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.
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it will be interesting to see if the upcoming work on Natal and the PS3Eye will produce new music games that don't involve instruments, but instead use the body (like DDR without a dance pad) or do literal "air guitar".
@Elsa
Yeah, after playing Pop'n Music on the wii, I think that Natal will make motion gaming better than using a wiimote
GOD YOU'RE AMAZING FOR USING THAT REBORN PICTURE SO RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS. GOOD JOB SIR.
Sounds hot! Makes me wish I had a sense of rhythm >.<
I didn't know another DDR game came out recently...then again, I don't think I've played DDR in about a year. Wonder if I can still play Heavy. >_>
Also, that is some AMAZING artwork on that guitar of yours. If you did that yourself, I would like to say that, in a perfectly quasiheterosexual way, that I love you.
Oh, and one other thing- am I the only one that thinks the advent of Natal would be a perfect way to bring ParaParaParadise to consoles? (Never really played it myself, but from what I've seen at conventions it looks like it could be done decently with Natal controls)
Want Empress nao
@vApathyv:
Yeah, DDR X came out here in the US back in June and I have to say that it is a pretty good mix of songs on it. The only problem is that they redesigned the cab from the old system 573 pads to these weird pads that look like modded cobalt flux controllers that require you to be 300 lbs. just to hold the button down. The other thing that might worry former DDR players is that they use a flatscreen LCD and the timing is really off from what I played.
As for the guitar, I saw this blog via Pixiv the other day - http://blogs.dion.ne.jp/konaken/archives/7558460.html
This guy realized that you can remove the faceplate off of the Les Paul controller and wanted to add a personal touch to the blank faceplate and he went all out on it. He doesn't have any instructions on how he did it, but he does list the materials that he used.
One of the most puzzling things to me is walking into an arcade only to find a LOT of people huddled around the new Guitar Hero machine. While I can understand the need to show off skills you learned while playing at home, I have a hard time understanding why that means more than spending money on a truncated version of a game you already own.
I mean, wouldn't you rather be playing Time Crisis? ;_;
@Fogo- Eek, really? I had enough problems adjusting from a much-worn in DDR Extreme machine to an almost-new SuperNOVA cabinet back in the day...that sounds pretty awful. >_>
And yeah, I painted one of my guitars once (It was an Xplorer, back before the faceplates detached) but it came out terrible. Kudos to that guy though, makes me wanna get off my ass and paint my Strat like I said I would.
@Bat Country
Exactly, and the price per song on those machines is $1 for one of the short songs and $2 for one of those long songs. All it is a Dell PC running the PC version of the game inside of it.