We are about 9 months into 2009 and a lot has happened this year in the rhythm gaming genre here in the US and over in Japan. We have seen the release of several Guitar Hero games and the excellent Beatles Rock Band along with a boatload of downloadable content released for both games (Rock Band and Guitar Hero). The portable systems even got some games such as Rhythm Heaven, Rock Band Unplugged, and DJ Max Fever.

In Japan, Konami has done their annual updates for Beatmania IIDX, Pop'n Music, Guitar Freaks, Drummania, and even Dance Dance Revolution got a new AC release a couple months ago. Besides updating their current franchises, they introduced Ubeat, a new game that uses a set 16 buttons in a 4x4 grid with tiny screens in them with gameplay similar to Elite Beat Agents.

The biggest news this year has been the release of DJ Max Technika outside of South Korea. PM studios has made waves in the arcade industry by releasing this game around the world and embracing the world market rather than shunning it like Konami has done for the past decade.

So with all that has happened so far, what's coming up for the remainder of the year and beyond?



In October, the US will see Pop'n Music make it's debut in the US with the 5 button Wii version on the 20th. After that, DJ hero and it's turntable peripherial come out on the 27th. In November, Lego Rock Band comes out sometime later in the month and Scratch: The Ultimate DJ was pushed back to Q1 2010.



In Japan, they will get a new PS2 release of Beatmania IIDX 16 Empress on October 15th. This apparently will be the last PS2 release and they are making it as amazing as possible with 180 songs spread out across 2 discs. See the full list here.

While the console selection is slim, the arcade releases will be abundant later this year with Beatmania IIDX 17 Sirius coming out at the end of the year and Pop'n Music 18 Sengoku Retsuden currently testing along with Drummania XG and Guitar Freaks XG and will probably see a release date sometime in 2010



While some may say 2009 is the year of the fighter, I believe that this year belongs to the rhythm games since there were so many high quality releases in the genre in this year alone in both the US and in Japan across multiple platforms. With that in mind, let's keep on rockin' until 2010 rolls around.