The March 2005 Nintendo Direct was successful for followers of Nintendo’s extra offbeat video games. Not solely did it promise a brand new Tomodachi Life in 2026, it introduced a brand new Rhythm Heaven for subsequent yr too.
For the uninitiated, Rhythm Heaven (recognized in Europe as Rhythm Paradise and in its native Japan as Rhythm Tengoku) gives gamers a sequence of vibrant, superbly designed mini-games the place the participant performs actions to the beat of the music.
When it’s at its best, Rhythm Heaven might be performed with out trying on the display screen, as gamers are capable of hear for the audio cues and interact in a little bit of call-and-response gameplay. It’s a testomony to the sport’s sound design that that is doable, however I’d suggest trying on the display screen anyway as a result of the attraction in every mini-game’s artwork is off the radar.
Beginning with a (good) Japan-only launch on Recreation Boy Advance, the sequence made its Western debut on DS with the second sport. This was adopted by the good Rhythm Heaven Fever on Wii, and the ‘best hits’ bundle that was Rhythm Heaven Megamix on 3DS.
That 3DS sport was 11 years in the past although, and followers have been eagerly ready for Nintendo and sequence producer, singer-songwriter Mitsuo Terada – finest recognized by his stage identify Tsunku – to return with a model new title. That long-awaited new sport will lastly arrive in 2026, with Tsunku as producer and composer.
The return of Tsunku was met with virtually as a lot pleasure because the return of the sequence itself. It’s little marvel – for many individuals, Rhythm Heaven is Tsunku, and the thought of anybody else main improvement on a brand new entry wouldn’t bear excited about.
It wasn’t a assure, both – again in 2014, whereas the 3DS entry was in improvement, Tsunku introduced that he had laryngeal most cancers and needed to have his vocal cords eliminated. This clearly led to him stepping down from a lot of initiatives (together with the breakup of his band Sharam Q, of which he had been lead singer since 1988).
The very fact we’d gone a decade with out a new Rhythm Heaven led some to consider that it had been one other casualty of Tsunku’s sickness, so the very fact the sequence is again with him on board is great information, each for the followers of his video games and on a private stage.
Naturally, nothing is a certainty on the earth of video video games, and whereas the standard of the earlier video games suggests the chances are actually in Rhythm Heaven Groove’s favour with regards to its likelihood of success, a decade is a very long time and Nintendo nonetheless has to verify it doesn’t drop the ball right here.
One potential banana pores and skin that wouldn’t have been a problem earlier than is enter and audio lag. The Rhythm Heaven video games rely on exact timing to make their mini-games work, and for the reason that GBA, DS and 3DS video games have been clearly developed with these handhelds in thoughts all the things felt completely responsive.
The Wii sport, Rhythm Heaven Fever, wasn’t fairly as satisfying for some gamers. That’s as a result of the Wii arrived on the daybreak of the HDTV period, and whereas the console itself solely output at 480p, loads of gamers used it on their HD televisions, a lot of which launched delays that weren’t current on older CRT televisions.
Because of this, many rhythm video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band had so as to add sync choices to compensate for such points. Rhythm Heaven Fever didn’t have these, and so for some gamers the timing was off, making the sport really feel sluggish at finest and unplayable at worst (see additionally the PS4 model of PaRappa the Rapper, which was a port of the PSP model and in addition had no sync choices, rendering it near-impossible to play effectively).
15 years after the discharge of the Wii sport, enter lag stays a modern-day difficulty on many televisions, and if Nintendo doesn’t take this under consideration for Rhythm Heaven Groove we might find yourself in a state of affairs the place the sport is usually good when enjoying it in handheld mode – the place audio and video sync are a managed surroundings – however turns into a much less pleasant sport when docked and working via a TV.
It’s telling of the general high quality of the sequence, nonetheless, that the primary potential pitfalls we fear about are exterior elements reasonably than the content material of the sport itself. It could take a large blunder to destroy Rhythm Heaven’s successful system, so right here’s hoping Nintendo doesn’t mess up the beat.
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