Types of arcades

There's a fundamental difference between arcades where I live, and arcades in Japan. In Japan, you typically pay a fee to play a video game. You enjoy the game and then you can pay to play again. Here, it's a rarity to find a video game in an arcade. The usual types of games here are mechanical games such as claw machines, basketball hoops and skill/luck challenges that reward virtual tickets, which you can later redeem for prizes like soft toys. Occasionally, they'll have a pay-to-play video game like a sit-down driving game with pedals and a wheel, or shooting an American man out of a cannon towards buildings with an App Store tie-in.

Controllers

Even though the skill games are really lame, the people making them at least understand the biggest design difference between a game in an arcade and something you play on the computer: the controls. On a computer, you have a mouse, keyboard, and controller with two analogue sticks. The controls on the arcade game can be whatever they want to build. For example, racing games have pedals and a wheel, which is really fun. Some, like Asphalt 9 Legends Arcade DX, also have moving seats that react to how you're driving in game by tilting and shuddering. There's motorbikes that you climb on and physically lean the bike to steer it. There's shooting games where you pick up the gun, aim it at the screen, squeeze the trigger, and feel the whole thing recoil hard as the heavy metal slide jolts in your hand.

My introduction to rhythm games

I've always been vaguely aware about those dance machines with the arrows existed, but I never saw one in person. I didn't bother to look up what this type of game was called until I stumbled upon the StepMania showcase at GDQ. It was played on a computer with a keyboard, and it was then that I realised that this type of game is something that I can actually play myself, not just a fantasy that only existed in my brain as a faint memory. I downloaded StepMania, and I've been fascinated by rhythm games ever since.

Before I'd played rhythm games, I didn't really listen to different kinds of music, I just listened to whatever happened to be on the radio when it was turned on, and I wasn't very enthusiastic about it. Listening to the music featured in rhythm games made me realise that there's so many other kinds of music that I'd simply never encountered before, especially electronic music, which is now my favourite kind of music.

There are rhythm games for the arcade too, and like other arcade games, they have fascinating custom control schemes that could never be implemented well on PC. You can play with your hands, with giant buttons, with your feet, with your upper body, with drumsticks, with knobs and dials, on touchscreens, inside tubes, and even in mid-air.

However, I wrote off any possibility of ever getting to play these arcade games because I'm buried down south in Small Town New Zealand. I'd never even seen a dance game, let alone any of the Japanese imports.

Small Town New Zealand

I did still get to play a console game with an interesting controller. It's Guitar Hero!

Guitar Hero

In Guitar Hero, there are five columns where notes can travel towards the camera, corresponding to five frets on the guitar controller. To play a note, you must pre-emptively hold down the fret button, and then strum.

It was surprisingly more realistic than I expected. The game implements the fact that when holding a higher note on the frets, it doesn't matter if you are also holding a lower note, because on a real guitar, that part of the string wouldn't vibrate anyway. This makes it easier to play fast notes, and also allows simulating real guitar techniques like hammer-ons and pull-offs. I'm very impressed by this!

I was playing a pretty old version that released on PS2, so I'm too young to recognise many of the licensed rock songs featured in it.

Dunedin

Finally, I moved to the medium city when I started university. I found out about the arcade, and I had to go check! Maybe they'd have a dance game, those are popular, right? The games available there have changed a little over the years, and when I first visited, the only game available there was...

Guitar Hero Arcade

This is definitely an odd one to start with! It seems pretty similar to the PS2 version, in both gameplay and graphics, though there's a mandatory character customisation screen before you can start playing your song. The available characters are the oddest selection of freaks. Again, I don't recognise the songs. The game is pretty fun, but... damn, have the guitars always been this... small? By the end of the first song, it's hurting my hands, and my head, and my neck, and everything is cramping... I wish I could play it a bit more, but I physically cannot. One song per visit is all I get.

I asked if they were planning on getting a dance game, because dance games are awesome, and I got the answer "maybe soon". I went back to check every few months to see if they'd got one, but I was out of luck until I checked about 3 years later, and stumbled upon...

