It might look utterly meaningless, but Rhythm Tengoku’s name highlights the best aspects of the game. “Rhythm” indicates that the game will be focused on music in some way. “Tengoku”? It means something in Japanese, and because nobody bothered to translate it, this obviously means the game is a bit insane.

What its name doesn’t tell you is that Rhythm Tengoku is a mini-game collection released for the Game Boy Advance, and as alluded to in the intro, in Japan only. Given the rather strange premise of the game, I imagine you are either scrambling to import it as we speak, or think the game is a complete waste of time.

(read on…)

I made a trip to Toronto yesterday to meet up with a friend. Hopped on a bus which reached Union Station at 5pm. On a weekday. This meant that hundreds of people were marching off the subway towards the bus/train station. My destination was the subway station, against the flow of the masses. And quick! as I was already a bit late.

I ran, trying my best to dodge the never-ending stream of people. This required me to have a razor-sharp focus on my immediate surroundings, to make quick decisions and even quicker movements, all the while anticipating the movement patterns of the people in the distance. Eventually their seemingly chaotic movements became logical in my mind, and dodging people became second nature.

I was in the zone.

That’s when I realized that running through Union Station at rush hour was the closest I would ever get to achieving a perfect run in a hardcore bullet hell shmup.

I can reveal two things about the game I’m currently working on:

• It’s awesome
• It has several user-selectable video modes

I’ve been working on the former for a couple of months now, but I only put some real work into the latter a couple of days ago.

(read on…)