My Escapade in the Rhythm Heaven Series
Rhythm Heaven Megamix art (Source: Destructoid)
If you read my previous article on Hi-Fi Rush, I did mention how I used to not like rhythm games. When my friends recommends me to play osu! or Cytus, I just say “yeah, I’ll look into it” and then never try it. I just don’t find those games interesting to me. My first “rhythm” game that I played was Crypt of the Necrodancer, which was very fun to play, but can also be very frustrating at times, especially at the later levels/zones. I then followed up with Cadence of Hyrule, a Zelda spin-off and crossover with Crypt of the Necrodancer, which became one of my favourite games to re-play (I even did attempt some speedruns!). After those two games, I was looking for more rhythm games to play. Coincidentally, at that time, Rhythm Heaven was having a resurgence in popularity on Youtube, especially for Rhythm Heaven Fever, after RTGame’s ‘visual’ playthrough and JaidenAnimation’s All Superb speedrun. I decided to try it out.
Now, this article is technically has been in the making for a year. I first tried out Rhythm Heaven Fever (Wii) in early 2022. After that, I kind of forgot about Rhythm Heaven until after I finished playing Hi-Fi Rush. After Hi-Fi Rush, I came back to the Rhythm Heaven franchise by playing the last Rhythm Heaven game, Rhythm Heaven Megamix (3DS). Then, wanting for more, I decided to try out Rhythm Heaven DS, and finally Rhythm Tengoku (GBA), the oldest game in the Rhythm Heaven franchise.
So, now, here I am, writing my thoughts about the whole Rhythm Heaven franchise. I will write the games in order of their launch date, not based on the order I played it first. On every games, I will write my thoughts on the overall game as a whole and then list out my most/least favourite mini-games/remix, my easiest/hardest mini-games/remix for me, and throw in some honorable mentions when there is any. Also, apologies in advance, there will not be a lot of direct game clips for this article, since video captures for GBA/DS/3DS are basically non-existent, and I don’t want to use an emulator for this. Some of the clips here will just be a recording from my phone capturing my 3DS.
Rhythm Tengoku (GBA)
Rhythm Heaven Silver start screen (Source: Rhythm Heaven Wiki)
Now this one is actually a bit interesting. There are no English/Western release for Rhythm Tengoku. But, thanks to the hard-work of the Rhythm Heaven community, we have an English patch for Rhythm Tengoku now! (named Rhythm Heaven Silver) The translations are not perfect/complete, but it is still great that I can understand and complete the game. Big kudos to them!
Rhythm Tengoku is available for the GBA, but I don’t have a GBA console to play with. Since I don’t want to play it on an emulator, I try to find some way to be able to play Rhythm Tengoku as close to the original as possible. Well, I do have a 3DS, and I already homebrew-ed it, so I did some research if you can play a GBA game on a 3DS. Turns out, you can! So, all I had to do to play Rhythm Tengoku is to obtain a ROM of this game (rip from the original cartridge, I do not condone piracy.), obtain and apply the English patch, feed the patched ROM into the injector app, and install it on my 3DS. This process was fairly easy, although some trial-and-error was needed when trying to package the ROM into an installable 3DS app, since the app could not determine the best settings to use for Rhythm Tengoku, so I had to adjust & try it myself. The game runs great with no input latency, since the 3DS are actually capable of running GBA games natively.
Rhythm Tengoku consists of 48 mini-games: 40 normal games and 8 remixes. There are 25 “unique” games, with the later 15 games being a harder variation of the earlier games. The 48 games are then arranged in 8 “columns”. At first, you will only see the first columns (first 6 games). More “columns” will appear if you have cleared all games in the previous column.
Most of the games are only controlled by the A button. Some games utilize the B button, as well as the directional pads (D-pad). I think this is why I can get in to Rhythm Heaven easily; the controls are very simple. Even though I struggle with remembering the controls for every game at the later remixes, after a couple of retries, I can get comfortable with it pretty quickly.
Aside from the main games, there are Endless Games that you unlock by getting Superb on the main games. There are also Drum Courses that teaches you the basic drum patterns & timings, and the Concert Hall if you have cleared all the main games. Other than that, there’s not a lot to talk about Rhythm Tengoku GBA. I finished it pretty quick and didn’t really have a lot of issues with this.
