It would continue on to spawn a vast array of sequels and spin-offs and took a stand as the pioneer of the rhythm game genre.Ī western sequel/remake to Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, Elite Beat Agents (EBA) made the rhythm game portable on the Nintendo DS. The simple premise of dancing, while hitting the right buttons in time with the music made it an instant hit, with hardcore and casual participants alike.
Introduced to Japan by Konami in 1998, DDR quickly expanded to North America and Europe within a year. Dance Dance Revolution ( DDR) initiated a craze across the globe, as it united the gaming and dancing worlds into one highly competitive universe. The first iteration was a little buggy, and while those imperfections seem to have been ironed out for Audiosurf 2, the charm and playability are a little shallow for anything hoping to compete with monoliths like Stepmania.įor such a space intensive game to make it from the arcade into the home is definitely a notable achievement. Audiosurf (and now Audiosurf 2) generates the highway and note chart based on any song that is in your library, allowing players to go head-to-head with friends or online to the tune of any song! Controlling a vehicle on a neon highway, the player is required to avoid obstacles, and score points using any song that they like. While the path that was generated would often be skewed from the actual rhythm of the song, Vib-Ribbon gains a spot on this list purely for its groundbreaking features and quirky game design.Īudiosurf adopted the innovative idea behind Vib-Ribbon, and expanded on it by employing the further improved technologies that were available at the time. While the game shipped with its own songs, it was revolutionary in the fact that it loaded itself onto the PlayStation’s RAM, and would allow the player to use any music they had on hand. Using the background song as a guide, you need to interact with the obstacles in time, while running along a white-line path. In this game you control Vibri, a vector graphic rabbit. Unfortunately it was only made available in Japan and Europe until a PSN release in 2014, but it still managed to garner a cult following in the meantime. Vib-Ribbon broke the mold when it was initially released in 1999. We’re sure to have missed something, so if you feel a game should be on the list, please leave your thoughts in the comments section below! We took a walk back through our catalogue to see which games left an impression, which ones had the biggest impact on the genre.
Rhythm games have merged the music and the gaming worlds together for decades now, and there have been some truly great titles.