Taiko no Tatsujin (Nijiiro Ver.)

This game is played by hitting a single enormous taiko drum (a Japanese type of drum) with provided bachi (a Japanese type of drumstick). Like most arcade games, there are two drums, so two people can play together side by side. Notes scroll horizontally across the screen and you have to hit them when they line up with the outlined circle. To play a red note, you have to hit the middle of the drum. To play a blue note, you have to hit the rim/edge of the drum.

I've actually played a clone of this game in the PC rhythm game osu!, but I didn't like it much on the PC, unsurprisingly because of the control scheme. They use keyboard keys to represent different parts of the drum, which gets really confusing and is just overall lame. Having an enormous drum to hit is way more enjoyable. It took me a little bit to really get into it, but from the start I knew that I really liked it. I've now been playing for a year or two, and I've spent an unreal amount of money on this game. I've cleared almost all the 9* difficulties, and have over 800 total songs on my score card, which doesn't include replaying the same song or songs I failed.

800 songs is probably more than half of them, but this game has a truly enormous amount of content across different categories of music. Almost none of it has English lyrics, but I'm okay with that. The song categories are pop (Japanese only), anime, kids (includes kids anime and traditional songs), game music (includes music from other rhythm games), variety (tends to include things that are popular online, like Touhou Project arrangements), classical (!), and the largest category, Namco original (includes original compositions for Taiko no Tatsujin).

I like how the difficulty curve works in this game. Normal difficulties generally try to stick to 1/4 notes, avoid complex rhythms, and switch colours between red and blue predictably, so it doesn't take too much brain power to know which part of the drum to hit. For example, RRRRRR is very simple, because you hit the middle repeatedly with alternating hands. RBRBRB is also simple, because you alternate between the middle and the edge with alternating hands, and your hands can stay in the same spot. Hard difficulties introduce complex rhythms and faster 1/8 notes, but the faster patterns always use consistent colours, and don't go on for too long, mostly 3 and occasionally 5 notes. The highest difficulties, Extreme, mix tricky colour patterns into the fast notes, such as BRRBRRB. This one is really tricky because repeating patterns of 3 are uncommon in music, and each hand has to switch between the rim and the centre unpredictably. Overall, the difficulty takes a natural progression that tests new skills and works well.

The difficulty system isn't without its flaws, though. Within the Extreme difficulties, there's a star rating to indicate the difficulty more precisely, from 6* to 10*. This works okay from 6* to 8*, you can see the complexity and speed advancing in the higher ratings, but once you get to 9*, the spread is so broad that some songs are impossible without more experience, while others are trivial. This problem is even worse in 10*. Because 10* is the maximum possible number, the types of songs in here range from "a bit harder than the average 9*" to "the hardest possible thing the game developers were able to come up with". It's the "everything else" category. This is where I find myself at the moment. A few 10*s are playable for me, and are on par with or a nice step up from 9*, but others are completely impossible without another year of improvement, and there's no way to tell from the song selection screen what it will be. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to continue playing beyond this point. Maybe practice the 9*s again and get better at them? I don't know. The 10* problem will still be there even after that.

If you're new to Taiko in the arcade, here's some general tips for you:

