Last week, Re:Gamers came together for the first Play+Discuss session—the topic was rhythm games. Rather than spend all our time playing Rock Band, we ended up focusing on the old, the weird, and the arguably-not-rhythm-at-all.

PixelPop / Rhythm Heaven: mixed metaphors

We discussed rhythm mini-games using mixed visual metaphors, such as the level 4 “Mix Tape” mode of the Nitrome game and Re:Game favorite Pixel Pop, and talked about in the future looking at the Nintendo DS game Rhythm Tengoku (aka Rhythm Heaven). If we use a DS in the future, we might also also look at games that use gestural / 2D interfaces like Elite Beat Agents, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, etc.

Dragon’s Lair: predictable patterns

We also spent a while playing (and most of the time just watching) the Dragon’s Lair playable DVD re-release, discussing both the structure of the game and the way that the player painstakingly learns patterns of pre-recorded interaction through some queues and a lot of learning-by-dying, and responds to each cartoon unit by performing these patterns. Do you need to be able to react in order for it to be a rhythm game, or does prediction based on memory enough?

Stampede and Space Invaders: emergant patterns?

We talked about the Atari 2600 games Stampede, which involve playing a pattern of bump-actions that emerge over time, and Space Invaders, which begins allows a wide number of approaches but narrows down to requiring an extremely specific pattern to be played in the opening moves of every level (for example, see 1:30-2:10 of the video below). If the player is rehearsing a pattern, does that count as a rhythm game, even if the visual metaphor doesn’t involve beats?

How to Complete Space Invaders

DDR-esque

There was a long break to play with a new Subor 16-bit unit, but we did find a controller-based chinese dance rhythm game to play on it in the arrow-style of Dance Dance Revolution, but with increasingly complex button combinations required as the game advances. Visual literacy was an issue with the game design — the designers had created an unusual “match the beat while it is fully in the box” UI metaphor rather than “match the beat when it crosses the line,” so at first we were failing a lot and having a hard time understanding why.

In the future: Rez, Otocky, …?

We didn’t end up playing the musical syncopation shooter Rez, however we did take a moment to watch a video of Otocky, an early musical shooter by Toshio Iwai (the later creator of Electroplankton for the DS). Otocky is a simple 8-bit side-scroller for the NES, while Rez is a PS2 3D-forward flyer. Like Rez, Otocky creates musical syncopation as a byproduct of play rather than using “match the beat” as a core game mechanic. Unlike Rez, however, Otocky had a BGM mode in which it is easily playable as a kind of music toy.