A Review of the ``Rhythm Heaven'' Video Game

I was once in the habit of importing video games from Japan.  I even played a long role-playing game
without understanding most of its text.  I purchased ``Rhythm Tengoku'' from this following listing:
https://www.play-asia.com/rhythm-tengoku/13/701fhv

From that product listing, I located the game's Japanese website, which is still available for view:
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/n08/brij/index.html

This is the very first entry of the ``Rhythm Heaven'' series of video games, and I don't believe the
first entry to have been released outside of Japan.  This series comes to my mind before all others,
when I consider video games easy to program, and video games that are entirely style over substance.

Some rhythm games involve the player's character walking in a straight line, with the rhythm element
arising from obstacles which require player action and have associated sounds, but ``Rhythm Heaven''
lacks even this.  The game ``Rhythm Heaven'' is a collection of many smaller games, each of which is
without variation in all sessions; a game tends to open with an introductory sequence explaining the
game by simple examples, after which a song starts and the real game begins.  The primary exceptions
are the remix stages which combine several games from a column into a longer game, switching between
them wildly, and which feature no introduction.  A game can be as simple as pressing a single button
to a beat, or as complex as using the entire directional pad; regardless, each game is quite simple.

The subjects of each game range from a scientist killing germs to a tweezer plucking hairs out of an
onion.  At each game's end, a score is provided based on how well the player kept the rhythm; a poor
score prevents the player from unlocking new games, and a perfect score requires perfect input.  The
opportunity to get a perfect score is only given randomly from the beaten games, with a marker shown
in the corner which breaks in a loud and jarring fashion upon imperfect input.  Most games allow the
player to continue, but I seem to recall at least one will abruptly end from a particularly bad run.

It wasn't until I thought about implementing a game resembling it that I realized its utterly simple
nature.  Programming these games is very simple, because there's no variation whatsoever; every game
plays exactly the same every time, and yet it's reasonably fun to revisit occasionally.  The closest
rhythm game to this one is ``Dance Dance Revolution'', which is more generic yet adaptable to random
music; every game in ``Rhythm Heaven'' has a unique song and art style in addition to controls.  The
rhythm game genre may be that best example of just how little gameplay there can be to a video game.

Unfortunately, making a video game that's hardly a game requires other talent, particularly musical.
.