Publisher: Enix
Developer: Producel
Release Date: 2/24/2000
Date Played: 6/11/2020
Region: Japan
Time Played: 1 hour
What’d you think?: This was a rhythm game that I didn’t even know existed before playing it. Same for the anime/manga franchise it was based on, which seemed to be about a band made of very beautiful anime boys and their (reader self-insert?) plucky female roadie or something. I’m sort of guessing what the anime is about, you only got a few seconds of show (decided by choices like “Audition” or “Live Show”) between each of 4 songs before rolling credits and giving you your high score. I didn’t fail any stages, so I suppose I beat the game, but my first playthrough, 3 of the 4 songs I played were repeat performances of the same song — you have to grind and unlock the other half-dozen or so available tracks.
Each track does have 5 different charts for it, one for each band member, so you can very roughly emulate drums/bass/guitar (twice!)/or vocals, but I do mean very — Though the timing indicators in this game do vary by color (and this color seemed to correspond to the pitch of the instrument), it never seemed to actually matter what button you pressed — just that you pressed one in time, a choice that, unless I misunderstood something, really puts a low ceiling on any difficulty level.
There was another entire mode, an “Extra” mode, where the button did matter — you had four of them, and it was VERY Dance Dance Revolution-like, except the timing indicators didn’t fly towards their target in a straight line, but instead did an awkward serpentine. Overall, this isn’t the worst licensed rhythm game we’ve seen at PS1Try, but if it was just this Extra mode, it might be.
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chx5hNpPeTQ