• If you're not using a save data card, you can unlock the Extreme difficulties by hitting right rim 10 times on difficulty select.
• You should use a Banapass/Bandai Namco Passport/Aime card to save your scores and outfit. It's fun. You can get one from the dispenser on the Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 6RR Terminal, which is like this little screen next to a 4 player sit-down racing game that your arcade might have. If they don't have WMMT6RR, ask at the counter, or order a card online. They work internationally!
• You can log in to the Donder Hiroba website to edit your name, swap between any of your collected outfits, and redeem outfit rewards in time-based events.
• Star ratings are not the same between the different difficulty levels. For example, a 6* Normal is easier than a 6* Hard, which is easier than a 6* Extreme.
• Because of that, after you graduate out of Normal, try going to 3* or 4* Hard for starters. Once you can consistently pass 7* Hard and some 8*s, try moving up to 6* Extremes.
• Practise alternating hands. You'll need to do this at higher difficulties.
• The game is difficult mentally as well as physically. Take a moment to rest your mind and your arms between songs. Long songs can be an endurance test.
• The timing windows are stricter on Hard difficulties and above.
• Certain songs have a purple Extreme difficulty available. The star ratings work the same between regular Extreme and purple Extreme. Sometimes the purple Extreme is rated higher than the regular one, sometimes it's a gimmick chart, but usually it's just an alternate version that you can also play. Don't be scared of purples!
• "Diverge Notes" is a really weird mechanic where depending on how well you're playing, the special yellow bar lines can take you to a different chart. Usually, the chart you go to depends on how many times you hit the previous yellow drum roll. Overall, this mechanic is usually used for gimmicks. Sometimes, the "easier" diverging charts are trickier. Anything can happen with Diverge Notes. Stay alert.
• The AI Battle mode is overall demotivating and the battle result is not correlated with your score. There have been charts where I've barely passed but I defeated the AI, and there was also an instance where I got a full combo and lost anyway. In singleplayer, I'm happy with my scores for what the scores are, and I'm always satisfied after clearing the chart, or at least still motivated after failing. In AI Battle, losing always feels bad, even though as far as I can tell it's entirely out of my control.
• You can scroll the song list faster by hitting the rim twice quickly. (Use both hands.)

Pump It Up Phoenix

Wow. A dance game. They actually finally got one.

I don't like it that much.

I'm accustomed to four-panel schemes, like Dance Dance Revolution and In The Groove. The five-panel scheme is weird. I think the layout probably allows for more interesting charts and foot movement at higher difficulties, but I can't get to higher difficulties, because I start to hit a weird problem above difficulty 7-8: occasionally, the pattern is impossible.

You have two feet. Usually, the charts respect the fact that you want to alternate feet, and you don't want feet to cross over. For example, imagine alternating feet and stepping top right, middle, bottom right, top left, middle, bottom left. It's doable.

Now imagine top left, middle, top right, bottom left, bottom right, middle. If you start by pressing the top left panel with your left foot (why wouldn't you?), you can't do the rest of the pattern alternating, your feet get tangled. If you start with the right foot on the top left panel, it works fairly well.

But some patterns seem like they don't play well, no matter which foot you start with. And they'll throw those patterns into the middle of a song that's otherwise really straightforward to play. This doesn't help me improve. The health bar also drops really fast, so it's a toss-up whether I'll be able to make it through the section or not. If playing with a swipe card, losing all your health on any song after the 1st will delete the rest of the credit, which is frustrating. It means the most optimal way to play is to pick the hardest song first, and then more reasonable songs afterwards, just to make sure I get to play them all.

I just can't figure this game out. If it wasn't for the weird charting — or, alternately, if I understood how to step the weird charting, which I don't — I'd probably be playing the game a lot. But it is, and I don't, so I haven't. If you play this game, please advise.

Every song is K-pop.

Sydney

The main arcade brand in New Zealand is TimeZone, and they only really care about Taiko and Pump It Up. So I was overjoyed when I found out that on my trip to Sydney, I'd be able to play a much wider variety of games at Koko! They had:

maimai DX PRiSM

It's no secret that Sydney is obsessed with this game right now. In a single Koko location (the aboveground George St one), they had 5 setups, each setup can support two players at once, and there was a large crowd assembled behind, queueing for their turn.

maimai looks like a washing machine. There is a thick circular rim surrounding a screen, which would otherwise be a window you could look through to see the washing tumble. The rim has 8 chunky buttons embedded in it, and the screen is touch sensitive. In the game, notes appear in the middle and move towards the edge, and you have to press the corresponding button when they touch. There are also some special star notes, which show a trail on screen that you have to touch and drag across after hitting the note. This is the most difficult type of note in the game, because it occupies your attention to understand the trail and your hand while the note is active. Occasionally, there are target-shaped notes, where you have to tap an indicated point on screen.

