# Talk:Rhythm game

This review is transcluded from Talk:Rhythm game/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Well-written
There are a few issues which show be addressed.
Release years are indicated with a mix of parenthesis and regular prose. Keeping things consistent will improve the flow.
The citations for the Fundamentals of Game Design book is different from the Arcade Mania! citations. I would pick one way or the other.
Ref 27- "Best Rhythm Game: Rock Band 2, UGO" needs a date (2008) and an accessdate.
Prose is well-written and complies with MoS.
Factually accurate and verifiable
The sources look good; all from reliable publications and website.
The article looks good except for the start of the history section. It described early forms of rhythm games and then goes on to say "PaRappa the Rapper has also been credited as the first rhythm game". Were Simon and Dance Aerobics also credited as the first rhythm game or just forerunners?
Thanks for the clarification.
Broad in its coverage
The major aspects look to be covered without going into excess detail.
Neutral
Looks to be neutral and unbiased.
Stable
There do not seem be any edit wars and daily editing is minimal.
Images
All images look to improve the understanding of the discussed topics, and are free photos on commons.
Overall
On hold for now
Meets criteria
The article looks great, just a few issues to take care of and I'll pass it for GA. Keep up the good work. (Guyinblack25 talk 15:52, 29 April 2009 (UTC))

The recent edits addressed my concerns. Nice job on the excellent article. (Guyinblack25 talk 19:42, 29 April 2009 (UTC))
Thanks for the review, and thanks to Bridies for doing most of the hard work. Randomran (talk) 20:14, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

what's this ? :

The screen will display an avatar who performs in response to the player's button-presses,[3] although the avatar is less important to the player than it is to spectators.[4] In single-player mode, the player's avatar will compete against a computer-controlled opponent, while multiplayer mode will allow two player-controlled avatars to compete head-to-head.[3]
It's not something you can find in every rythm game, and only featured in few games. This should'nt be in the definition of rythm game.
--84.6.110.148 (talk) 22:24, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

First, the matter of the name of the genre. I do not believe that Rhythm Game is the name of anything - I wish I were better versed in the technical grammatical terminology for this, but looking around wikipedia and other places, I find the names of genres are typically either premodified with determiners (as in "Literary genres include the novel and the sonnet." (answers.com/sonnet) or have a category noun like "fiction" as their head (as in "science fiction", "detective fiction"). I concur with User:Masem that my original attempt to fix this (to Rhythm Gaming) was equally wrong, but Rhythm Game reads really awkwardly, and seems to be incorrect. Better alternatives might be "the Rhythm Game", Rhythm Games", or Rhythm Video Games. The article itself is already somewhat inconsistent about this - the last sentence begins with "In 2008, it was reported that the music game had become the second most popular video game genre in the U.S." (emphasis mine) The music game article too avoids using such awkward genre terms, and is much better for it.
More importantly, this article states that the rhythm game is (or "rhythm games are", as the case may be :) a subgenre of action video games, but if you go read the action game page, it does not list rhythm games as a subgenre, and in fact very explicitly defines action gaming to be something entirely different from what rhythm gaming is, with a focus on levels and character abilities and bosses and items, none of which appear with any regularity/importance in rhythm games. So I think this needs to be categorized differently, or the Action Game article needs to be significantly expanded. 
A smaller quibble - I don't think that pitch-based singing games should be mentioned here. The music game article lists them separately, and they should probably stay that way. Yes, Rock Band makes this kind of confusing by blending the two, but individual works that blend genres are
hardly rare.
Personman (talk) 08:24, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

