Someone brought up why I didn’t choose UBeat for Best Music Game of the year. On the one hand, Japan has a great number of games released that we don’t get or haven’t yet received here in America. For that reason, it seems unfair to consider them in the award choices. On the other hand, I also didn’t play the majority of US releases. I considered the games I played, and I did play both UBeat and Rhythm Tengoku Gold. If these games were to be considered, they would both beat Rock Band 2 by a large margin with UBeat coming out as the champion.
For that reason I think I should stick with my choice for Best Music Game, but I’d like to talk about why UBeat would have won if it was released and why I’m sure it’ll win in the future if and when it’s released here.
UBeat is basically Whac-A-Mole set to music with a 4 x 4 grid of buttons with LCD screens instead of moles. Each screen plays a short video when it’s time to hit them, with a particular point in the video being the exact moment at which the LCD button should be pressed. The song list during the location test here in Irvine was small but impressive. I was thrilled to see Scatman John’s Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop) in the game and played it quite a few times. The machine is also sexy as hell. I know that Konami wants to suck me in with the flashy machine, but I have to say, if lights and the look of the physical machine count as an attract mode, this game has a much better attract mode than any other game I’ve played! On a side note, Dance Dance Revolution X, which was also location tested at the same place and time, was also quite flashier than its predecessors. To get back on topic, the UBeat cabinets were small, sleek, and sexy! I’d love to have on in my house some day, and I’m really hoping they’re brought to America. You can read my review of it here.
Rhythm Tengoku Gold is a DS game utilizing only the touch screen in various rhythm based games. While most music/rhythm games could be played without the music, Rhythm Tengoku Gold would be impossible without the music. In fact, once I’ve figured out how a particular game works, which is hard because the game’s in Japanese, I can close my eyes and continue to play based only on the audio cues.