Arcade UFO in Austin Texas -- Chunithm and Jubeat mania!

 As you can tell from my previous post about Rhythm Games . . . my family is pretty into them in general, and because of that, we all were super psyched last month when we found an arcade in Austin that featured some pretty rare and exclusive machines. Welcome to Arcade UFO!

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE!

To be honest, if you're used to a giant megaplex arcade like Pinballz or Main Event, you'll feel pretty crowded when you get inside.  It basically feels like a corner shop gas station that's been converted to an arcade featuring two rooms of games.  But, here's the thing . . . the games inside are a rare treat. You don't go there for the fine restroom accommodations (believe me, you don't), but you do go there to play games you can't find anywhere else.

That said, the owner seemed to be a super sweet guy that kept checking on our family of 5 during the visit.  The kids were instantly drawn to a game called Chunithm. The whole family ended up standing around the two Chunithm machines watching each other play.

We were all masked up of course. You'd be a fool not to in these cramped quarters

My sons were absolutely in love with the game. My youngest kept raving about how he would love to have one of these arcade machines in our house. About that time, the owner once again dropped by and let us know that . . . well . . . these two machines are half of the four total machines you can find in the US.  I don't know if that's true or not, but it seemed legit.

The great thing about this game is how you use an entire mini-keyboard to play and not only is it sensitive to finger tap, but it can also sense when you lift your hands off the keyboard and wave them above. Meaning, it has some kind of crazy sensors that look for hand motion above the keys.

The other game we were drawn to was called Jubeats. it features 16 touch sensitive squares that you tap to chase the beat.

There were a slew of other rhythm games in the place, but we didn't spend much time outside of playing these two games. You can see their full games list here.

So if you're looking for a unique rhythm game experience in Austin, do yourself a favor and head to Arcade UFO. It's a college dump that reeks of anime fans and rhythm games in all the right ways, and I'm sure if you got to know the crowd there, you could even join in their weekly competitions.

Happy dueling! 

What is it about Friday Night Funkin?

Back on the topic of Rhythm Games . . . I had a long conversation with my son last night about Friday Night Funkin. Again, it's another one of these rhythm games that he's kind of lost himself in, and yet when you look at the game you're thinking . . . what? It's just some dumb free flash game from Newgrounds? But no! It's more!

Nice

That's a successful kickstarter for the full game to be produced, and that also gives you a glimpse into the adoration their community has for this game. My youngest son even had a Friday Night Funkin video of his go somewhat viral and garnered 110k views.

He's playing a mod of the game, and that is probably the core of why this game is so successful. Their community has invented a way to change the opponents and the songs and catalog a long list of mods. 

Another one of the core reasons this game is popular has to be the music. It is catchy and features a lot of call and response melodies in the voice of "the boyfriend" and his opponent. In fact, the first time I was introduced to this game was during our crazy power outage incident. At one point our boys put on an amazing half-an-hour long show where they just scat-sang those weird boyfriend sounds back and forth at each other. My wife and I had no idea what was going on and it sounded hilarious like they were just making up weird melodies, but no, it was the actual songs from the game.  Kawaii Sprite, the artist behind the music, has them all up on spotify for you to listen to.

My oldest son actually asked me to create a song using "the boyfriend" sounds and some sounds for his woop character so he could make a mod for the game. It was hard to do, but I actually made something for him to work with. He constructed the sprite sheet for it and now . .. the difficult part . . . editing the xml, which I'm afraid he'll be stuck on for a while.

No purple skinned beat box monster will best me!

And lastly, part of that success has to have come from that art style . . . it's a little like graffiti art meets a chibi-esque super deformed art style characters that battle against each other in a fighting game style. And . . . I have to admit, there is one piece of humor in this game that's a little crude for my tastes, but, again, that crude humor is probably part of the formula that makes it an underground hit.  

All in all it's an interesting formula for success in this rhythm game, and somehow it all works . . . and my kids are listening and playing along. 

Happy Dueling

. . . and then . . . Just Shapes & Beats

 When an indie game gets such high ratings as these:

• 98% positive reviews on Steam
• 8/10 from Destructoid
• 5/5 from Gamestop

. . . you just know it's gonna be good, so if you need something to convince you, there you go.

As for me and my fam, Just Shapes & Beats is yet another in the list of our favorite rhythm games. For me, up until this point, it's been all about the awesome music I've been hearing from the room adjacent to me while the kids play.  For the kids, it's the amount of personality the game crams into the simple character designs, it's about the challenge of memorizing a grueling bullet hell, and yes . . . the music.

When the kids first started playing this game, I remember my son saying, "How can this music slap so hard when the only words in it are 'close to me'." Truer words about a song that slaps have never been said.

I'd categorize this game as a rhythm game hybrid that's mostly a bullet hell where memorizing patterns is king. The object of the game? Keep your little blue square inside the black spaces of the game, and that my friends is surprisingly difficult. You do get a chance to warp your square a couple inches away from your start point with the press of a button, but if you land in an occupied area, you'll get a bite taken out of your cube. In normal levels, you only get 3 bites out of you 'til you need to start over or return to the last checkpoint.  In boss levels, you can take up to 6 hits. You can go from completely healthy to dead in just a few seconds though, so you have to be in the groove.