"Rhythm game" is the prevalent term used in sources. "The rhythm game" is fine as well but I don't see that the determiner is especially necessary in the lead section. I am ambivalent either way but this follows the format used in most other video game genre articles. "Rhythm games are..." doesn't work as far as I see because a genre/subgenre is singular. I also don't see a problem with "inconsistency", since either way is fine; variety is the spice of life and all that. The "awkwardness" probably results from "game" which is necessary for purposes of clarity. You are wrong about the action game article: it does indeed list rhythm games as a subgenre. In any case, it is referenced in this article that rhythm is a subgenre of action (or is at least considered so by many) so what action game (an incomplete start class article) does or doesn't say isn't really this article's problem. Singstar and Karaoke Revolution are mentioned here because they marked Harmonix turning away from arty, abstract music games to populist "performance sims", which in turn led to Guitar Hero. The only other place they are mentioned is: The genre also includes games that measure both rhythm and pitch, in order to test a player's singing ability and since Rock Band does both that mention is justified. Music video game again does not have any sourced justification for "pitch games" as a separate subgenre. bridies (talk) 09:41, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
All of our gaming genre articles are "something" game due to how that's used in nearly every source. "Rhythm gaming" may make sense for a few places where one is talking about the action of playing a rhythm game, but when talking about the game itself, it does not. --MASEM (t) 13:09, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Should the DDR picture be above the navbox like that?  æronphonehome  00:07, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

It's in-keeping with the format most of the genre articles use. There was a discussion at WP:VG about this format some time ago; it was rather inconclusive but the consensus seemed to lean towards this format. bridies (talk) 04:27, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

This article credits Simon, Dance Aerobics and PaRappa the Rapper as the first rhythm games.  However, (aside from Simon), Melody Blaster from Mattel came out several years before PaRappa and is far more in line with "modern" rhythm games than Dance Aerobics (which Melody Blaster also came out before anyway).
Granted, this game isn't nearly as well known, since it was the only game released for an add-on to an add-on to a dying system (The Music Synthesizer add on for the Entertainment Computer System for the Mattel Intellivision), but game play footage obviously shows that this game *is* the ancestor of modern rhythm games like Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution.
Here's some footage from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ee1TV7wMYc&NR=1
Now, the question is, how does all of this apply to this article? 70.106.140.90 (talk) 07:20, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Without reliable secondary sources, it doesn't. bridies (talk) 12:25, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
What kind of reliable secondary sources are you looking for?  IntellivisionGames.com, ran by one of the main Intellivision Programmers and the current holder to rights for all things Intellivision has the 1983 release date listed here (http://www.intellivisiongames.com/gamecatalog.php) and more information about the game here (http://www.intellivisiongames.com/gamepage.php?gameId=54) 70.106.138.168 (talk) 04:29, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
That probably makes it a primary source, but in any case it doesn't support any of the above claims. bridies (talk) 05:46, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
How so?  The first link obviously shows that the game was released long before any of the others (aside from Simon, which is a different creature altogether).  The second link describes the gameplay footage with text and a few images (that also happens to match the YouTube video I linked to - and several others).  I'm not sure what it is you're looking for.  70.106.138.168 (talk) 13:08, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
A reliable secondary source which makes the claims explicitly. Not original research based on primary sources. bridies (talk) 13:30, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
I don't mean to sound stupid, but which "claim", that it was released in 1983 or that it's a music/rhythm game? or something else? 70.106.138.168 (talk) 02:41, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Claims such as "[the game] is far more in line with "modern" rhythm games than Dance Aerobics" and "this game *is* the ancestor of modern rhythm games like Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution." bridies (talk) 04:27, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Wouldn't the game itself show that?  Do we need a secondary source to describe Tetris as a game with falling blocks where the goal is to make lines?  70.106.138.168 (talk) 04:46, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Just because a game came first before others does not establish it as the basis of the genre; the game may have been forgotten, ignored, or just unknown to the developers credited for the games that establish the genre. So here, we need a source to establish that Melody Blaster was the basis for rhythm games.  We can say it was likely the first rhythm game, but it's not the one that founded the genre. --MASEM (t) 04:52, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Do we have a source that PaRappa's "basic template forms the core of subsequent games in the genre"?  None of the references prove that PaRappa wasn't "forgotten, ignored or just unknown to the developers" of games like Guitar Freaks, Guitar Hero and Rock Band.  Because none of the sources in this article show the developers of subsequent rhythm games ever heard of PaRappa.  70.105.124.79 (talk) 14:37, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
The sources are referenced in the article. [1], [2] and Brian Ashraft's book. bridies (talk) 15:08, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Neither one of those two articles provide any evidence that developers of GH, GF, BH, etc. ever crossed paths with PaRappa.  And the second article incorrectly states that PaRappa was the first rhythm game, so I wouldn't even consider it that reliable. 70.105.124.79 (talk) 15:16, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
I suggest reading WP:V, WP:OR and WP:RS. bridies (talk) 16:10, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Simon was copied from Atari's earlier arcade game Touch Me, please correct this mistake. Also, Aerobics from Spinnaker on the Atari 800 is from 1983, predating Nintendo's Aerobcs by 4 years.
Also, Exus Video Jogger with mat (Foot Craz Pad) was on Atari VCS in 1983, I put it in some idiot keeps deleting it. Will you please stop deleting this fact.

