It's been awhile since I've imported games from Japan, but a few years ago, I was doing it quite a bit. Two games in particular stood out among those I sampled: Daigasso! Band Brothers and Rhythm Tengoku. Both were developed by Nintendo themselves, rather than simply being published by the company like another great import title: the excellent Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. Both are also now getting some sequels... within the next eight weeks. My wallet is already weeping.
Band Brothers wasn't just my first import title; it was one of my first Nintendo DS titles overall, added to my collection after Yoshi Touch & Go and WarioWare: Touched but before I experienced the pure bliss of Kirby: Canvas Curse. Unlike many of the other games in the DS's launch window, it wasn't touch-centric; in fact, it was originally designed for the Game Boy Color. Its basic gameplay, where the player presses and releases buttons according to directions that scroll by on the top screen, only takes advantage of the DS' higher button count rather than any other unique system feature.
The button count, though, makes it work: the cardinals of the d-pad plus the four face buttons make up a full scale, meaning you don't just push buttons in time with the music in the game—you are actually playing the DS like an instrument. While key changes, octave shifts, and sharps are handled automatically by the game—you just need to keep pushing the buttons it tells you to—in the unlockable Pro mode, you also become responsible for pushing L and R to do the octave and sharp shifts yourself. It makes for a very challenging experience.
Band Brothers didn't stop there, though; it added a number of features that were DS-centric; the two most memorable being its multiplayer mode—in which eight players could all tackle separate parts of a song with a single game card, or an infinite number of players could play a song together if everyone had their own card—and the Score Edit Pro mode, which let players use a complex (by Nintendo standards) editor to compose their own works for play in the game. Both features helped propel Band Brothers to cult status; communities sprung up on both sides of the Pacific, playing together and trading songs. Through the use of unofficial save-copying hardware, fans even worked out how to trade songs over the Internet.
And now we have Daigasso! Band Brothers DX, which ships three weeks from today. Of course, it has a new song list, but there's also a couple neat new features coming on-board as well. Most notable is that Nintendo has added online support for additional downloadable songs (63 are listed on the official site, complementing the 31 listed as included) as well as trading your own compositions online—and, it seems, contributing them for public download as well. The onboard song storage for your own tunes has been expanded from eight slots to 100.
A few new ways to play have been added as well; a Jam Sessions-like guitar setup where you hold chords with buttons and strum on the touch screen, and a karaoke mode where you sing into the system's mic. There'll be a special Wii channel, too, that will let you pipe your performance over your TV speakers and show everyone's scores on the big screen. Of course, it's all for naught if the new songs aren't good; the original game was great, but a later add-on cartridge that fit in the DS's SLOT-2 contained a lot of lackluster arrangements. Hopefully, the new game won't slack off in this department.
The other game seeing a revival, eight weeks from today, was one of the GBA's last greats: Rhythm Tengoku. Rhythm Tengoku is one of those games that I will always remember; while it is true that it draws on the mechanics of games that came before it, it skillfully carves its own niche in the annals of game history, providing the player with an experience all its own. It is primarily a rhythm game inasmuch as your score is determined by how accurately you press buttons in time to the music, certainly; but to leave it at that is giving it short shrift. It is so much more.
48 challenges pit your skills against not just different patterns of arrows sliding by or sets of targets to hit in-time with the music, but a wide-ranging showcase of unique scenarios and varied gameplay skillfully woven with a delightful array of music that feels far less licensed (as rhythm games are wont to feel) and far more as if they were composed specifically for the gameplay—which is, at least for some of the game, entirely true.
So skillfully woven and delightfully composed is Rhythm Tengoku that merely considering the game summons to mind a plethora of my favorite scenarios, in much the same way seeing a picture of the original Mario leads to a mental replay of early levels of Super Mario Bros. Chief among these is the matsuri festival game, where you hold buttons to cue your dancer while karaoke-like lyrics scroll by; say "don don pan pan" to any Rhythm Tengoku fan and you can rest assured he will be thinking of exactly this.
Others are definitely worthy of mention, as well. A marching game assigns steps to buttons which you press in response to barked-out commands... a scientist hunched over a microscope watches bacteria zip by, which you must nail in time with the rhythm by firing fork-shaped projectiles at them... mice running across a tabletop, hiding behind dishware when the cat pops up—all set to hopelessly catchy tunes which echo in my mind even now as I write. And then there are the remixes after every few games, which throw little bits of prior games at you in rapid succession, often set to their own tunes.
We don't have much information on Rhythm Tengoku Gold yet, other than the apparent reappearance of several characters from the first title and the fact that at least some of the game is played with the touch screen. Provided Nintendo isn't pulling a WarioWare: Touched on this game, effectively moving it outside the control of the original team, Gold might just take up a special place in my heart next to the original. Here's hoping.