As per most indie games, they get away with taking tons of liberties that regular games can't risk.  For example, after you beat the first boss, the game makes you think you've beaten it for a minute, and then the boss you just beat goes on an insane rampage as he turns all the blue graphics to magenta and chases you back down the campaign map nodes you just traveled down.

I WILL TURN ALL THE BLUE THINGS MAGENTA!! RAWWWRRRR!

Insanity I say!  Making you think the game is over?  Making you think you lost progress? Yup. And that extra bit of charm is just amazing. This is what happens when you put creativity first, and God bless the indie titles that pull it off as well as Just Shapes & Beats has.

Our personal copy of Just Shapes and Beats is on the Switch, but it's also available on Steam, PS4, and Stadia. If you haven't played the game recently, but enjoyed it in the past, you might want to go revisit it again, back in June 2020, the team at Berzerk unleashed 5 new levels. The kids are going to have to get past me though if they want to play them. I just started up a new game all to myself.

Y'all . . . it's freaking hard and you die a lot, but the music is so fun that you don't even mind starting over again.

Happy Dueling! 

. . . and now . . . Rhythm Heaven Fever

Ever since talking about Robeats and Rock Band the other day, I've been taking a little inventory in my head of all the Rhythm games we own, and it's a fair amount. The first one that really stood out though was a game we put a lot of mileage on back when the Wii was king.

That's right, it's Rhythm Heaven Fever TIME!!! 

Literally the only two keys you'll need to press in game. Simple.

Although this wasn't the first in the series of rhythm heaven fever games (it was actually number three in the series when counting the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS versions of the game), it is one that's lived on and been played several times over at our house. I even downloaded the music and made a mix CD of the jams for my son to listen to in the car.

Believe it or not, there's actually still a fanbase for this game, enough to support a reddit page and justify some super cute stickers on Redbubble, and supposedly a hacked version of the game with download links hidden in a "we are number one" video. Classy!

If you're unfamiliar with the game, the essence is that you'll be tapping A, B, and releasing said keys, to the beat.  That's it, but it's done in a series of rhythm games with super happy and fun music.  

For instance, the first thing you'll be doing is playing golf to the beat while two monkeys throw golf balls for you to hit out over the ocean for a hole in one. 

What water hazard? 

Before you know it, you'll be screwing on large and small robot heads in a toy factory and doing all kinds of other cute and fun tasks. After playing four different mini-games in a row, you'll open up what is called a "remix" that features a rhythm game mash up of all the previously won mini-games.

If you manage to get a "superb" rating and earn a medal in these rhythm games, you'll be opening up a whole set of other fun and challenging rhythm sub-games and features, like winding up and releasing toy cars or seeing how far you can descend down and endless game of keeping the tempo.

The biggest difference between this game and its predecessors is, however, the presence of two-player games. Head-to-head yet cooperative 2-player games are the best!

Forking supersonic peas flicked from a mile away is soooo satisfying!

This game ranks pretty high around our house. Definitely one of the top rhythm games we've played and instantly the game that comes to mind (at least to my children) when I say "rhythm game."

Happy Dueling!

From Robeats to Rock Band and Back Again

My youngest son plays a lot of Roblox. Lately he's been playing a lot of one particular game in Roblox called Robeats. What's Robeats? Well, I'll let this fandom page I found explain it for us:

RoBeats is an MMO Vertical Scrolling Rhythm Game (Commonly abbreviated as 'VSRG') ... You can buy songs with in-game coins, and buy harder versions using stars. The easiest songs are difficulty 1, while the hardest are difficulty 34. ... The gameplay is extremely similar to the Guitar Hero video games, with some elements inspired by osu! as well.

So basically, you zone into a city block filled with people and visit shops and chat to each other, and then queue up for head-to-head rhythm games on a difficulty scale where you press ASDF to the beat.

Ready to move my blox!

I've watched him play, and I've even played the game myself. The fact is, he's getting really good at this game. He even recently uploaded a video from his YouTube channel where he slayed this jam.

Knowing this, I had to have him play Rock Band. It's been on the top shelf of our garage storage for a long time just waiting for this moment. It's a totally different experience in that you are either on the drum set using 3 limbs (instead of 4 fingers), or holding a guitar and using both hands in different ways: one to press the buttons on the neck and one to strum.

So I went into the garage and got the Rock Band gear down, wiped all the dust off, brought it inside, and set it up. He was hesitant at first because of the style of the music, but after seeing me work through a couple songs, he gave it a shot and after a few tries managed to complete a song. 

Y'all, mission successful. Since that time the house has taken a liking to "I think I'm paranoid" by Garbage, and the I've caught all the kids humming it like it was the 90's. hahaha!

Dad and Son Jamming!

The highlight was being able to back my son up on drums at the same time he was playing, but the real surprise was when he committed himself to learning the drum part himself and beating my high score. Methinks the kid has some natural talent -- really glad we have him playing French Horn in band.

I highly doubt Rock Band will take the place of Robeats for him, but I was just happy to play it again with him and expose him to another rhythm game.

Happy Dueling!