Due to the unconventional system of notes moving towards the edge rather than scrolling in a single direction, as well as the clutter of the star trails covering the screen, the main challenge of this game is "reading", which means mentally interpreting what you see on the screen so you can direct your hands to do it. I had less trouble than I expected reading this game, but the star trails really do my head in. Part of the challenge is that you have to click the star, wait a beat, and only then follow the trail. In easier charts, you can keep your hand where you clicked and wait to start following the trail, but in harder charts, you might have to use that hand to click something else in that time.

The music selection in this game, and actually for most of the games in Sydney, seems to be more limited to the staples and classics of rhythm game music, for example Brain Power, Bad Apple, LeaF's music (Calamity Fortune), Nanahira's songs (Internet Yamero), and vocaloid (Melt, Mesmerizer, Magical Cure Love Shot). They all have a dedicated category for Touhou Project arrangements.

This game was also my first exposure to the extrinsic reward stamp card miles fluff that tries to keep you engaged and returning to the game. I don't really get it. I play rhythm games because I like the game and the game is fun, not because they give me profile cosmetics! I have engaged with the campaigns in Taiko, but those are mostly external to the game: you casually get tickets while you play the game, and you can trade them later on your own through the Donder Hiroba website. In maimai, it's built into the game's menus. Before you can pick a song, you have to click through screens asking you which reward card you'd like to travel down and which anime mascot character you want to train, and then screens after the game showing you how far your mascot travelled and which rewards you got on the card. It requires pressing the skip button maybe 10 times (and waiting for the associated animation) to get through all the screens.

maimai FiNALE

This was the previous version of the game before DX PRiSM. They have one cabinet of it, sitting sad and alone in the little secluded section in the downstairs past the pool tables of the other Koko. It's pretty beat up. The gameplay is mostly the same, but I'm talking about this game because the rewards system is even more ridiculous than DX PRiSM's.

First, before you get to play a song, you get to put honey on the tree. If you do this, then HAPPY will visit within the next 3 days, so you'd better return and play the game in that time if you want to see HAPPY! I guess HAPPY is some kind of fairy who's lured in by the smell of the honey and you catch her trying to lick it off. Or maybe she's a bug and she got stuck in it.

You put honey on the tree and then you get to play a song, you know, the point of the game. After you play a song, you get cheese pieces! You need 20 to make a full cheese, at which point you will be presented with the message, "Cheese is complete!" Then you start collecting pieces for a new cheese. I do not know what this means. (An unofficial wiki explains.)

I did return within three days, and I did catch HAPPY at the honey tree!

SOUND VOLTEX EXCEED GEAR

In my opinion, this may be the most important and defining arcade rhythm game series. The music that's come from the Sound Voltex series is very exciting and it embodies everything that rhythm games represent. I love when the music made for this game shows up in other community rhythm games.

This game is mostly an ordinary 4-column vertical scrolling rhythm game played with four large (palm-size) buttons, but there are some unique added mechanics. There are two orange buttons below the primary buttons, one for each hand. These are cued with orange scrolling notes, similar to the usual white notes. There are also two knobs, one for each hand, that are positioned off to the sides. So each hand can either be pressing buttons or turning the knob. The knob is cued with a pink or a cyan line that moves across the screen. There is an indicator at the bottom of the playfield, moved by turning the knob, and you have to keep the indicators aligned with the pink and cyan tracks. The speed of rotation doesn't really matter, you just have to turn it and it'll keep it on the track for you.

The game styles itself super-seriously, with dark brooding colour schemes, selective use of highlights, and dramatic animations. This is is very unlike the bright, colourful, cute, whimsy, mascot aesthetic of Taiko no Tatsujin and maimai.

When I saw this game years ago, I felt kind of ambivalent about the gameplay itself, because the knobs mechanic looked pretty weird, and I didn't like how the knobs and the orange buttons both distort how the music sounds. The knobs apply a sort of high-pass and low-pass filter, or a swoosh sound when turned quickly. The orange buttons apply a juddery distortion effect synced to the song's tempo. When listening to the original versions vs the FX versions of the songs, I always prefer the original versions, because in my view the distortion effects kind of ruin the music. So this isn't a game I've been excited to play. But due to its quality music and importance to the whole scene, I decided to give it a go when I saw it in Sydney.

