First beatmania game with Dancemania licenses, much like the DanceDanceRevolution series.
Combo is no longer counted. This was the last beatmania game where combo was not counted.
Flashing GREATs only appear in EXPERT mode. This is the only beatmania game where this is the case.
Songs are now displayed in a list on the right side of the screen, with their levels in a star to the left of their name.
First beatmania arcade title with hard version charts. DO IT ALL NIGHT, OPERATOR, THE ONLY WAY IS UP, THE RACE, and UP ON THE FLOOR have each a hard version chart that can be played during Stage 2 on Hard Mode.
Two modifiers were introduced:
SUDDEN, which causes the notes to appear in the middle of the screen.
HIDDEN+SUDDEN is now possible, which causes the notes to not appear at all. This was changed in beatmania THE FINAL, where the notes briefly appear in the middle of the screen.
HI-SPEED, which causes the notes to double the scrolling speed.
Isao Saito and Hiroaki Saito make their BEMANI debuts.
The beatmania 5thMIX ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK contains not only the songs from beatmania 5thMIX, but also the songs from beatmania 4thMIX which had not been removed in 5thMIX.