Most Favourite : Turbo Tap Dance
‘Boppin tunes, simple A-button controls, and a higher tempo song to make this game actually hard to Superb at first. Also, cool monkeys!
Turbo Tap Trial
Least Favourite : Quiz Time
This is not even a rhythm mini-game. You just need to press the same number of times as the prompt, and you’re done. You don’t even need to press the buttons following the rhythm.
Easiest : Karate Man
I mean, this is the first mini-game in this game, what do you expect?! Karate Man is supposed to be your introduction to the game. It’s just a simple A-button presses, static tempo, and normal tempo song.
Karate Man
Hardest : Built to Scale 2/Poly-Rhythm 2
Hands down one of the hardest mini-game in this game. Legit, it took me a couple of tries to actually clear Built to Scale 2 & get a Superb rank. It’s the ending parts that give me a lot of troubleat first, when you have to alternate & stagger A presses and the D-pad really quick.
Built to Scale 2/Poly-Rhythm 2
Rhythm Heaven DS
Rhythm Heaven DS art. Rhythm Heaven DS for the Europe region is called Rhythm Paradise. (Source: Nintendo UK, original article has been taken down.)
Rhythm Heaven DS is the first Rhythm Heaven game to receive an English localization. For the Nintendo DS, this game brought some changes to how you play the game. We’ll delve more into this topic later…
As for the mini-games itself, there are 51 mini-games in Rhythm Heaven DS: 40 normal games, 10 remixes, and one from the credits (yep, the credits is now a playable game!). There are 24 “unique” games, with the 16 remaining being the harder variations of the previous games. These 50 mini-games (excluding the credits) are then arranged in 10 “columns”. There are only one game that I would say are “remade” from Rhythm Tengoku, and that is Karate Man. But, even then, Karate Man on Rhythm Heaven DS introduced new mechanics not present in Rhythm Tengoku, so it does not even feel like a direct “port” of the game.
Aside from the main games, we also get several side-games as well. There are 6 Endless Games, where the goal is to get a high score and play as long as possible in increasing difficulty. There are 7 Rhythm Toys, where it’s more like a sandbox/‘stress relief’ using the respective toys with no goal. There are also Guitar Lessons, which are basically the Rockers game, but using the music from other games.
Now, for the control scheme… Since the Nintendo DS have a secondary touch screen, Rhythm Heaven DS utilizes the touch screen as your main input. For simple actions, we tap (or tap and hold) the screen. For a heavier action, we flick the joystick across the screen. This is where I find the controls annoying. On the one side, my hands feels very thankful for this since tapping the screen with a stylus is less tiring that mashing buttons. On the other side, the touchscreen makes the game feels that there is a slight desync, and the flicks are sometimes not very accurate — sometimes not detecting the flicks correctly or detecting a flick even though I’m just tapping the screen. This quickly becomes annoying when you’re attempting a Perfect run, since the game can mis-detect your tap & flicks, ruining your Perfect run.
Most Favourite : Munchy Monk 2
Great remix of the original Munchy Monk song. It’s basically a longer version of Munchy Monk. It’s not that hard, but it is not super easy either, but you definitely need to concentrate on this game since it’s pretty fast-paced. Also, look at those cute elephants on the back!
Munchy Monk 2
Least Favourite : Fillbots 2
All my homies hate Fillbots 2. Seriously, this mini-game is…, just…, horrible, there’s just no other way to describe it. Unnecessarily long (Fillbots 2 is the longest non-Remix mini-game in the Rhythm Heaven series, clocking at 2 minutes and 52 seconds, which is only 12 seconds shorter than the Remix 10) and awful off-beat inputs that doesn’t even feel/sound fit to the music. There’s no heckin’ way I’m going to attempt a Perfect of this…
Easiest : DJ School
There’s not a lot of inputs in DJ School, and the inputs are pretty sparse throughout the game. The music are not that fast either, so this is a chill mini-game to play. But, Yellow DJ has a great character, though!
Hardest : Remix 8
This is one of those games that has the “cleared it once and never come back to it again” vibes.
This remix/game, in it’s fastest part, is the 4-th fastest game in the entire Rhythm Heaven series.
Combine that with rapid switching between games, and you got yourself what is considered one of the hardest (vanilla) remix in the entire Rhythm Heaven series.
