Rhythm Heaven for the Nintendo DS is truly one of my all-time favorite DS games; one of my all-time favorite games on any system even. So when I first heard it was coming to Wii, I was ecstatic. But that quickly led to trepidation. Would Rhythm Heaven still work as well with motion-based gestures? Sure, the DS game made use of a flicking action, but that was still something physical. Trying to swing your hand or arm to a beat can be less precise. What I found, however, was a great surprise.

The demo setup had three songs available for play. I immediately picked the badminton game, since it seemed like the most straightforward motion gesture. The premise was simple, if not silly. A dog and a cat riding in their own airplanes would swat a shuttlecock back and forth in rhythm to the song. During the practice, I tried to swing for the dog in rhythm to the beat. Nothing happened. I gave it a few more tries. I wasn’t just missing, nothing was happening at all. Then it dawned on me, this game doesn’t use motions gestures at all. A simple press of the A button was all that was needed to swat back the birdie. This makes the game a lot closer to the original Rhythm Heaven for the Game Boy Advance, which did not release outside of Japan.

With this realization, I excitedly jumped into all three games. The simplest involved stabbing kernels of food with a fork as they’re flicked towards you at high speed. It would be a ridiculous task to rely on just your sight, but by listening for the cues and hitting A on the right beats, it’s a piece of cake. The medium difficulty game had you play as a samurai often seen in the series cutting down evil spirits to get back a pinwheel stolen from some kids. You slash the ghosts as they hop out of a portal. At times a group of ghosts will emerge. Pressing A and B together makes Mr. Samurai fell them all with a flurry of slashes.

The last game was the above mentioned badminton game, and definitely the hardest. It’s very similar to the ping pong game on the DS Rhythm Heaven where you must continually return the birdie. At times, the cat gives you an audio cue that he’s going to hit a slower lob which takes twice the time to return. This was the only game I couldn’t get a high level on, since these types of games just make me too anxious. Once you lose the rhythm it’s tough to get back into the beat.

It was also with the badminton game that I realized what makes the Wii version interesting in lieu of using motion controls. As a console game meant to be played on the big screen, and able to take advantage of better graphics and processing power, this new Rhythm Heaven does its best to become more visually distracting. In the badminton game, the cat will eventually fly further away, tricking you into thinking the shuttlecock takes more time to return. Later on, it becomes night and you fly into a flurry of clouds, prohibiting you from seeing just about anything going on. Likewise, midway through the samurai game, a presentation starts up that tells the story of the children losing their pinwheel, and blotting out the action almost entirely. This may seem daunting, but then with enough practice you could beat all of these games with your eyes closed.

Rhythm Heaven needs to be on your radar if you own a Wii. The music is very catchy. Heck, even the audio cues are very catchy. I still get the cat’s “ba-dum bum bum” announcing his lob stuck in my head at times. Sadly, there’s still no word on a time frame for the game’s release, and it may be awhile yet. The demo at E3 was still entirely in Japanese, so don’t let this one slip from your mind. Keep an eye out for it.

Tags: E3 2011, hands-on impressions, Nintendo, preview, Rhythm Heaven, Wii

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