I have a piece up on The Escapist this week called Rhythm and Rhyme. It’s about hip hop and video games, particularly how I think there’s never going to be a wildly successful Rock Band style game based on hip hop. Then I go into examples of the kind of non-simulationist gameplay that hip hop can inform. Here’s the first paragraph:
Music games have exploded in popularity in the last five years. While PaRappa the Rapper may have been the first hit rhythm game, modern music games are practically synonymous with rock music. Rock Band alone has revolutionized digital music distribution, giving small bands previously unimaginable amounts of exposure and introducing a new generation of music listeners to older songs they would not have heard otherwise. Which raises the obvious question: Why hasn’t there been a similar game for hip hop? It would seem a straightforward challenge to take the Rock Band formula, apply a few tweaks and make it work for a different genre of music.
{ 2 comments }
Both articles (this one and your past one) are excellent reads!
Interesting you wrote about this Darius…
Earlier this year I was working on a small game prototype for a freestyle rap battle game based on my attempts to learn how to freestyle rap over the past few years, and it was surprisingly close to what you are describing at the end of your article.
So far the prototype remains barely worked on as I realized it was too big of an undertaking to ever squeeze in as a class project, but it's one I've wanted to get back into for a long time.
Comments on this entry are closed.