Wow, this game is awesome.

Everything about the way the game is clicks together extremely well. The music courses through my body and I can manipulate it with the distortion effects. When I stepped away from the cabinet it felt like stepping away from a rollercoaster after the ride. It is the most intense, all-consuming rhythm game I have played.

CHUNITHM LUMINOUS PLUS

No way. Chunithm? Chunithm!! The game that's been stuck in my mind! The one with the touch panel! The one where you wave your hands in mid-air! I've been so excited to play this for years! This was the catalyst that got me interested in arcades in the first place! I thought I'd never get the chance to play it! And it's here! Right in front of me!

Damn, this game sucks actually?

The air sensor doesn't feel that good to play, but the main thing that ruins it is the massive delay on the keysounds.

Keysounds/hitsounds are a game mechanic common in many rhythm games where the game plays a sound in response to your input. If the game doesn't have hitsounds, such as StepMania, maimai, and Sound Voltex, you generally try to pay attention to the mechanical click sound that the button itself makes and use that to time against the music. Or, for dance games like Pump It Up, you use the feel of the impact of your foot, and try to time that to the music. If the game does have hitsounds, like Taiko no Tatsujin (it plays a drum sound effect when you hit the drum, since the actual drum controller does not reverberate sound like a real drum would) then you listen to the sound that the game makes and try to time that to the music. Due to electronics, hitsounds will always have a small delay after the actual impact. On some games, like Taiko, the delay is so small that it's barely noticable, but in Chunithm, the delay feels enormous.

The delay feels so enormous that there's a mental disconnect between the feel of my touch and the feedback I'm hearing in response to my actions. I found myself having to consciously touch the panel earlier than the beat in order to try to align the keysounds with the music, which is a deeply unpleasant experience. I did not try a second credit.

jubeat Ave.

jubeat has a 4x4 grid of square buttons with displays in them. The displays fill up with an arrow, and when it is full, you have to press the button. That's the whole game, I don't think there's any other game mechanics. You have two hands, so often you will have to press two of the buttons at the same time.

I don't like it. The displays are hard to see, especially when covered by your hands. The timing indicator is hard to read, and borderline impossible when trying to touch notes that aren't beat-snapped. For example, it's really difficult to tell a 1/4ths rhythm from a 1/8ths rhythm, especially when simultaneous notes are involved, let alone anything with complex rhythm.

It also turned out that the charting style was very dull, at least among the songs I played. The best comparison I have is iNiS-era osu! beatmaps, where the style is that the regularly spaced notes go in a straight line or follow a snaking pattern, heavily featuring repetition and symmetry. The harder maps still follow the same style, just faster with smaller circles and more spacing.

I guess the 4x4 grid is too restrictive to create interesting charts in. This game probably should have been thrown out at the prototype stage.

I quickly got frustrated and decided I didn't want to keep playing when I couldn't figure out how to skip the tutorial, and had to sit through it every single play.

crossbeats REV. Sunrise

Not much to say about this one. It plays a lot like osu!, but more cluttered and harder to read for no reason. The approach rate sucks and the indicators fill the whole screen.

O.N.G.E.K.I. bright MEMORY

So after being disappointed by the pure and simplistic controls of jubeat's 4x4 button panel and crossbeats' touchscreen, imagine my face when I see this cabinet:

Six square buttons. Two sets of three, glowing red, green and blue. Two tiny red and yellow buttons in the corners. A lever, sitting in the middle, sort of like a flight control stick, except when released it remains where you left it. And two glowing pink and purple buttons, vertical, attached to the inside walls of the booth, boldly labelled "Wall.Action.Device.". What on earth is this thing? This looks so silly and overcomplicated. Sure, let's try it. Let's play something silly.

I scan in my save data card. Welcome, new user! Your first play is free! Let's enter your name! And here's a reward on every single stamp card! Skip, skip, skip, skip skip skip. I lost count of how many stamp cards, but it had to have been at least 10, each with forced animations. I guess this was the whole backlog of past campaigns that I'm only now joining. Then there's a story cutscene, set in a school or something. That's a first for an arcade game. Then I get offered if I want to play the tutorial. I timed this process. It took over 4 minutes of menuing before I could get into my first game.

