RB and GH vs DDR and BM

[Kannibal]

Yesterday I brought a friend over from school cause I told him I had a friend bringing in a JP PS2....he didn't beleive me so he came!

when we get to my house my friend with the JP PS2 was waiting...hahaha...
we plugged in the thing...set up....ok done!...finally

he pops out Beatmania IIDX 9th or 11th...I forgot and my peep from school ask what that it was thinking it was some sort of fighting game for some weird reason...

when the game boots and we start up by picking a song...first thing that comes out of my friend's mouth is: "Is this supposed to be a Guitar Hero wanna be?"

me and my other friend just drop the turntables...stare at the floor...look at each other...then we stay staring at my silly friend....

the weird thing is that me and my friend from school are from the same generation of gaming...he is supposedly more superior than me in any music game...but he never knew Beatmania existed?...the same thing happened when we went to the arcades and he saw DDR a while back...

what is even more weird is that there is this new game called Scratch! or something...which is going to have similar game play mechanics as beatmania and not one preview of it mentions beatmania anywhere as well as calling it the most innovative game ever...

my question is...are NA developers trying to take credit of what JP developer Konami made? or has Konami forgot to make a patent for their stuff?