The PS2 era saw the rise of the plastic peripheral music genre of video games. Guitar Hero debuted in 2005 and took the world by storm, while Dance Dance Revolution continued to be a huge success even in its home market.
While these games grabbed all the attention, they weren’t the only rhythm games released for the PS2. Behind the flash and excitement of impersonating Jimi Hendrix by swinging a plastic guitar around the living room, a group of smaller releases put their own spin on the genre, often in strange and experimental ways.
6 Britney’s Dance Beat
In an era when seemingly everything got its own licensed game, it’s not much of a surprise to see that one of the biggest pop stars of the era, Britney Spears, has built a game built entirely around her and her music. The game plays as an aspiring dancer who aspires to become one of Britney’s backup dancers on her upcoming tour and puts the player through a series of challenges based on different songs.
However, unlike the growing number of dance games that were built around real life dancing at the time, Britney’s Dance Beat attached to button inputs on the controller. The game also only featured five of Britney’s songs, which must have been quite a disappointment to fans expecting more. It played just as well as any other similar rhythm game, but the focus on Britney alone severely limited its appeal.
5 B-boy
Another dance game where the player didn’t actually dance, B-boy focused on street dance competitions. However, this may have been beneficial, as having real windmills built may have resulted in a few broken bulbs. Instead, the game relies on timed button presses and a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater style balance meter to hold frostbite.
However, it didn’t do very well at the time, clearly overshadowed by other rhythm games of the time, and little information can be found online about it. Reviews were also mixed, which may have contributed to the lack of success.
4 Mojib Ribbon
Parappa the Rapper designer Masaya Matsuura has spent much of his career creating cartoon animals to create interactive music, and Mojib Ribbon is no exception. Yet another game about a rapping animal, players follow Mojibri, an ink-pen rabbit trying to become a great rapper. He does this by writing his raps on clouds he walks over, while the words are written as he goes, occasionally dipping his pen into clouds of ink floating above him.
It’s a bizarre yet compelling concept, and one that Sony has found impossible to pinpoint. Due to the heavy reliance on the syllabic nature of the Japanese language on his texts, translation into English proved difficult. Of course, the game never left Japan, nor has it seen a re-release, making it an obscure curiosity.
3 Mad Maestro
When asked about the connection between video games and orchestras, the answer is usually concert performances of video game scores by classical musicians. However, Mad Maestro suggested another connection – what if someone made a rhythm play about conducting an orchestra?
This title is built around a story in which a young conductor has to save the city’s concert hall. He does this by recruiting a group of supporters to help the city keep the city open. This means tackling their problems by playing different pieces of classical music to them, with composers like Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Mozart. Though poorly received in the West, Japan loved the game, leading to a Christmas edition of the game and a direct sequel, neither of which left their home countries. It’s a strange but wonderful concept, and unfortunately no one seems to want to revisit it today.
2 Frequency
Harmonix has built a reputation as the favorite music game developers. From fuser until Rock band, they have released a consistent stream of much-loved rhythm games and are devoting significant time and resources to improving the interaction between music and games. Although they are best known as the original creators of Guitar Heroit wasn’t the first time they released a rhythm game for PS2.
Frequency resembled a space shooter, like a small craft hovering along a track, picking up notes. Striking these notes correctly allowed the song to automatically play for a while, while new songs opened with other instruments, creating a juggling act as players jumped from song to song, allowing them to keep each element, and thus the entire song. . It was incredibly fun and featured music from the likes of No Doubt, Orbital and the director’s own band, Freezepop. Today, however, it’s been forgotten thanks to Harmonix’s greater successes, and seems unlikely to ever see a resurgence.
1 Guitaroo Man
Guitaroo Man is the game for people who think that Guitar Hero is way too normal. The protagonist of the game is a shy, nervous boy named U-1 who is attacked one day by a demonic creature, which leads his talking dog to hand him a magic guitar and urge him to use his powers to fight evil. defeat. The game then leads U-1 to use the power of rocks to take out a series of weird and wacky enemies to become the True Guitaroo Man.
It’s incredibly strange, but the simple gameplay, often involving a combination of button presses and analog stick movements, is addictive and immersive. It doesn’t do anything innovative with the rhythm genre – instead it takes what makes it fun and spins it all the way up. It’s a shame, then, that Koei decided to release the game in incredibly small numbers, essentially making it a failure, as it’s never seen a re-release.
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