The tutorial introduced me to a flurry of mechanics. There's an anime character at the bottom centre of the screen that I can move left and right using the lever. I can direct her into the yellow rings to gain health, but if she hits the purple rings she'll lose health, so I have to avoid those. I also have to make sure she's above the black playfield, otherwise I won't be able to use my buttons to hit the notes. So with one hand I use the lever to keep her in the correct spot, and with the other hand I hit the red, green and blue buttons when the corresponding indicators on screen reach the judgement line at the bottom. There are also pink and purple notes that are hit with the wall button, so I have to either take my hand off the red/green/blue or the lever in order to hit those.

Finally I can play the game.

After my first song, grinning from ear to ear, I was absolutely stunned. This was the best game I have ever played in my life. It's so unbelievably fun. It's mind-blowing. It's hard to explain why. Maybe it's because I wasn't expecting the varied mash of game mechanics to work well together, but it really does land perfectly. The sheer number of things happening on screen: character movement, enemies, swipe notes, rings, switching hands, and trying to focus on tapping to the rhythm through all of this, is overwhelming in the best way.

A key part of the gameplay is that you have to arrange your hands in different ways to play certain kinds of patterns:

1. One hand on buttons, one hand on lever: Do this to keep your character on a moving playfield while tapping along to the rhythm. You can use the lever in your choice of your left or right hand, and the other hand can press the buttons, because a set of three buttons is available on either side.
2. Both hands on buttons: Do this when it's a wide stationary lane that has two columns of notes. Each hand has to play the notes from its column. Sometimes the patterns are synced up, sometimes each hand has to do a different things. Since both hands are occupied tapping, they won't make you move the lever during this time.
3. One hand on Wall.Action.Device., the other hand using buttons or lever: Since the Wall.Action.Device. is too far to reach with the opposite hand, this forces you to use a specific hand for gameplay. For example, you have to hit the left WAD with your left hand, so you have to use your right hand for the lever. While holding the WAD, the game might ask you to tap a pattern, or it might have a section where you have to rapidly swipe the lever back and forth.

The game has hold notes, including on the buttons and on the WAD, so this can force you to tie up a hand and use only the other hand for gameplay for a bit. Another common pattern around higher difficulties is to have left hand WAD and right hand on lever, and then they'll do right hand WAD, forcing you to switch the lever over to your left hand. Enforced ambidextrous versatility. It's really cool.

The chaos keeps me focused and on my toes. The high contrast charting and enforced variety of playstyles makes this game thrilling from start to finish. You've got to try this.

WACCA REVERSE

WACCA was next to O.N.G.E.K.I. I only had limited time that night, and I spent it all playing O.N.G.E.K.I., so the only review I can give of WACCA is "looked less enticing than the most fun game I had ever played".

pop'n music

This controller looks like a quirky colourful bubble wrap simulator, with round buttons larger than my palm conjuring memories of being a small child in a ball pit. What if this was actually an incredibly hard 9-button rhythm game?

Yeah, I can't even play Normal difficulty in this.

DANCERUSH STARDOM

It's like a touchscreen for your feet. This game is wildly different from the other 4- or 5-panel dancing games, because it abandons precision in favour of style. The charts let you truly move around, truly dance, and do whatever you want with your upper body. Many players see it more about showing off rather than getting a good score.

You'll have to check a video to understand what I mean. I don't think I can do it justice in text.

It didn't click for me.

Auckland

On my way back from Sydney, I was passing through Auckland for a couple of days to see Hatsune Miku live. After grabbing some food on the afternoon before the evening show, I passed by an arcade, and I had to check what was in there. To my surprise, they had two rhythm games in there that I'd actually never even heard of before:

GITADORA GALAXY WAVE DrumMania

Apparently there's some versions of this game for two players where one person plays the guitar and the other person plays the drums, like a little band. That sounds cool! I think this one only had the drums though, because that's all I played.

