maimai

maimai is a music arcade game by Sega that puts the player in front of a round touchscreen surrounded by a ring of buttons and asks them to hit notes placed all around the circle with their hands and fists in time with the music. The unusual circular control scheme and the need to move both hands simultaneously across the whole surface make maimai a visually very different game from traditional rhythm cabinets with straight lanes of notes arriving from one direction. The cabinet also reacts to touches in the middle of the display, adding another layer of possible notation.

The music library combines pop, electronic, and anime songs with original compositions made specifically for the series, and the game has from the start been styled as a distinctly Japanese subculture affair, with a cute visual style and mascots who guide the player through menus and individual songs. The physical demands of the higher difficulties, where the player must quickly move their hands around the entire circle while also watching what happens in the middle of the display, make it a challenge even for experienced rhythm game players used to other control schemes and other note layouts.

A cabinet with two displays facing each other allows two players to compete at once, and its unmistakable appearance made maimai a recognizable attraction in Japanese arcades, one that even people who don't play rhythm games themselves would often stop to watch. Characteristic too is the sound of hands slapping the display, which, together with the loud music, became an inseparable part of the atmosphere around the cabinet even in busy Japanese arcades. The series has grown with a number of sequels featuring new songs and game modes since its debut, and is today considered one of the more original contributions to the music arcade genre of the last fifteen years, one that showed rhythm games still have room for new ideas even after two decades of genre development.

Why play it: Thanks to its unmistakable cabinet with two displays facing each other and the characteristic slapping of palms on the screen, maimai is one of the most original entries in the genre of the last fifteen years.