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Heard and strongly agreed re: rhythm game barrier to entry and garbage-ass community. It took me quite a while to put together a home setup for IIDX and I only got rid of it because my current living situation both doesnāt allow for me slapping buttons loudly and is walking distance from an arcade (which is right next to a really good taco place, Friday nights before the pandemic happened were such a light in my life god damn) with IIDX/Popān/SDVX/bunch of other games. Iād like to think of it as me being blessed for my steadfast devotion to rhythm games for legitimately two decades now, but the truth is I just got lucky.
Rhythm games are the type of thing I always enjoyed best when I could be a sort of an ambassador to get friends into it and make my own community, which kinda happened ā my circle of friends was playing IIDX with me for a bit, though all save for one eventually fell off. But they enjoyed it, and they get why I like it, and they like it even though they donāt play it anymore, and thatās cool to me! I was able to share my passion with people I love and let them know me a little better through it. Wishing for SB to be a physical space so I could be the same kind of ambassador for everyone here for the Games I Love The Most, as Iām sure we all wish we could.
IIDX for me has been, among many things, a tangible quick-return-on-investment example of the power of dedication and sustained effort, which ultimately helped give me the willpower and confidence to engage in putting that sort of dedication towards other areas of my life, such as fitness and other forms of physical self-care ā a little embarrassing that it took a game to do that, but I do think that that lesson is one of the greatest things that the game has to offer, and itās one of the axes upon which I encourage people Iām tutoring (for lack of a better word) at the game.
Those are a few of the many many reasons I love that game, and I genuinely hope that everyone gets to have an experience and connection like that not even to IIDX in particular, but just any game ā and if you have one, Iād love to hear about it!
8 Likes
Also in defense of my vote for Osu Tatakae Ouendan 2, it always felt like a good culmination of what Parappa the Rapper and Gitaroo-Man have been doing: The āstoriesā for each stage are more interesting and introduce fun new characters and problems for them to overcome, the humor in them is great and enhanced by the art.
Itās not so much a rhythm game I suppose as it feels like youāre a maestro coordinating a dance choreography. The context of your characters dancing help create the needed context for the stylus-swishing and slashing youāre doing across the screen. So in this sense Iāve never felt like what I was doing on the bottom screen was at all divorced from the music, because itās very well connected with the dance moves, which are also very well connected with the music. Gitaroo-Man on the other hand feels way more abstracted. Like yeah you can do the guitar distortion pitch thing and the button presses correlate to notes but the way the path moves and snakes around feel completely random and arbitrary.
Also it introduced me to a lot of good music!! It also has a really great cover by a SMAP song which made me think for a fleeting second that SMAP was good until I listened to the original song and realized otherwise.
Osu though, Iāve never played and I donāt think it would do anything for me without all the structure, visuals and context of the Ouendan/EBA games.
4 Likes
My favorite rhythm game nowadays is Jubeat. I gather the remaining Asian rhythm game community shares that opinion because when I visited the specialized rhythm game arcade in Seoul a few years ago, there were 5 Jubeat machines and only 1 of every other rhythm game. It didnāt make it to many of the remaining arcades in the US, unfortunately, but for people with tablets, the tablet version is worth a spin (albeit itās a bit like playing DDR on those slippery console pads).
Jubeat is simply the pure distilled essence of all rhythm games. There are 16 big square buttons with an LED screen behind each one. The buttons gradually light up and the peak brightness/fullness is reached on the music beat, and you press it. You can customize the button animation with your own preferred art (e.g. a flower opening up, or water that fills it from bottom to top).
Thatās it, thatās the game. Itās a totally unmediated and concrete hand/sight/music coordination, that I instantly felt good at without the usual problem of establishing the mental mapping between screen and button. Itās the game most guaranteed to feel like a āflow stateā that Iāve ever played.
5 Likes
Beatmania has always seemed like some sort of rhythm game paradise that Iāll never get to experience except on Youtube. I donāt live anywhere near an arcade and I donāt think Iām going to invest in a home set-up. The music is great though.
2 Likes
I think Jubeat is super cool, and I think the aesthetics and a lot of the music of each release tend to be real, real good.
My big issues any time Iāve ever tried to seriously engage with it are:
My hands get in the way of seeing the notes, even when I intentionally try to come at the game from the sides rather than from the front
The screen-buttons are almost a little squishy rather than clicky, I donāt get the same kind of feedback (physical or aural) that I get from microswitches
The second one is a personal problem, but if thereās any solutions to the first one Iām all ears! Iāve talked to people at my arcade who bust out 10s easy and no one has ever had any concrete solution for me.
2 Likes
I love yāall but really I feel bad for hijacking this thread so maybe we should continue this in the dead music games thread
I was actually just coming to bump that thread with that new WACCA character so feel free to.
Sounds like you already talked to people with better skills/advice than me. I only got semi-good on my Seoul trip and I recall my peak was beating one 9 by the skin of my teeth. (But I was proud of how quickly I got to that speed.).
I recall my solution to the visibility blocking problem included standing close and bending my elbows, and keeping my gaze focused towards the lower end of the screen and using peripheral vision more for the top. Mostly though the key was to exploit the symmetry of the patterns to expect notes to appear even when I couldnāt see them, but that might stop working during the super chaos sequences on the 10s.
I guess that problem shows Jubeat is actually not yet the purest form of rhythm game. Iām looking forward to a neural link rhythm game blasting effects directly into my visual cortex in the cyberpunk future
2 Likes
These have ā„2 noms. May have missed some.
Rhtyhm/Music Games
Elite Beat Agents
Ouendan!
