My Music Game Addiction (Part 1)

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I'm new to the Bitmob community, and I wanted to discuss a problem I seem to have: I've been hooked by music games. Recently, the games in series such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero have become popular with people who never touched a game before, gamers who didn't play music games in the past or those like me who have played music games for years. Music games have been around for quite some time, but only when they became part of popular culture was it okay for me to be addicted to them.

My first exposure to music games was the Playstation classic, ‘Parappa the Rapper'. I seriously loved every stage of the game, making sure my rhythm matched the other rappers in-game. I later learned about free-styling, so having to go to a friend's house to play this game wasn't a chore because of the reward of learning techniques that could get me hundreds of points instead of maybe 30 or 40 for following the beat correctly. I also played the semi- sequel, Um-Jammer Lammy, but the songs weren't as memorable as the original Parappa. Therefore 1997 marked the start of my eventual music game addiction.

I first started seeing how popular music games would become with Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) around the year 2000. I have some really great memories of playing the home versions of the DDR games with friends. Even though the game was not real dancing, as I'm sure was pointed out by many in various media outlets, it wasn't about trying to simulate real dancing. To me, it was just about having fun with friends jumping around or trying to play double pad songs for the first time. Several of these freinds could play ‘Afronova' on Heavy (the highest difficulty) without looking at the screen. That is nothing compared to what you can find now on youtube, but back when I first saw that it was INCREDIBLE. The dancing craze was spreading to adults too; my parents and other relatives were beginning to play DDR for exercise. As DDR eventually faded in popularity, new music games moved in to take its place. Since the focus of my addiction seems to be in the last 5 years, these important years will be the topic of Part 2 of My Music Game Addiction.

(3)

Toby Davis

July 01, 2009

welcome to the site. Only music game I have played, but still on easy would be Boom Boom Rocket.

Walter Wood

Welcome to bitmob dude! Good to have you.;D

I hope in Part 2 you'll at least acknowledge Amplitude. That game consumed so much of my youth. I never owned it, but instead would rent it multiple times a month. The last song, "I want to be synthesized" was probably my first experience in what would become a long love of electronic/super produced music. That and it introduced me to a bunch of music a 12 year old me probably never would have thought to listen to. I miss Amplitude...

Brenden Kurima

Thanks for the warm welcome, guys. Unfortunately my only experience with Amplitude is from a demo included with Official Playstation Magazine. I liked the demo, but felt the game was a little too difficult for my tastes at the time. I recently finished Rock Band Unplugged which is supposedly similar to Amplitude, so maybe its time for me to look for a used copy of Amplitude...