Taiko no Tatsujin gives you one drum. This game gives you nine. It's a full drum kit.

The gameplay is a typical vertical scrolling rhythm game. I didn't go above Advanced difficulties, because identifying nine inputs is very difficult, but it wasn't quite as difficult as it is in pop'n music, because this game makes the shapes of the on-screen indicators represent the kind of input you do. For example, the foot inputs have a foot icon fall down on the screen, which helps with reading.

Overall, I think it's pretty good, although charting is certainly weird when designed to be played with an actual instrument. For example, in Sound Voltex, you're pressing buttons, not playing an instrument, so they can chart whichever input buttons make sense, like they can do stair patterns or minijacks or jumps or whatever emphasises the music. Typical VSRG chart design, you know.

In DrumMania, it's a drum kit, and it makes drum kit sounds. Unfortunately, they can't choose to put notes in arbitrary lanes for the sake of chart design, because even though the gameplay might play well, it would audibly sound terrible. Such is the problem with keysounds. For example, in Go To The Oasis - ADVANCED (timestamped) the chart simply alternates between snare (yellow) and bass drum (purple) for quite a while. This happens in every song I played. It is quite uninspired charting. Some of the drums will only be touched once or twice over the whole song, or on BASIC difficulty, half the drums don't need to be played at all. I'm not sure if the charting gets more exciting at the harder difficulties, when they're able to require more reading ability of the player, or whether the charters were still held back by the drum sounds needing to fit with the song.

NOSTALGIA Op.3

This game sucks. The controller is stupid. It looks like a piano, oh okay, so you play the game like a piano, right, WRONG. I already complained about 9-button gameplay being challenging, and if there was an actual piano rhythm game, it'd be an 88-button game requiring years of practice to reach an advanced level at. This doesn't play like a piano for two reasons. First, the keys are too small, smaller than a finger, so instead of gracefully playing the correct note, you just kind of smash a handful of keys all at once. It doesn't require precision anyway — any key in the rough general area of the note will do, so slam down on a bunch of them, who cares. The horizontal imprecision is theoretically similar to the gameplay of CHUNITHM, except here it's nonsensical, because in CHUNITHM you touch any point on a smooth touch panel, and in NOSTALGIA you're pressing discrete keys where the specific keys aren't important.

Another mistake imported from CHUNITHM is keysounds, and as we've established in that game (and in GITADORA GALAXY WAVE DrumMania), keysounds are bad. The keysounds are too delayed from the audible sound of the key clicking.

It's a truly terrifying game. Death to keysounds AND the controller is stupid. It's stupid, stupid CHUNITHM.

beatmania IIDX

The final game at this location in Auckland was an infamously hard 7+1-button vertical scrolling rhythm game. I elected not to try playing it. (I knew it would go worse than pop'n music. I'm not good at reading lots of columns.) However, since I value writing quality articles and I want to bring you the most accurate reporting possible, I've consulted with multiple dedicated players of this game, and they agree with the following in-depth review:

this game is for freaks

Christchurch

maimai DX PRiSM (again)

To my surprise, Christchurch does have a single maimai machine — the only one in the South Island! I stayed for a few hours, and I had a wonderful experience in which I mostly talked to people. There were so many people who were so enthusiastic about this game that there was a 50-minute-long queue to take turns playing. It made a nice change from Dunedin, which doesn't have enough interested people to need a queue, where I can play alone on Taiko for over an hour without seeing anybody else. Everybody I talked to was so interesting. Despite not playing much, this overall might be the most exhilarated I've ever felt when leaving an arcade. I felt such a strong sense of community and comradeship with all the personalities I'd met, and I was sad to say goodbye.

Conclusion

Don't judge a rhythm game by how it looks, give it a play before you form an opinion. Some games that I'd dreamt of playing for almost a decade, like CHUNITHM, turned out to be utterly unenjoyable, whereas some games I had low expectations for, like SOUND VOLTEX and O.N.G.E.K.I, were brilliant unforgettable experiences.

I would do almost anything for the chance to play O.N.G.E.K.I. again.

Cadence