Overview The defining feature of
Maimai's arcade cabinet is its striking resemblance to a front-loading
washing machine. Early advertisements and promotional materials contained different joke catchphrases, such as 'It's not a washing machine!' and 'No water.' At its first deployment test,
Maimai had 'No washing' written on its cabinet. Early in development, the original concept was actually a music player instead of a rhythm game. Up to 2 players can play per cabinet, and up to 4 players can play together with more cabinets. The motherboard can be accessed using the back door on the right side. The original design was revealed to have been made in collaboration with
Sharp in Sega's
Maimai LIVE 2014 Washing Festival event. To save their personal play data, players can use an 'Aime'
IC card with the machine to log into their account. From 25 October 2018 onward, with the introduction of the Amusement IC standard In July 2019, this integration was removed with the release of
Maimai DX, and video recording was replaced with a static camera to save commemorative photos at the end of a game. Since the cabinet uses only one computer for both players, if a player is already playing on a machine, the second player's input will not work at all until the end of the game. The background image during this time states "Please wait until the current game is finished!" alongside the music video of the currently playing song if there is any. Various kinds of notes will appear at the centre and approach the outer rim of the circular touchscreen. The player must tap, hold or slide on the touchscreen or surrounding buttons in time with the music, depending on the type of note. There are 5 types of input-timing judgements (ranging from least to most accurate to timing): 'Miss', 'Good', 'Great', 'Perfect' and 'Critical Perfect', as well as showing if they are 'Late' or 'Early'. In-game settings can be toggled to enable different displays to show the different types of judgements based on the player's preference. The types of notes in the game include: •
Tap: A pink circular ring, requiring a single tap when it reaches the edge of the screen. •
Hold: A pink hexagonal bar, requiring holding for the entire length. In Finale and earlier versions, releasing early or midway and pressing down again will result in lower score/accuracy and a 'Fast/Late Perfect', 'Great' or 'Good' rating. As of DX, hold notes can be released partway through so long as the note is held for at least 80% of the total duration. Worth two Taps. •
Slide: A star followed by a path. The star counts as a Tap and is always followed by a slide path worth three Taps often starting one beat after the star is tapped. The player must trace along the path and finish it when the star reaches its end. •
Paired: A combination of two (or more) Tap, Hold, or Slide notes, which are colored yellow in order to signify them being needed to be activated at the same time. •
Touch: A blue square-like note (yellow when two or more notes) that sits on the screen and requires a single tap when the outside arrows close in. Worth one Tap. •
Touch Hold: A multicolored square-like note (rotated 45°) that sits on the screen and requires holding for the entire length. Worth one Hold. •
Break: A red-yellow ring/star that requires a single tap and is worth five times as much as a Tap, requiring a 'Critical Perfect' for the full score of the note. Breaks can be paired with a normal Pair note or another Break note. As of
Maimai DX FESTiVAL, charts can also include Hold notes and Slide paths that have the Break attribute, and they too count as a Break note. •
EX: Non-Touch/Slide path notes (including break notes since Festival) that glow brighter than other notes. Any non-'miss' judgment is a 'Critical Perfect', unless it is an EX Hold note that has been released early, which results in lower accuracy as per usual. Like other touch-based rhythm games, such as
Chunithm and
Wacca, many players wear
gloves during gameplay in order to dampen the impact of hitting buttons and allow for easier sliding on the screen's surface, as well as to minimize injuries caused by
friction, especially while playing at higher difficulties.
Songs The game's song library is regularly updated. Each song has a unique background image or music video. Currently, songs in
Maimai are sorted into categories based on where they originated from, with the main categories being: •
POPS & ANIME:
J-pop songs and
anime soundtracks released under mainstream labels. •
Niconico & VOCALOID: Songs originally uploaded to
Niconico, or using a voice synthesizer such as
Vocaloid,
CeVIO AI, or
Synthesizer V. •
Touhou Project (東方Project): Arrangements of soundtracks from the
Touhou Project bullet hell franchise. •
GAME & VARIETY: Songs originating from other games, as well as independently released music. •
Maimai: Songs exclusively commissioned for
Maimai. •
ONGEKI & CHUNITHM: Songs originating from and
Chunithm, two other rhythm-based games also developed by Sega. All songs may also be sorted into another category at a time, such as release version, numerical difficulty level, and alphabetical order. Each song has four or five playable difficulty levels for its charts. The four regular difficulty levels are Basic, Advanced, Expert, and Master. Previously, there was also a fifth 'Easy' difficulty lower than Basic, but it was removed entirely in DX. Some songs have an additional Re:MASTER chart which may be added either on release or in a later version. For songs added within the latest three versions of
Maimai, As of
CiRCLE, achieving "All Perfect" on a chart gives one additional rating point to it.
Maimai NET Maimai NET (now
Maimai DX NET) is
Maimai's website for players to access their account. To enable these services, a Sega ID or other IC card with play data has to be linked. In earlier versions (pre-DX), if the game cabinet had a
camera installed, players could record one of their played songs and access them on the
Maimai NET website, which could then be downloaded and posted to sites like
Niconico and
YouTube. == Series ==