You cited another Wiki article and what appears to be a 404-not-found. Suggest you read WP:RS and WP:CIVIL while you're at it. bridies (talk) 15:04, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Quick note: The penulitmate source -Associated Press- "is no longer available". Is there anything we can do about that? bridies (talk) 05:36, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Checklinks tool, found replacement URL for it. --MASEM (t) 06:00, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
Also, ref no. 14 just redirects to IGN/tech. Google gives a couple of other URLs for it but they do the same thing. Any ideas? There's other citations for those points if need be, but still... bridies (talk) 12:25, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed it. bridies (talk) 05:08, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

There needs to be a clear line to distinguish what is a music game and what is a rhythm game.  Currently their definitions seem very similar.  I propose all games that actually require following a rhythm(such as Rhythm Tengoku and its sequels) to be classified as rhythm games and all games that prioritize the use of vision(Guitar Hero series, Rock Band series, osu!) to play be classified as music games.
--207.179.240.230 (talk) 01:24, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

That would be original research, which we don't allow. --MASEM (t) 02:17, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
As Masem said, that's an original definition running counter to what's in the sources. There's a large overlap mainly because rhythm games have had the lion's share of the wider genre for several years now, but stuff like Harmonix's early abstract games, pitch games like Singstar, those music-production-for-dummies Music games, and others like music-shooter hybrid Rez are not rhythm games. bridies (talk) 06:29, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Mentions of Japanese games just died off after the Origins and popularity in Japan (1970s – 2000) section, and then it's all Rock Band and Guitar Hero UNDUly down the next two sections. Japan-based games and trends, such as the term otoge (音ゲー), Rhythm Heaven series and additions of new arcade RGs (maimai, Groove Coaster, Bemani lines like Jubeat), were just glossed over or right out not mentioned at all. Towards the smartphone era only the (American) Tap Tap franchise was mentioned, ignoring again Asian additions like Cytus. The gist kinda leaves the POV that "yep rhythm game started big in Japan but who cares of it now" to me. 野狼院ひさし Hisashi Yarouin 14:00, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't think we're purposely leaving them out but the fact sources are fairly weak to cover the Japanese side of rhythm games when GH/RB were huge in the West.  If we can source the continued popularity of these in Japan, that would be helpful. --MASEM (t) 15:42, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm not saying that's on purpose either, just how the current state looks like, and how it could strive better NPOV. I understand that Wikipedia is a work in progress, so that's one area to expand in the days coming. For starters, the Game Music Triangle collab between three arcade RG franchises at the annual Niconico conference earlier this year has 4Gamer reported spotting "large numbers of visitors playing at exhibiting trial-play cabinets". 野狼院ひさし Hisashi Yarouin 04:40, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
It's because Guitar Hero et al were really maaaaaaaassive in the West for several years and their bootprint was all over the video game market broadly (money making, tech development, demographics etc.). Whereas everything else is/was relatively niche, whether in Japan and the West. I do think we can add these various bits and pieces from Japan alongside Tap-Tap etc. and/or we could possibly trim the long peripheral section now that it looks more like a (big) fad in perspective. Whichever the case may be. bridies (talk) 07:11, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

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"Many rhythm games include multiplayer modes in which players compete for the highest score or cooperate as a simulated musical ensemble."
A simulated as opposed to an authentic musical ensemble?
How are they to be distinguished? The writer apparently has some litmus test in mind but reflection fails to turn up what it might be. Is it the transient character typical of such collaboration? The intent of the participants? Given the wreck and ruin wrought by COVID-19 in the arenas of musical collaboration and public performance, this seems a substantive issue, but YMWV--one man's profundity is another's pettifoggery, so I didn't strike the word "simulated". I just don't understand what is intended by it in this context. Lewis Goudy (talk) 22:29, 16 February 2021 (UTC)