Memorable Music and Rhythmic Games Part 2

UNiSON (2001)

I’ve only played the Japanese version of this game, thanks to my friend’s brother, who has access to a Japanese PS2. The story of the game is cute - the city is under tyrannical rule, and dancing is prohibited by the dictator. Three girls - Trill, Cela, and Chilly (representing the three difficulty levels) form a group called Unison to sing, dance, and perform in order to encourage the public to revolt and lift the ban on dancing.

Despite the fact that most of the songs were originally by female singers, the Japanese version re-recorded the songs (including YMCA) with the voice actresses for Trill and Cela. Their dance instructor, sporting a ginormous afro, trains them to dance with commands similar to real-life.

The game play is interesting as it involves both joysticks to represent arm and leg movements and requires a lot of memorization. The instructor teaches you the steps (joystick movements) in bite-size chunks, only allowing you to pass to the next section if you memorize and perform the steps well. Before being allowed to dance your steps in public, you must be able to perform the whole song from start to finish in the studio.

Here’s a sample of the training. By the way, the voice actor for the instructor is the same actor for the City Hunter anime.

Wasn’t that cute? And that’s why I couldn’t play the American version - it lost its charm.

First of all, they dubbed all the Japanese dialogue to English, so the voice acting is relatively poor, in my opinion. Next, in the US version, they chose popular American songs and played it as is. That means Unison is no longer a singing group (with songs by Nelly and The Village People, I’d hope not!). And their dance instructor no longer shouts out commands during training, but shows you the moves silently. T_T

On stage, the costumes and background sets are interesting and have a good design. If you’ve memorized your steps well, you can marvel at the surroundings and notice how your dance moves complement the rest of the group. Here’s their first performance:

This game makes me feel like I’ve had to learn and practice dance moves. I’ll admit that my friend, her brother, and I have gotten together to perform these dances while humming the songs…yes we look like idiots. No you will not see us in a video! Hehehe….live-action Unison!

Developer: Tecmo
Console: PlayStation 2

Gitaroo Man

I do not own this game, however, it’s a worthy mention for this post. You play a whiny boy with low self-esteem who, when challenged to a musical battle, will transform into Gitaroo Man, who is an extreme opposite of the protagonist. This game also has quirky flavor and designs, including a moaning female voice that is SO hilarious, it can’t be taken seriously…..”Oooooh….Guitaroo Maaaan!……Ooooh YEAAAAH!…”

The game play requires tracing a line with one of the joysticks while pressing buttons to the beats indicated by the line. There are four types of game phases - charge - you play to gain health, attack - attempt to drop the opponent’s health, but messing this up will drop your own health, guard - avoids your opponent’s attacks by dodging them, and harmony - to finish the level.

An enemy’s life bar on the screen can be misleading - an empty life bar does not mean you win immediately, and bar with some life does not mean that you’ve lost. However, if you have not inflicted a sufficient amount of damage to your opponents, the game will loop the song so you have to play through again.

Developers: iNiS / Koei
Console: PlayStation 2

Rez (2001)

When I first saw this game, the first thing I noticed was the 3D wireframe backgrounds along with the nice techno/electronica music. Everything was synchronized to the beat, from the character’s pulsing body, moving backgrounds, enemies, and bombs. Each stage has 10 sections, starting with a simple base and beat. Each time you move onto a new section it will introduce another layer to the music, making it more complex the farther you travel.

The game play is interesting and is comparable to the targeting system in Panzer Dragoon. Basically, in third-person view, the character is flying on a pre-determined path (not free flying). The joystick moves the square targeting crosshair around the screen, and you’re able to lock onto a maximum of 8 targets by holding down the fire button. Once released, the colliding missiles make music synced to the beat, depending on the number of targets locked.

Your life bar is represented similarly to Vib-Ribbon’s representation - get hit and you regress into a simpler shape. Collect enough upgrades, and you will evolve into a smoother form.

I don’t remember what the story is for this game, and frankly, I don’t care! The game is a wonderful experience. The bosses are pretty challenging and impressive. And even towards the end, when you have to re-defeat the bosses from the previous stages before you can move onto the final one, they’re slightly different in terms of look and behavior. Nice to see it’s not plain ol’ “we’re going to make you fight the same bosses you already defeated before.”

Developers: United Game Artists
Consoles: Dreamcast, PlayStation 2

Elite Beat Agents (2006)

Three guys, dressed in dark suits and sunglasses like government agents, travel around the world in search of those in dire need of help. Situations are not serious - an example is the female babysitter who wants to calm the children and spend time with her boyfriend, or the dog who is lost and needs to find his way home. The agents do not directly help those in need, but instead dance and encourage them like cheerleaders.

Featured on the Nintendo DS, it requires a stylus to play three types of actions: Hit Markers: numbered circles to show where/what order to tap, dotted lines in between to show the speed at which to tap, Phrase Markers: tap and hold the stylus, following the ball as it moves, and Spin Markers: which requires you to spin the wheel on the screen with the stylus.

Depending on how well you execute the moves, you can influence the scenes on the top screen. It’s hard to play and watch at the same time, but the game has a review mode. Very entertaining, actually, like so:

Developers: iNiS
Consoles: Nintendo DS

So these’re all my choices for now. I think it’s interesting to keep track of what developers created what and notice slight similarities between those types of games. What musical games do YOU guys like?