Research for Music Hero: Part 2 - Music and Rhythm Games

What makes up the other half of our game is definitely the music genre.  Although it has been steadily declining as of late, there is no use denying how powerful and fun these games were, and maybe still is.  To this day, I try and get friends together, dust off my instrument peripherals, and jam out on one of the many downloaded songs I had for Rock Band 2.  So let's see what I think should be in our game.

Before Rock Band included a microphone and drum set, there was just the guitar (and occasionally a bass guitar), and I think Guitar Hero was at its peak with this game.  It had a polished design, great music, and smooth gameplay.  I really wanted to make myself play this game to continually get better and better.

So what worked?  The character design really felt solid in this one.  I could really sense the genre each character represented.  I want our characters to have that same sort of design philosophy.  Along with that, but how the music was played felt polished and flawless.  When we are bounding through levels, I feel we  need that polished gameplay so those who play it over and over again can expect what to press and really feel like a rock star.

And if we can make our music sound as great as the set list to this game, that wouldn't be so bad either.

Mario Paint was a real weird game when it originated for the Super Nintendo, but more people know it today by it's music composer sub game, shown below.

This version of Mario Paint is now available on your computer (through a ROM hack), and youtube has tons of videos of people making songs with this composer.  I think having some form of this in the game would be a very cool addition.  Whether that's being able to use sound bytes for specific attacks and jumps (representing what button you hit) or even a player being able to make their own track list for the background music.

Although this might be a huge hurdle, it would nonetheless be a cool addition if pulled off correctly.

The last game I would like to go over is Theatrhythm Final Fantasy.  Essentially it is just like any other Japanese RPG (role-playing game), but now the battles are fought using something similar to a timed button mission.

One of the discussions our group had was for how our boss battles would be managed, and I think this game is the perfect example of how it can be accomplished, especially when multipalyer can be managed.  By building our combo, the players can unleash the full power of their instruments.  Each player can have a special grid, similar to Rock Band or this game, and if things are executed correctly, the player can attack the boss.  Maybe the harder the riff, the more damage can be done.  If it doesn't work, the players have to rebuild their combo and try again.  But this game can help paint how the game could look when fighting the boss. As they sit on the side, the players attack using the power of rock!