Even though that between the games it maintain a similar rhythm/pattern, I still need a moment to know what’s the next game in the remix, and there’s just not enough time to process that information.
In the end I cleared it, though, but I don’t think I will ever attempt a Superb (or even a Perfect) of Remix 8 (HAHA, I lied, I finally got a Superb for Remix 8, shown on the video below!).
One of my Remix 8 attempts. It's not perfect, but, hey, recording a gameplay with a slight audio delay is hard! (shocking, I know...!)
Honorable Mention : Lockstep (& Lockstep 2)
People may find Lockstep as the hardest mini-game in the Rhythm Heaven series, and I did too at the start. But, after a few attemps, I finally get the hang of it and I actually liked it. For me, the challenging parts of Lockstep is the switch between on-beats and off-beats. Even now after I finally able to get a Superb on Lockstep, I still make lots of mistakes when I replayed it.
Now, why should I mention Lockstep 2 as well? Well, when most of other mini-games’ second version are harder than the first version, Lockstep 2 is not harder than Lockstep. On my playthrough, I definitely had a ‘oh no…’ moment when playing Rhythm Heaven DS and figuring out Lockstep 2 exists, only to get Superb on my first try, even though at this point I only got an OK rank on Lockstep. The music is actualy slower in Lockstep 2, and overall has a more chill theme compared to Lockstep. The input window when switching beats are slimmer, but still very doable & not much different than the original Lockstep.
One of my Lockstep attempt.
Rhythm Heaven Fever
Rhythm Heaven Fever title screen
The game that started my escapade, the most popular game in the series, Rhythm Heaven Fever for the Nintendo Wii. After the DS touch-based games, we are now back to button controls using the Wiimote! Using the Wiimote is surprisingly quite comfortable and resulted in less strain on my hands during my playthrough, but the wireless nature of the Wiimote makes that there will be some input delay. While Rhythm Heaven Fever does have an intelligent latency calibrator disguised as a ‘rhythm test’ in the beginning of the game, Bluetooth being Bluetooth, I experienced some input latency spikes throughout the game. I also experienced playing Rhythm Heaven Fever and missing inputs on the game, only to find out that my Wiimote batteries are about to be depleted…
Aside from that, Rhythm Heaven Fever has the same amount of games as Rhythm Heaven DS; 51 games broken down into 40 normal games, 10 remixes, and the credits. From the 40 normal games, 28 games are unique and 12 are harder versions of the earlier games. Also like Rhythm Heaven DS, there are 10 “columns” in the game. There are two (main) games that are “remade” from the previous games, the Night Walk/the credits music and Karate Man (yet again!). Still, the mechanics of Night Walk and Karate Man are different from the ones in Rhythm Tengoku and Rhythm Heaven DS.
Like Rhythm Heaven DS, there are extra games that can be unlocked by getting Superb ranks from the main games. The extra games are all remade from Rhythm Tengoku (sorted from least to most Superb ranks needed): The Clappy Trio, Sneaky Spirits, Power Calligraphy, and Tap Trial. Also like Rhythm Heaven DS, aside from those extra games, Endless Games and Rhythm Toys also make a reappearance. There are 5 Endless Games and 4 Rhythm Toys available in Rhythm Heaven Fever.
Unlike other Rhythm Heaven games, Rhythm Heaven Fever sports a 2-player mode. You can team up with you friend/family to play cooperative-ly on 8 mini-games, that have been modified from the single-player ones to fit a 2-player experience. Those 8 games are : Fork Lifter, Tambourine, Ringside, Micro-Row, Flipper-Flop, Launch Party, Tap Troupe, and Karate Man. Besides those 8 games, the 2-player mode also has 5 separate Endless Games as well.
Most Favourite : Flockstep
Who doesn’t love the Huebirds of Happiness? This mini-game is simple, the music is sweet, and most of the time, you won’t see what happens on the screen, ‘cause it’s easier to do so! It’s not quite as hard as Lockstep, but it definitely wasn’t easy either. But, aside from that, I earned my first Perfect for Rhythm Heaven Fever on this mini-game!
Flockstep attempt.
Least Favourite : Love Rap (& Love Rap 2)
Heck Love Rap, all my homies hate Love Rap. If only I have a European copy of the game, I will use the Japanese voice for this mini-game. I have the US version, and I do not have the luxury of switching voice languages. So, I attempted & suffered a lot in this mini-game since the cues are missing/drown over because of the English localization.
