Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, a Japan-only release, made quite a splash on the Nintendo DS last year -- in many circles, it was the game to import. A unique take on the rhythm and music genre, Ouendan had players tapping and tracing all over the touch screen to help three male cheerleaders cheer on a host of people with problems ranging from a test at school to saving the world from an incoming asteroid. The gameplay was refreshing, challenging, and loads of fun. The song list, the levels, and the scenarios all fit together nicely to create a package that was a delight to play.
The prevailing wisdom was that this game would never make it outside Japan: it was packed full of Japanese cultural references and the soundtrack wouldn't have any appeal for American or European audiences. It seems Nintendo decided they couldn't ignore the import success though. We first heard about Elite Beat Agents back in February, actually. Nintendo UK executives let slip Ouendan might be headed to Europe, but our questions of how went unaddressed. That was remedied at E3.
Elite Beat Agents is not a localization of Ouendan, though it shares the same gameplay. What developer iNiS has done is create an entirely new story crafted to appeal to English-speaking audiences. The demo featured two new songs and entirely new scenarios, and the cheering is now done by a brand-new squad of the titular Agents. Derek, Morris, and J do the same basic thing Ryuta, Suzuki, and Saitou did in Ouendan: perform on the touch screen to inspire the characters in the story playing out on the top screen. Of course, the Agents have one thing up on the Ouendan boys: they sing. Or, at least, hold microphones -- I didn't hear them actually singing.
The demo started off with a tutorial by the Agents' leader, ex-CIA agent Commander Kahn, explaining the mechanics of Agents. There are three core mechanics to the game, and they all work the same way they did in Ouendan. Racking up high scores in Agents is, like many other music games, dependent on getting large combos of these consecutively. You also have to watch the Elite-O-Meter, which rises with successful execution of the song and falls with misses (as well as falling slowly over time).
The first, and most prevalent, mechanic is the numbered beats which appear on the screen, which you must tap to clear, in order. However, it's not just as simple as tapping them out as you see them; these beats are aligned with the music. Your cue to tap them is a shrinking circle that touches the outer edge of the beat when it's time to do the tapping. The beats can appear anywhere on the screen, but subsequent beats will usually follow in a pattern. Often, the spacing of the beats give you a clue to the rhythm that the combined beats form -- the more closely the beats are spaced, the quicker they will sound off. Depending on how close you are to the beat, you'll get 300, 100, or 50 points for that beat. Tapping the beats also adds song-appropriate sound effects to the audio, to give aural feedback to your performance.
The second mechanic is the path. The same shrinking circle appears at the beginning of the path and is your cue to put your stylus down before a ball appears, which proceeds to roll down the path, touching dots along the way. Your stylus needs to be on top of the ball when it touches one of the dots for you to get that dot. Missing a dot will break your combo, but it won't count in your misses at the results screen. At the end of the path is either a solid spot (at which point you should lift your stylus; the end of a path scores similarly to a beat), or a U-turn arrow which means the ball will bounce back along the path the other way. Again, appropriate sound effects accompany your progress or failures.
The third mechanic is a spinning wheel. When it appears, it takes over the entire screen and you must spin it by drawing circles on it, filling the meter in the background. You must fill the meter to the top to get points, and if you continue spinning the wheel beyond the top, you'll earn bonus points. Faster definitely equals better here. Spinning the wheel also fills your Elite-O-Meter slightly; though you'll get the biggest boost by clearing it.
The prevailing wisdom was that this game would never make it outside Japan: it was packed full of Japanese cultural references and the soundtrack wouldn't have any appeal for American or European audiences. It seems Nintendo decided they couldn't ignore the import success though. We first heard about Elite Beat Agents back in February, actually. Nintendo UK executives let slip Ouendan might be headed to Europe, but our questions of how went unaddressed. That was remedied at E3.
Elite Beat Agents is not a localization of Ouendan, though it shares the same gameplay. What developer iNiS has done is create an entirely new story crafted to appeal to English-speaking audiences. The demo featured two new songs and entirely new scenarios, and the cheering is now done by a brand-new squad of the titular Agents. Derek, Morris, and J do the same basic thing Ryuta, Suzuki, and Saitou did in Ouendan: perform on the touch screen to inspire the characters in the story playing out on the top screen. Of course, the Agents have one thing up on the Ouendan boys: they sing. Or, at least, hold microphones -- I didn't hear them actually singing.
The demo started off with a tutorial by the Agents' leader, ex-CIA agent Commander Kahn, explaining the mechanics of Agents. There are three core mechanics to the game, and they all work the same way they did in Ouendan. Racking up high scores in Agents is, like many other music games, dependent on getting large combos of these consecutively. You also have to watch the Elite-O-Meter, which rises with successful execution of the song and falls with misses (as well as falling slowly over time).
The first, and most prevalent, mechanic is the numbered beats which appear on the screen, which you must tap to clear, in order. However, it's not just as simple as tapping them out as you see them; these beats are aligned with the music. Your cue to tap them is a shrinking circle that touches the outer edge of the beat when it's time to do the tapping. The beats can appear anywhere on the screen, but subsequent beats will usually follow in a pattern. Often, the spacing of the beats give you a clue to the rhythm that the combined beats form -- the more closely the beats are spaced, the quicker they will sound off. Depending on how close you are to the beat, you'll get 300, 100, or 50 points for that beat. Tapping the beats also adds song-appropriate sound effects to the audio, to give aural feedback to your performance.
The second mechanic is the path. The same shrinking circle appears at the beginning of the path and is your cue to put your stylus down before a ball appears, which proceeds to roll down the path, touching dots along the way. Your stylus needs to be on top of the ball when it touches one of the dots for you to get that dot. Missing a dot will break your combo, but it won't count in your misses at the results screen. At the end of the path is either a solid spot (at which point you should lift your stylus; the end of a path scores similarly to a beat), or a U-turn arrow which means the ball will bounce back along the path the other way. Again, appropriate sound effects accompany your progress or failures.
The third mechanic is a spinning wheel. When it appears, it takes over the entire screen and you must spin it by drawing circles on it, filling the meter in the background. You must fill the meter to the top to get points, and if you continue spinning the wheel beyond the top, you'll earn bonus points. Faster definitely equals better here. Spinning the wheel also fills your Elite-O-Meter slightly; though you'll get the biggest boost by clearing it.