odd timing issues. The one issue just about everyone was aware of was the first note of Clazziquai's Freedom has to be hit a bit earlier than the start of the song in order to get the max rating on it instead of a cool or a good on it.

All in all, DJ Max Technika is a solid entry to the EZ2DJ / DJ Max series. The touchscreen is something that isn't too innovative in the arcades (I think the megatouch machines have been around for awhile now) but the fact that they have successfully pulled it off on something as timing specific as a rhythm game, I believe that they have gone somewhere with the rhythm genre and have taken it to a place where Konami has yet to succeed with any of their titles.