E308: Rhythm Heaven is the best musical microgame collection at the show
by JC Fletcher 
on Jul 18th 2008 11:00AM
Nintendo's E3 offerings included a three-minigame demo of the stealthily-announced U.S. version of
Rhythm Tengoku Gold. The games featured are the ones seen in the
trailer:
- Assembly Line, in which two metal squares roll toward the middle of the screen in rhythm as scales play, and you flick upward on the screen to launch a rod through them when the holes in the middle of the squares meet
- Robot Gallery, in which a newly-assembled robot moves from right to left on a conveyer belt and you have to hold the stylus down at just the right moment to drop the fuel pump and fuel the robot, then release before you overfill it.
- Chorus involves holding the stylus down until you want the player-controlled singer to join in the chorus with two other singers. You release the stylus to fit with the pattern of the two singers before. Frequently, the chorus leader will instruct everyone to sing out in unison, which I missed every time!
These three games were (as far as I know) new to the DS version. Though two out of the three could just as easily have been controlled by buttons, the stylus worked great. Also, even though the game offered a tutorial for the "flicking" motion, it was easy to jump in. I consider the tutorial, then, a freeform minigame about knocking trucks over.