Easiest : Board Meeting
Board Meeting is basically Clappy Trio, but now there are four. If the music gets faster/slower it would have been more challenging, but it is not. This game is a cake-walk.
Hardest : Monkey Watch
Oh, boy, the notorious Monkey Watch.
RTGame spends about half an hour on just the practice screen on his playthrough. While I also struggle a little bit, it's safe to say I fared a bit better and was able to clear this on my fourth attempt. But I will still call this the one of the hardest game in Rhythm Heaven Fever (outside of Remixes), for the same reason why I think Lockstep is challenging, which is the occasional on-beat off-beat switching. Also like Lockstep, if you lose your rhythm in this, it's quite difficult to got back on track, especially if you lose it near the switching period.Monkey Watch attempt.
Honorable Mention : Remix 3, Remix 8, Remix 9
Big kudos to Tsunku and their team, the music for these remixes are Certified™ banger! Also, big kudos to the localization team; they manage to translate these songs without large modification to the musics, and they still sound good! Remix 9 in particular is one of my favourite music from the entirety of the Rhythm Heaven series.
Remix 9 attempt.
Rhythm Heaven Megamix
Rhythm Heaven Megamix cover art. (Source: Nintendo, original article has been taken down.)
If the Rhythm Heaven series had a ‘Definitive Edition’ game, Rhythm Heaven Megamix would fit the bill. Rhythm Heaven Megamix combines lots of mini-games from the previous games, while also adding several new mini-games and new remixes. With a total of 108 games (90 initially and 18 additional games unlockable), Rhythm Heaven Megamix is a celebration of the whole Rhythm Heaven franchise.
Despite being on the 3DS, unlike the Rhythm Heaven DS, the games are now primarily controlled by the buttons. There is a setting that allows you to change the control scheme to simple touchscreen taps, but again, like the DS, it feels that there are a lot more input delay when using the touch screen. Using the buttons is still the best way to go, even though on longer games/play session your hands may feel sore.
Rhythm Heaven Megamix now has a Story Mode. It’s not a serious story (as the game itself said), so don’t expect a deep & touching story. It’s a very light and nonsense story, with some sprinkle of light jokes here and there, but aside from that, there’s not much to it. But then again, you buy Rhythm Heaven Megamix for the minigames, not for the story.
Completing the minigames will reward you with Coins. The Coins you get will vary based on how you perform in the games. These Coins are used in the Story Mode to progress at certain points in the story. Outside of the Story Mode, these Coins can be used in the Shop to buy items & music. These items & music are then displayed in the Museum, which the Museum serves as a traditional ‘game browser/list’, since Rhythm Heaven Megamix doesn’t present the games as a list like the earlier games.
Aside from Story Mode, Rhythm Heaven Megamix introduced Challenge Land/Challenge Trains. As the name transpires, these features sets of challenges based on existing games. Each sets of challenges feature at least 3 games with additional restrictions & challenges in place. You have 3 tries to complete the minigames in the set. If you finish a set for the first time, you will get Flow Balls, which are used in the Shop to unlock the 18 additional minigames. The challenges range from something as easy as attaining a 70 score or higher, a higher tempo minigame, or ‘get a mininum number of Ace/Perfect inputs or you will lose’. The earlier sets are easy, but the difficulty quickly ramps up on the later sets, as it will contain more than 3 games per set and the game combines more than one challenges/restrictions.
Challenge Land also hosts the Perfect Campaign. This now hosts the occasional Perfect attempt/run for the minigames. If you manage to get a Perfect, like the Challenge Trains, you will be rewarded with a Flow Ball. In the previous games, if you miss the Perfect, the minigame will still continue. In Rhythm Heaven Megamix, if you miss a Perfect, the game will immediately end. Honestly at first I kind of don’t like it, since abruptly ending the minigame does not feel great, but I kind of didn’t mind it at the end.
Since there are a lot of mini-games to cover, I may include more than 1 game for each of the Most Favourite, Least Favourite, Easiest, and Hardest mini-games. I feel like limiting to only 1 game per “category” down here is doing a bit dis-service, as Megamix has lots of great mini-games.
Most Favourite : Second Contact, Kitties
Both Second Contact and Kitties are the newer mini-games that Megamix had.
