Have you ever seen someone play Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) and wonder how these guys do it? Or how some top players on Osu! seem inhuman?
I was one of these rhythm game players for a good part of my life. I was fortunate enough to live close to an arcade with many rhythm games, leading me to play rather frequently. If you were curious how deep the rhythm game rabbit hole goes, maybe I can offer a sneak peek of it to you via some of my experiences.
DDR
When I was a wee kid, arcades were all the rage where I lived. All the cool kids and their cliques would gather in the arcades after school and play for hours while simultaneously getting their eardrums blasted. While other kids were interested in shooting games like Time Crisis and House of the Dead, I would gaze upon the older kids playing DDR or Para Para Paradise, wondering how they could coordinate their eyes and body so well. I knew I wanted to try them as well, but I was always conscious about the onlooking eyes that would gather whenever someone was playing these games.
The gameplay was simple. The arrows would come sliding to the top, and you had to press on the corresponding pads on the floor when the time was right.
Eventually, I decided to give it a try when I was there with my friends. I tried not to think too much about how much of a fool I would be making of myself, and tried to have fun. Unsurprisingly, I loved the gameplay and I was hooked. I wasn't great, but I enjoyed playing. One of the songs that I loved playing was Sunkiss Drop, a happy-core song that was produced by one of Konami's (the game publisher) artists. It had a very upbeat tune, and the regular beats allowed for some really fun chereographies. See this duo doing some interesting footwork for an idea of what it could look like. I loved the footwork at about 1:59 in this video.
Unfortunately, the arcades near me didn't have a DDR machine, and playing DDR worked up sweat easily - if I was with my friends, I wouldn't want to be stinking of sweat after a session of DDR! I still had an itch for rhythm games. So I started playing...
Jubeat
The arcade nearest to my home had these funny little cabinets with 16 squares. Since they were almost always occupied and it was hard to peek at the screen while others were playing, I didn't pay it much attention initially. When the arcade was less crowded, I decided to try it. And boy, I was hooked. Just like DDR, the aim of the game was to hit the notes as they popped up. Since they corresponded to the rhythm of the music, it was satisfying to hit the notes correctly.
And to top it all off, you could unlock new songs to play as you progressed in the game by simply purchasing a Konami e-Amusement card, which could be used for many of Konami's games! You started out with maybe 50 or so playable songs, but if you unlocked everything that number would easily double or triple. The more you played, the more currency you earned to unlock the songs.
It also turned out that one of my friends who lived close to me loved playing rhythm games. So together, we enabled each other's addiction to rhythm games by playing them with each other. I spent a lot of money, but I did enjoy myself a lot as well.
Sound Voltex
As Jubeat lost popularity over the years, a new game from Konami came to take its place. It was called Sound Voltex.
Like most rhythm games, you hit the notes according to the music. However, in Sound Voltex, you also had to turn these two knobs which simulated some musical filters, like distortion. Even though it wasn't fundamentally different from any other rhythm game, the fast-paced songs and the satisfaction from passing a song was greater than that of other rhythm games.
Nothing beats a good ol' video when it comes to explaining how the game works, so here's gameplay of one of the songs I could pass at my peak.
Sound Voltex had a ridiculously high skill ceiling, and while I was doing okay for myself, I wasn't anywhere near the top. One basic game of Sound Voltex cost about ~1 USD, and you could play 3 songs if you passed the first two. I didn't come from money and didn't have enough money to constantly play the game. Even if I did, I enjoyed playing songs that I liked instead of practicing songs that I wasn't good at, which wasn't great for improving my skill at the game.
The End of Arcade Rhythm Games for Me
As mentioned above, my progress on all these rhythm games was linked to a Konami e-amusement card. However, I lost my card on a flight, nullifying all progress that I had made in the 10 years I played Konami games. Having hundreds of dollars and hours of progress wiped with the loss of a card, I stopped playing rhythm games in the arcade. I simply didn't have the time to redo everything again.
Every once in a while, I take a stab at Osu! or StepMania to see if I still have the rhythm game chops. But every time, it becomes apparent that it takes a monumental effort to get good at rhythm games and I didn't want to spend the time to get better. I guess my skill level at rhythm games peaked much earlier.
Have you played any rhythm games before? How was your experience? Let me know in the comments.