rhythmheaven – Set Side B

Sundry Sunday: Rhythm Heaven Reanimated

rodneylives — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Nintendo’s Rhythm Heaven games are still a bit obscure, but have a passionate fanbase. They share design sensibilities with the WarioWare series, which is because both share a character designer, Ko Takeuchi. They both have a distinctive clean-line look, and a similar sense of humor.

About four years ago, some of those fans made one of those reanimation compilations of the series, and the fruits of their labor is unusually keeping in spirit of the original, which itself samples many different art and musical styles. The reanimation feels like it could have been one of the remixes from the games itself.

Speaking of, the reanimation covers all of the remixes, of all of the games in the series, with the result that the full sequence is eighteen minutes long! It’s quite faithful to the originals, despite the vastly different animation styles, and it even scored an appreciative comment from Takeuchi himself! Here it is, but be warned: you’ll watch it for a while, then see one of the videos mention it’s only half over, and you’ll think to yourself, no way:

An aside, a different reanimation project near to my heart, but unrelated to video games, is the highly-memeable 2004 collaboration that animated They Might Be Giants’ Fingertips (6 minutes, original page). Note, in its original Flash incarnation, different elements would be selected on every play, an aspect that is unfortunately lost in these renderings.

rodneylives

Dragon Con 2023: Music Games

rodneylives — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 14:00:00 +0000

Save Point brought a whole bevy of Japanese arcade music games to DragonCon this year. I am of two minds of them: it’s definitely niche and I’m in favor of that, and it’s nice to see a genre like this represented well. But they brought so many of them, and they were stationed close to the board gaming area, which made it very difficult to be heard there. Throughout most of the con you had to nearly shout to be heard in that area! I couldn’t get into any board games because of it. Hopefully next year they’ll find a way to better isolate the music games from attractions more suited to a quiet atmosphere.

Still, I will set aside my grudge against wrecking my Le Havre experience this year in order to document, via my cell phone, the many music games that appeared in 2023. Here we go:

StepManiax, played by the requisite bikini girl

“Jubeat” here has been at DragonCon several times before. It’s got an unusual form factor, and no screen?

“Pop’n Music,” from Konami’s Bemani series. I don’t get the significance of the “Pop’n” appellation. Is it related to Pop’n Twinbee? Is “Pop’n” a good thing in Japan?

I think this picture was from Pop’n Music.

I am uncertain how proper it is to make fun of the blatant Engrish in the title of “Sound Voltex Exceed Gear” here. The game has been at DragonCon many times, and every time the word Voltex makes my inner editor cringe. Maybe the title was intentional, but I doubt it. Anyway, it features the usual kind of anime girl characters that are so common in the art for these games.

From another Konami game whose name I don’t seem to have recorded. The penguin mascots are unmistakable relatives of Penta, introduced way back in 1983 in Antarctic Adventure for the MSX, and Pentarou from the Parodius series.

One of Namco’s Taiko no Tatsujin drumming games, rarely seen in the US. Donkey Konga on the Gamecube was part of this family.

Of course there was a Dance Dance Revolution machine, how could there not?

Groove Coaster, mostly a rhythm game where you tap a button as a cursor reaches designated points in a line. I think Rhythm Heaven does it much better in principle.

Technica 3 here asks, why be satisfied with one screen when you can have two?

“WACCA” (?) here is one of two games to use a washing machine-inspired cabinet design.

This one, whose title I didn’t catch, is a washer/dryer combo

This mutation of the theme of DDR, and the next one, are so old as to use the old Konami twin stripe logo, which I think is much better than the following “company name on red background” one.

Dance Maniax 2nd Mix. Konami really saturated the market with these for awhile, didn’t they?

Almost the last one. I can almost hear the overwhelming din in my ears now.

The last one, Rhythm Heaven! Of course the most charming and unique of them all was the one I could barely hear at all, its volume was turned so far down. It was almost unplayable, but it still had a lot of people try it out!

I mean just look at this! How could you not want to play it? What’s up with that stylin’ monkey? Why is that giraffe in the shot??

It’s blurry but I had to include this one, from the attract mode. The Rhythm Heaven games have so much love and care poured into them. Of course many of the staff also worked on the WarioWare series.

That just may exhaust what I can milk from my DragonCon attendance this year. Back to our usual beats!

rodneylives

DragonCon 2023: Arcade Things

rodneylives — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 14:00:00 +0000

More low-effort posts about game things spotted at Atlanta’s pop culture mega-convention.

A Cosmic Smash cabinet!

That recent arcade port of NES obscurity Mr. Gimmick!

A 2007 arcade version of Rhythm Heaven, completely in Japanese! This was perhaps the coolest game at the convention.

Sadly blurry in this shot, but: Space Invaders! Without the color overlay though. The monitor didn’t work for like two entire days, too.

Twilight Zone pinball, this picture being of the time I nearly completed the door but lost my last ball before collecting that hated Question Mark! (Don’t worry though, the next day I came back and did it, and played Lost In The Zone. I left with the #2 score on the machine–although oddly, it seems someone else who plays these games also has my initials? JWH? Their Terminator 2 machine’s scoreboard is full of JWH but I’ve never played it!)

The games were brought this year by Save Point, who mostly provided Japanese games and some pinballs, and Joystick Gamebar, which provided a good number or retro arcade machines and more pinball, including that Twilight Zone.

Two of the people who helped bring us the games from Joystick Gamebar this year, Winston (left) and Brian (right)

I’ve got hundreds of pictures that I’ve yet to sift through. More tomorrow!

rodneylives