Rock'N Megastage

Do you like J-Pop? If you are interested in this game, I sure hope you do. The soundtrack is composed entirely of it. What's there is good, but I have to admit that it's sorely lacking variety. Since Rock'n Megastage is a rhythm game, I felt it best to discuss the music first. There are about 34 songs present in the game. Many of which sound alike. If you despise J-pop, chances are you will despise Rock'n Megastage. Even if you like J-pop the chance is still high that you will bore of this title quickly and not because of the music. The gameplay can be a real snooze fest.

Rock'n Megastage puts a small twist on the standard rhythm game formula. An outline will move down the screen and whenever an instrument icon is in the outline, you have to hit the corresponding button. Same basic gameplay, just a different way of going about it. There are four different instruments in the game: Bass, Drums, Keyboard and Guitar. You can "play" up to three of them in one session. Each instrument is mapped to it's own button on the dual shock. Just time your presses correctly and you will succeed. Now seems like a good time to explain what kills the game for me. There is no audio feedback when you press the button! So, while you may be pressing the drum button you will not hear any drum. It's kind of like playing DDR with a controller. In other words, not much fun. Sure, you still have to press the button to the beat, but you won't know how good your timing was unless you watch onscreen. The game is like playing air guitar while listening to a song you like. Whether or not you do anything the guitar in the song still plays. You have no impact on anything. What I'm getting at is this, all you are doing is pressing buttons over a song. You are in no way helping create that song, you are merely pretending to play it. I don't play these games to test my timing skills, I play them so I can feel like I am actually playing music. The game makes sure to let out a loud buzz every time your timing is off though.

There are three main modes to choose from, in addition to training and free play. Arcade Mode has you pick songs from the list and play them ala Beatmania. You are limited to one instrument in this mode. Original mode is the same as Arcade, but you are forced to play the drums, in addition to one other instrument of your choosing. If you play on the hard difficulty, you are forced to play the drums and two other instruments of the remaining three. Finally, we have Story mode, which is, surprise, original mode with a few story sequences tacked on.

When starting the game in arcade mode you have three choices Practice, Normal and Live. Practice is easier and allows you to play two stages. Normal is an average difficulty and lets you play three songs. Live mode is like Survival mode from Beatmania. You have a status bar to the left side of the screen which starts out filled. For every mistake you make, a little is drained from the bar. When it is empty, game over. This bar is carried throughout all five songs and there is no way to refill it. Another feature unique to Live mode is the way song selection is handled. Rather than choosing your music, you choose a theme which contains five songs. Themes range from Slow Tempo and Hi-Speed to Girls Selection and Men's Selection. There is also a random choice present. In addition to the status bar being carried over throughout the five stages is your combo count. So, if you're good enough, you can rack up one big, long combo across all five songs resulting in a high score.

Original mode only has two choices when starting. They are Regular and Original Live. Regular is simply arcade mode played with two to three instruments, as opposed to one. Original Live mode is the Live Mode from Arcade with the ability to play two to three instruments. As such, Original mode acts as a more challenging version of arcade mode and will probably see most of your playtime. Apart from the ability to play more instruments at once, there is nothing that separates Arcade and Original.

In Story mode, you choose from one of nine characters. Each of the characters has one instrument that they prefer to play. Three play Bass, three play keyboard and three play guitar. You have the task of playing their preferred instrument plus the drums. Story mode is carried out with still frame pictures and text. You read some text, play a song, read more text, play another song and so on. At various points in the story a rival character will ask you a multiple choice question. Nothing exciting. The story follows your basic rags to riches theme. You start out playing on the street corner and work yourself up to packed clubs. Sounds like an epic tale right? Well, the whole thing happens in only four stages. The idea is cool, but considering it is nothing more than Original mode with some text, Story mode is a waste of your time.

The game comes packaged with a little foot mat controller which is an utter waste of time. I'm not sure if I just got a defective controller, but it is unresponsive. You have to hit it in just the right spot for it to respond. It makes playing a game based on precision button presses nearly impossible. Not to mention, you can only play one instrument with it so it is useless in the Original and Story modes. This is one time when the standard Dual Shock controller is much better than the specialty controller. I tried using it a few times and then just threw it in the box. Thankfully the piece of junk comes packaged with the game, otherwise I might've wasted money buying it.

The graphics in this game are either hit or miss, depending on your preferences. All of the characters are flat 2D sprites. I'm not talking flat characters ala Parappa, I'm talking flat 2D sprites ala 16bit games. They are placed on average 3D backdrops resulting in a strange look and feel. In no way would I call these graphics good, but I can appreciate the charm. I, for one, enjoy them as they add a bit of style to the game. Various effects occur based on your skill. If your status bar drops to a set point, the crowd will start pelting you with garbage. Do good enough and various lighting effects will go off, including fireworks. The outline scrolls quite smoothly and I don't recall any slowdown while playing.

Rock'n Megastage has an average language barrier. Most of the menus are in English, along with some song titles. All story mode text is in Japanese as are a few menus and a majority of the song titles. Navigating should be no problem at all. The few menus that are in Japanese are in Katakana. If you can't read Katakana, with some slight trial and error you will have no problem. While you will be missing the point entirely, you can easily get through Story mode without any Japanese knowledge. All you have to do is jam on the button to skip all the text. I wouldn't worry about understanding the song titles either. A short sound clip of each song is played when you highlight the song's title.

Unless you enjoy playing DDR with a controller, or are itching for some J-pop, skip this game. It's really not worth your time. The Foot controller is a waste of plastic. The gameplay is nothing more than glorified air guitar. Overall, it's just a very basic rhythm game with nothing that really stands out. There is a nice amount of songs but they are severely lacking in variety. If you like J-Pop, you should enjoy it but the lack of other genres limits the games appeal. I did enjoy listening to it, in fact, that was really the only reason I kept playing the game. I certainly wasn't having fun pressing the buttons. That is the problem with Rock'n Megastage. No matter how good the music is, with such boring gameplay it's just not worth your time. Save your money for one of the Beatmania games. Interestingly enough, I think an add on disc with new music may have been released for this game. At least it was planned. There is an "addition" option in the options menu. Selecting it ejects the disc tray. Maybe the other disc actually features some rock music? You'd think a game that has "Rock'n" in the title would actually feature some heavier music than J-pop.

©2002 Ed Finnegan

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