For Second Contact (and also First Contact), I gotta give them credit for the creativity to create this mini-game. The lines (spoken by the Martian/the Human) are absolute gold, especially if you miss an entire line. The occasional “freeze-shots” of the Martians (or the Humans in First Contact) are also great.
One of my Second Contact attempt.
For Kitties, I mean, just look at the mini-game description! Also, the game itself is just fun to do, not too hard, but not too easy either.
THEY'RE SO CUTE YOU GUYS!
Least Favourite : Ninja Bodyguard
This one is kinda weird for me. Back in Tengoku, I did not have any issue playing Ninja Bodyguard. But here in Megamix, I just barely got a Superb, and always misses something.
Easiest : Karate Man
It’s the first game in Rhythm Heaven Megamix. Very sparse input, very short game of just ‘press A’ to the cue. Like, I thought they can’t make the game any easier than Rhythm Tengoku’s Karate Man, but this proves me wrong.
Hardest : Cosmic Rhythm Rally
I have to say, honestly, the games in Megamix are pretty easy. I can’t really say there’s a really hard one that got me stumped for a while, but, if I had to pick the hardest game out of all of them, then yeah, Cosmic Rhythm Rally is probably the hardest for me. It has a quite-high tempo and the occasional rhythm changs throws me off.
Cosmic Rhythm Rally, or should I say, Hell Rhythm Rally?
Honorable Mention : Left-Hand Remix
One of my favourite remix in this game. It’s also the first remix in Megamix that I got a Perfect on!
One of my attempts on Left-Hand Remix. Again, not perfect..., but it's okay enough.
Closing Thoughts
If you got some spare time to kill and a “penchant” for rhythm games, give the Rhythm Heaven games a try! I suggest you to play these from the easiest first to the hardest, which, in my opinion, goes like this : Rhythm Heaven Megamix, Rhythm Tengoku, Rhythm Heaven Fever, and Rhythm Heaven DS. I feel like if you play the easier one first, you can use it to build up your rhythm, which then allows you to tackle the harder games much better.
Rhythm Heaven Megamix, while includes the super-hard Challenge Land, is relatively super easy compared to the other games, especially early in the game where most of the mini-games are “an ever easier” version of the normal mini-games. Rhythm Tengoku is very “trolly” and unfair, where some games just out-right not giving you the audio cues needed, but once you know all the “trolly” bits, it’s actually not that hard. Rhythm Heaven Fever is where I would say the middle ground, where the mini-games are quite challenging enough and will give you some trouble, especially for Remix 10, which some considered to be the hardest mini-game/Remix in the Rhythm Heaven series. Rhythm Heaven DS is just hard, not just because the mini-games itself are hard, but also because of the inconsistent input methods of touch & flicks and the very-strict scoring system, where in several games you literally need to get perfect to get a Superb rank.
If I has to rank these in terms of my favourite, though, it will go like this (from most favourite to least favourite) : Rhythm Heaven DS, Rhythm Heaven Fever, Rhythm Heaven Megamix, Rhythm Tengoku. Even though that Rhythm Heaven DS is the hardest one for me, I still like the creativity that goes into the games on Rhythm Heaven DS the most. I also like how Rhythm Heaven DS combines those mini-games into the remixes, as most of them usually flow really good between games, sometimes even so seamlessly that they can switch games in-beat/when you give an input. Rhythm Heaven Fever and Rhythm Heaven Megamix are very close for second favourite, but I think I’ll favor Fever more than Megamix, for it’s better remixes. I still love Rhythm Tengoku, though…, but, I find that Rhythm Tengoku doesn’t really offer a lot of things compared to the other games in this series.
Now, where is my Rhythm Heaven game on the Switch, Nintendo…?
Writer’s Notes : Well, this is a longer one! And, it contains not just one, but four games! Originally, I planned to do these 4 games in separate articles, but I thought that the articles will come out too short, so I just mashed it into one longer one. Honestly, I liked it better this way.
Oh, for the Tears of the Kingdom, I’ll probably write an “early thoughts” kind-of article first, and then I’ll follow up/update that article once I have fully completed & explored the game. I got a feeling that Tears of the Kingdom will be massive, so writing a full article on it may take longer. Soo, yeah…, I’ll see you in May 12 for the launch of Tears of the Kingdom!