The use of CD-ROMs for games in the 1990s meant a drastic improvement in the quality of in-game music. With this advancement came a number of game designers who decided to use this to combine the worlds of gaming and music, creating the rhythm game genre.
It’s not surprising that because of this, the original PlayStation had a bunch of great rhythm games. One of them,Parappa the Rapper, proved to be hugely influential. It even gave Sony an additional mascot for a time, as the rapping dog represented the diversity of games on the system. Not every game got to be as big, however, and there are plenty of weird and wonderful rhythm games that haven’t quite had the same lasting impact.
6Spice World
While the PlayStation was dominating the gaming charts, the music charts saw the dominance of The Spice Girls, especially in their home country of the UK. Naturally, Sony’s London studio saw this as a great opportunity to combine the two. The result was 1998’sSpice World, which shared its name with the group’s movie debut.
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The result is probably one of the stranger appearances ofreal-world musicians in video games, as the girls were all turned into large-headed Bratz doll versions of themselves. The gameplay was also odd, as it offered simple dancing gameplay and the ability to direct music videos as the girls danced around. While the game was popular at the time, it disappeared from memory as Spice Girl mania died down by the 2000s, and also because the game itself wasn’t very good.
5Fluid
Fluidis one of the original PlayStation’s stranger titles. It was so strange that North America avoided it entirely, as it only launched in Japan and Europe. Players control a dolphinswimming through a hazy seascape, where the objective is to collect artifacts within different levels. Each of these artifacts contains a specific sound, and these sounds became part of a sample library.
In fact, controlling the dolphin was only half the game. The other half was the Groove Editor, where the collected samples could be thrown together to make music, and the dolphin could then do on-the-fly improvisation of the sounds. This music creation was limited, however, as the player could only really create New Age ambient music with the game’s limited tools.
4Music 2000
Not so much a game and more a piece of software for the PlayStation, theMusicgames from Codemasters are best summed up as Pro Tools for the PS1. At a time of limited availability of music-making software for the home market,Musicwas hugely influential.It gave PlayStation owners a basic digital audio workstation, with its own sample library, sequencers, and a ton of in-built effects.
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It had a significant limitation, however, as players couldn’t export their music, so it remained trapped inside the PlayStation and couldn’t be ripped to a CD directly. The samples inMusic 2000were also very 90s, so it was hard to make anything that wasn’t moody techno, which limited its potential. It’s mostly forgotten today, as more flexible PC-based DAWs have become affordable and readily available, but at the time it was a big deal.
3Bust-a-Groove
WhileDance Dance Revolutionwas starting toheat up in arcades, another game brought dancing gameplay to the PlayStation:Bust a Groove. It didn’t use a dance mat like its more popular contemporary, however. Instead, it used inputs similar toParappa the Rapper, as a group of wacky characters held dance-offs.
The characters were definitely odd, ranging from a stereotypical 70s disco dancer to a hip hop dancer from the mean streets, all the way up to a man in a gas mask, a cat-themed magical girl, a woman who dresses like a baby, and a pair of aliens. It was bizarre and generally got rave reviews, but the series proved unpopular in the West as the second game skipped Europe and the third game never left Japan.
2Um Jammer Lammy
WhileParappa the Rappergets a ton of attention to this day for how influential and unique it is, its immediate spin-off,Um Jammer Lammy, tends to be a little more ignored.Parappaeven got a remaster for PS4, whileUm Jammer Lammyremains stuck in the past.
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KeepingParappa’s call-and-response gameplay, this spinoff changes the responses from repeated rap phrases to cool guitar licks. Playing as the sheep guitarist, Lammy, from the rock band MilkCan, players have to use their guitar skills in such bizarre situations as putting out a fire, flying a plane and looking after some babies. It offered a little more complexity than its predecessor while keeping the tone and ease of access that made it so beloved in the first place.
1Vib-Ribbon
From the same mind that gave the worldParappaandLammy,Vib-Ribbonsees the player taking control of a rabbit made of vector graphics walking across a line covered in shapes, each representing a different button on the controller. These shapes slide along the line to the beat of music, and the rabbit must hop, skip and jump across these to avoid devolving into a worm and dying.
It was already a unique concept, but what made it extra special was that its levels were procedurally generated based on any audio fed into the game. In other words, the game disc could be swapped for any audio CD, and the songs on that CD would create a series of new levels for the game. It was a cool concept for the time, but aside from an accidental PS3 re-release and areference in PS5 pack-in gameAstro’s Playroom,Vib-Ribbonhas yet to be brought into the mp3 and streaming worlds, where it could really shine.
