The use of CD-ROMs for games in the 1990s dramatically improved the quality of in-game music. With this advancement came a number of game designers who decided to use this to combine the worlds of gaming and music, creating the rhythm game genre.
Unsurprisingly, that’s why the original PlayStation had a ton of great rhythm games. One of them, Parappa the Rapper, proved enormously influential. It even gave Sony an extra mascot for a while, as the rapping dog represented the diversity of games on the system. Not every game has to be this big, though, and there are plenty of weird and wonderful rhythm games that haven’t quite had the same lasting impact.
6 Spice World
While the PlayStation dominated the gaming charts, the charts saw the dominance of The Spice Girls, especially in their home country of the UK. Of course Sony’s London studio saw this as a great opportunity to combine the two. The result was 1998 Spice Worldwho shared his name with the group’s film debut.
The result is probably one of the weirder appearances of actual musicians in video games, as the girls were all turned into big-headed Bratz pop versions of themselves. The gameplay was also odd, as it offered simple dance gameplay and the ability to direct music videos while the girls dance around. While the game was popular at the time, it faded from memory when the Spice Girl mania subsided in the 2000s, and also because the game itself wasn’t very good.
5 Liquid
Liquid is one of the weirder titles from the original PlayStation. It was so strange that North America completely avoided it as it was only launched in Japan and Europe. Players control a dolphin that swims through a hazy seascape, the goal being to collect artifacts within different levels. Each of these artifacts contains a specific sound, and these sounds became part of a sample library.
In fact, controlling the dolphin was only half the game. The other half was the Groove Editor, where the collected samples could be thrown together to make music, and the dolphin could then improvise the sounds on the fly. This music creation was limited, however, as the player could only create true New Age ambient music using the game’s limited tools.
4 Music 2000
Not so much a game and more a piece of software for the PlayStation, the Music Codemasters games are best summarized as Pro Tools for the PS1. At a time of limited availability of music making software for the home market, Music was hugely influential. It gave PlayStation owners a basic digital audio workstation, with its own sample library, sequencers, and tons of built-in effects.
It had one major limitation, though, as players couldn’t export their music, so it remained locked in the PlayStation and couldn’t be ripped directly to a CD. The monsters in Music 2000 were also very 90s, so it was hard to make something that wasn’t moody techno, which limited its potential. It’s mostly forgotten these days as more flexible PC-based DAWs have become affordable and readily available, but it was a big deal at the time.
3 Bust-a-Groove
While Dance Dance Revolution started heating up in arcades, another game brought dancing gameplay to the PlayStation: bust a groove. However, it did not use a dance mat like its more popular contemporary. Instead it used input similar to Parappa the Rapperwhile a group of wacky characters held dance-offs.
The characters were absolutely strange, ranging from a stereotypical 1970s disco dancer to a hip-hop dancer from the mean streets, all the way to a man in a gas mask, a magical cat-themed girl, a woman who dresses like a baby, and a couple of aliens. . It was bizarre and received generally critical acclaim, but the series proved unpopular in the West, as the second game skipped Europe and the third game never left Japan.
2 Um Sorry Lammy
While Parappa the Rapper is getting a lot of attention these days for how influential and unique it is, its direct spin-off, Um Sorry Lammyis usually more ignored. umbrella even got a remaster for PS4, while Um Sorry Lammy lingers in the past.
to keep umbrella‘s call-and-response gameplay, this spin-off turns the responses of repeated rap phrases into cool guitar licks. Playing as sheep guitarist Lammy from the rock band MilkCan, players must use their guitar skills in bizarre situations like putting out a fire, flying an airplane and caring for babies. It offered slightly more complexity than its predecessor, while retaining the tone and ease of access that made it so beloved in the first place.
1 Vib ribbon
Of the same spirit that gave the world umbrella and Lammy, Vib ribbon sees the player take control of a rabbit made of vector graphics and walk on a line covered in shapes, each representing a different button on the controller. These shapes slide along the line to the beat of the music, and the bunny has to jump, jump, and jump over them to avoid turning into a worm and dying.
It was already a unique concept, but what made it extra special was that the levels were generated procedurally from all the audio input into the game. In other words, the game CD could be swapped out for any audio CD, and the tracks on that CD would create a series of new levels for the game. It was a cool concept for the time, but aside from an accidental PS3 re-release and a PS5 pack-in-game reference Astro’s playroom, Vib ribbon has yet to be brought into the mp3 and streaming world where it could really shine.
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