i love music games

[strumlord]

man. i cant wait for this friday cause amplitude will be in my hands! i will finally be able to play it! i will rule the online circuit too. seriously though, who else is getting this game?

[That Guy]

What do you guys think -- spammer or true-to-life Cellar virgin?

[perth]

i dont think hes a spammer, theres no link. on the other hand, theres no value being added with this post. i think we should take a wait-and-see approach.

~james

[Elspode]

It does strike me as sort of odd that one's first post would be something that apparently no one has heard of...

[perth]

nah, i think ive heard of it. think its a ps2 game like rez for the dreamcast (actually, while i wouldnt be willing to pay more than say 20 bucks on rez, its kind of a cool game if you can find it).

~james

[Undertoad]

Music games? Is that like dance dance revolution?

[wolf]

I was on wait-and-see mode also ...

It sure SOUNDS like an ad ... but does comply with the cellar rule about no urls in your out of the gate post ...

(*shrugs*) Either dude will come back and tell us more or this is the last we heard of him.

I can't say I've ever played any kind of music games, myself ... unless they involved Schragemusik (I'll save you the trouble ... it's strafing, particularly from a aircraft (forget which one, sorry ... possibly the ME-109) that had upwards angled guns, so the German fighter pilot could come up UNDER the pig-dog American Mustang and blow him out of the sky.

[vsp]

Only vaguely. Amplitude is the sequel to Frequency, which was a sleeper hit for the PS2. Those two and DDR all fall into the currently-popular genre of "rhythm-action" games, which can be described as increasingly-sophisticated musical variations of Simon. <a href="http://psx.ign.com/articles/150/150490p1.html">Parappa the Rapper</a> on the PS1 was probably the breakthrough title for the genre (in America, at least). The Bemani series (DDR, Beatmania, guitar games, etc.) has sold like hotcakes in Japan.

Whereas <a href="http://psx.ign.com/articles/161/161525p1.html">DDR and its many remixes</a> are based around physical dexterity (stomping pads to the beat), Frequency and Amplitude are centered more closely around the music itself, tearing it apart and remixing it through controller manipulation.

<a href="http://ps2.ign.com/articles/166/166450p1.html">A glowing review of Frequency</a>

I have Frequency, and don't quite "get it," but do regard it as an extremely interesting conceptual design.

<a href="http://ps2.ign.com/articles/166/166546p1.html">Rez</a>, on the other hand, is a shoot-em-up on rails (think Panzer Dragoon, Starblade, Starfox, etc.) that's designed around some serious eye-and-ear candy. EVERYTHING in the game (shots, explosions, changes in terrain, you name it) is kept in time with the techno beat of the background music. It's a maddeningly subtle concept that's well worth checking out and experimenting with, with different styles of play capable of unlocking all sorts of strange effects.

The Japanese version is coupled with a small vibrating device that plugs into the controller port, which throbs in time with the pulse of the game. Those of you with perverse applications in mind for said device can rest assured that you're not the first. Many have reported that it's the first game that their girlfriends WANT them to play.

[That Guy]

Originally posted by strumlord
man. i cant wait for this friday cause amplitude will be in my hands! i will finally be able to play it! i will rule the online circuit too. seriously though, who else is getting this game?

But who writes like this about a game in their frist ps0t?

UT - DDR is a funny game. I've never played it, but just watching those idiots pay to look like morons gets me going, especially when they're techno-geeks that have no rhythm at all.

[Jakeline]

UT - DDR is a funny game. I've never played it, but just watching those idiots pay to look like morons gets me going, especially when they're techno-geeks that have no rhythm at all.

Guilty. I'm a chubby white girl with very little rhythm, but I totally dig DDR. It's my guilty pleasure. It's actually been my idea to open a gym that primarily has physically interactive games (like DDR and that boxing game with the gloves, and stuff like that), so people can actually have a good time while working out. And let me tell you, DDR is a hell of a good workout.

[Undertoad]

That's a WAY cool idea jl.

I love it when gaming and technology and life come together like that. As more and more kid gamers grow into adult gamers, I bet this is the wave of the future.

[Jakeline]

Thanks UT. All I need now is to find a rich sugar-daddy to fund it. Anyone know a weathly man, close to death, who wants to adopt me? Or just a plain weathly man would be fine. I'm sure I could arrange an "accident."

[vsp]

Originally posted by Undertoad
That's a WAY cool idea jl.

I love it when gaming and technology and life come together like that. As more and more kid gamers grow into adult gamers, I bet this is the wave of the future.

A while ago, Slashdot and others linked to a story about a California high school that incorporated DDR into its phys-ed curriculum.

I watched the kids going nutzoid on the pads at the mall, and figured I'd give it a try a while ago; I downloaded (arrr! arrr!) the Japanese DDR 2nd Mix for my Dreamcast, got my hands on a PS1 pad and adapter, and plunked the game on the easiest settings. I got to where I could get a decent rating on the first or second song before the novelty wore off and I went on to some other games. (The versions being played now are simply ludicrous; the arrows fly by at warp speed, to the point where I can't imagine anyone finishing a level without tearing both ACLs.)

The kid gamer -> adult gamer paradigm is THE reason why Sony currently rules the home gaming universe. The first generation of mass-market cartridge-based consoles (Atari, Intell, Coleco, Odyssey^2, Astrocade, Vectrex) ruled the roost from around '80-'84; the NES was at its peak later in that decade. Lots of people who were kids or teens in that period were firmly in their twenties when the PlayStation debuted in 1995... but unlike previous generations, they'd grown up with video games and thus still had an interest in them.

The PlayStation was a mass-market console capable of appealing to more sophisticated audiences (though also capable of kiddy fare), brought PC CD-ROM game capabilities to the living room in an affordable closed box, and also eliminated the need to visit arcades to play arcade-quality games. The PS1 was the console that Moore's Law caught up to; what you played in the arcade was often identical to what you played at home, but without the annoying kids buzzing around or any need to wait in line to play. Even at their best, accuracy in 1:1 conversions was something that could rarely be said for the Genesis or Super Nintendo (except when rehashing older games), let alone older consoles.

The Saturn had many of these advantages (I have a friend who paid big bucks for one specifically to play arcade-quality Virtua Fighter 2), but Sega didn't have Sony's aggressive marketing or anywhere near the number of third-party developers. Ditto for the 3DO, which was an ambitious failure in its attempt to do all of the above, but was older than the others and thus cripped by lesser design specs.

Once Sony ruled the home, attracting older gamers became even easier for them, because that opened the door for niche titles that many kids wouldn't be interested in. Developers could take advantage of the huge console base to make games for limited audiences, knowing that a smaller chunk of the console base was still a vast number of potential sales. And so it goes to this day.

[strumlord]

i wasnt spamming just stoked about the game is all. i havent been ruling the online circuit either, turns out ever ones better than me ( i have made some decent (atleast i like to think!) mixes though. my s/n on amplitude is the same, 'strumlord' if anyone wants to trade tracks.

[perth]

i dont think anyone accused you of spamming, strumlord.

~james