Gitaroo Man
Beatmania IIDX
Taiko no Tatsujin
Rhythm Tengoku
Fighting Games including wrestling games
WCW vs. NWO Revenge
Street Fighter Alpha 3
Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown
WWF No Mercy
Soul Calibur 6
WWF Wrestlemania 2000
Under Night In-Birth
Soul Calibur
Guilty Gear Xrd REV2
Garou: Mark of the Wolves
Fire Pro Wrestling: World
Bushido Blade
Bloody Roar 2
3 Likes
I can see this and for me, the fully voiced NPCs and mostly seamless transition between interiors and exteriors in the world made me think of it as an evolved form of the immersion Shenmue was reaching for. I want to replay Shenmue 3 but man, I really donāt like how they gated progression behind money making and training. I did like how ridiculous and ragdolly the fighting ended up being.
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Sad that Melee didnāt make the cut. Impressive for SC6. No hate but didnāt expect to see so much support. Under Night In-Birth, SFA3, and VF5 deserve to be in over SF2.
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Oops Melee and N64 both got two votes. I just didnāt include them or Power Stone because theyāre so different.
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you all should have fought for your games harder!! like if i got fake metal slug six in you coulda come in the thread and got excited about your faves like everyone else did that had a game get in! if everyone was half as excited about their favorite shooter as i am about final fantasy i would have seconded so many more votes
none of my actual all time favorites made it in. in fact this is the most represented my taste has been on one of these things because i spent a week yelling about my favorite games! when we do this again i hope people sell their votes harder
8 Likes
look I sold wayne gretzkyās 3d hockey as hard as I could ok
I even namedropped f-zero gx I thought people liked that game around these parts
8 Likes
I donāt care about the outcome of the tournament and am just happy this got a lot of us talking about why these games are good.
4 Likes
im still thinking about hobos ffxiv post because yeah of course youre gonna hate a game that you dont pay attention to and skip all the cutscenes of (i remember bachelor asking WHO IS THIS about krile at the end of stormblood) but also my feelings are hurt in a tiny pathetic way because the night at the brothel was one of my favorite jokes! it couldnāt happen in ANY OTHER GAME! and i was told that it was really funny, but when i hear tons of negative stufd by the person the joke was for, that by extension makes me think everything i do/say about or in the game is annoying and the nice things arent real
anyway i know this isnt true but if ive been thinking about it i guess i should post about it
I have super fond memories of late night prae runs making fun of cids oven mitts and watching concerts with miffy. we would just put on some hour long concert and talk foreverā¦and yeah thats meta enjoyment but i wouldnāt have met @miffy and she wouldnāt have gotten excited about dota 2 with bachelor and offered to help our freak pickup game without ffxiv
anyway like i said this is just me being sensitive. i dont care how far ffxiv makes it through the votes im STILL JUST EXCITED TO BE HERE
5 Likes
i want you all to know that i got too overwhelmed by the nomination thread to read it all but i did use nepotism to get a late nomination for seiklus in after the deadline. that nomination did not, of course, secure it a place, but i tried. iāll save the spiel for next time
ok gonna go through the contenders now
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MINECRAFT
vs.
SUPER STREET FIGHTER II TURBO
i played SFII a little when my mate got an old SNES, and it was like, a fighting game. i played E Honda and was confused. the backgrounds were cool. but minecraft had really nice music and was the first time i really got the appeal of a procedurally-generated timesink, exploring the caves and finding lava and diamond was neat.
MINECRAFT
CRAZY TAXI
vs.
METAL SLUG 6 (Metal Slug 3 romhack)
metal slug has cool sprites and daphny likes it! Crazy Taxi was kind of loud and overwhelming when i played it as a kid
METAL SLUG 6 (Metal Slug 3 romhack)
EVERYBODY VOTES
vs.
PUYO PUYO series
puyo go pop
PUYO PUYO series
STREET FIGHTER III THIRD STRIKE: FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE
vs.
CONTRA: HARD CORPS
SFIII has really sick character design! iāve never played a Contra
STREET FIGHTER III THIRD STRIKE: FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE
YAKUZA 0
vs.
SUPER METROID
what was that thing @Father.Torque said? āwhat if we took the muddy sound of the SNES and made it an assetā?
SUPER METROID
NIGHTS INTO DREAMS
vs.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2
FM synthesis is very cool but nights is weird and neat
NIGHTS INTO DREAMS
GAME BOY CAMERA
vs.
DEUS EX
that UNATCO music is nice but i think GBC is the single piece of software iāve spent the most time composing music on, maybe even more than pxTone (not very long, to be clear)
GAME BOY CAMERA
IKARUGA
vs.
FINAL FANTASY XIV
i donāt really know anything about Ikaruga sorry. itās on my switch but i never play my switch now. i donāt play MMOs or JRPGs but ffxiv is the only game i play. it can definitely be tedious and i spend most of my time kinda zonked out trying to think what i should be doing, or doing some boring routine thing out of habit, which isnāt great. but all the music from the new expansion is amazing, and a lot of the old stuff is too. i agree with parkerās post too. i do feel bad for @HOBO sometimes about the Tiny Mountain stuff, but i guess thatās what happens when you sin. anyway
FINAL FANTASY XIV
8 Likes
i think we should do another round of this sometime and iād be happy to pitch in counting votes and crunching numbers to facilitate it, but Jellicle straight up said we shouldnāt treat this as the ultimate tabulation of sb opinions and itās just for fun! donāt sweat it if your favorite game didnāt get on there. i left games off my own nomination post literally because i assumed weād do this again sometime, and didnāt want to overthink and overstress about this very casual discussion. and im pleasantly unsurprised that the roster we ended up with is so esoteric
I do think itās criminal that not a single Kirby game got nominated though and i would have added Super Star if i didnāt assume other people would do it. BUT (points back at first paragraph of this post)
9 Likes