Say a little prayer for my wallet in the meantime. A good thing to ask for would be to have Nintendo stay their hand in announcing yet another must-have import. This one-two punch has me nearly knocked out already.
Band Brothers wasn't just my first import title; it was one of my first Nintendo DS titles overall, added to my collection after Yoshi Touch & Go and WarioWare: Touched but before I experienced the pure bliss of Kirby: Canvas Curse. Unlike many of the other games in the DS's launch window, it wasn't touch-centric; in fact, it was originally designed for the Game Boy Color. Its basic gameplay, where the player presses and releases buttons according to directions that scroll by on the top screen, only takes advantage of the DS' higher button count rather than any other unique system feature.
The button count, though, makes it work: the cardinals of the d-pad plus the four face buttons make up a full scale, meaning you don't just push buttons in time with the music in the game—you are actually playing the DS like an instrument. While key changes, octave shifts, and sharps are handled automatically by the game—you just need to keep pushing the buttons it tells you to—in the unlockable Pro mode, you also become responsible for pushing L and R to do the octave and sharp shifts yourself. It makes for a very challenging experience.
Band Brothers didn't stop there, though; it added a number of features that were DS-centric; the two most memorable being its multiplayer mode—in which eight players could all tackle separate parts of a song with a single game card, or an infinite number of players could play a song together if everyone had their own card—and the Score Edit Pro mode, which let players use a complex (by Nintendo standards) editor to compose their own works for play in the game. Both features helped propel Band Brothers to cult status; communities sprung up on both sides of the Pacific, playing together and trading songs. Through the use of unofficial save-copying hardware, fans even worked out how to trade songs over the Internet.
And now we have Daigasso! Band Brothers DX, which ships three weeks from today. Of course, it has a new song list, but there's also a couple neat new features coming on-board as well. Most notable is that Nintendo has added online support for additional downloadable songs (63 are listed on the official site, complementing the 31 listed as included) as well as trading your own compositions online—and, it seems, contributing them for public download as well. The onboard song storage for your own tunes has been expanded from eight slots to 100.
A few new ways to play have been added as well; a Jam Sessions-like guitar setup where you hold chords with buttons and strum on the touch screen, and a karaoke mode where you sing into the system's mic. There'll be a special Wii channel, too, that will let you pipe your performance over your TV speakers and show everyone's scores on the big screen. Of course, it's all for naught if the new songs aren't good; the original game was great, but a later add-on cartridge that fit in the DS's SLOT-2 contained a lot of lackluster arrangements. Hopefully, the new game won't slack off in this department.
The other game seeing a revival, eight weeks from today, was one of the GBA's last greats: Rhythm Tengoku. Rhythm Tengoku is one of those games that I will always remember; while it is true that it draws on the mechanics of games that came before it, it skillfully carves its own niche in the annals of game history, providing the player with an experience all its own. It is primarily a rhythm game inasmuch as your score is determined by how accurately you press buttons in time to the music, certainly; but to leave it at that is giving it short shrift. It is so much more.
48 challenges pit your skills against not just different patterns of arrows sliding by or sets of targets to hit in-time with the music, but a wide-ranging showcase of unique scenarios and varied gameplay skillfully woven with a delightful array of music that feels far less licensed (as rhythm games are wont to feel) and far more as if they were composed specifically for the gameplay—which is, at least for some of the game, entirely true.
So skillfully woven and delightfully composed is Rhythm Tengoku that merely considering the game summons to mind a plethora of my favorite scenarios, in much the same way seeing a picture of the original Mario leads to a mental replay of early levels of Super Mario Bros. Chief among these is the matsuri festival game, where you hold buttons to cue your dancer while karaoke-like lyrics scroll by; say "don don pan pan" to any Rhythm Tengoku fan and you can rest assured he will be thinking of exactly this.
Others are definitely worthy of mention, as well. A marching game assigns steps to buttons which you press in response to barked-out commands... a scientist hunched over a microscope watches bacteria zip by, which you must nail in time with the rhythm by firing fork-shaped projectiles at them... mice running across a tabletop, hiding behind dishware when the cat pops up—all set to hopelessly catchy tunes which echo in my mind even now as I write. And then there are the remixes after every few games, which throw little bits of prior games at you in rapid succession, often set to their own tunes.
We don't have much information on Rhythm Tengoku Gold yet, other than the apparent reappearance of several characters from the first title and the fact that at least some of the game is played with the touch screen. Provided Nintendo isn't pulling a WarioWare: Touched on this game, effectively moving it outside the control of the original team, Gold might just take up a special place in my heart next to the original. Here's hoping.
Say a little prayer for my wallet in the meantime. A good thing to ask for would be to have Nintendo stay their hand in announcing yet another must-have import. This one-two punch has me nearly knocked out already.