Rhythm Heaven For Nintendo DS: Could It Be Fun And Educational?
Rhythm Heaven, known in Europe as Rhythm Paradise and in Japan as Rhythm Tengoku Gold, is a rhythm video game for the Nintendo DS hand-held console. According to sources, Rhythm Heaven is said to be the sequel of the Game Boy Advance title: Rhythm Tengoku, which was only released in Japan. Rhythm Heaven was released in North America on April 5, 2009 along with the release of the third generation Nintendo DS console, Nintendo DSi.
Basically, this video game's control is mostly used with the stylus (obviously). I must be sincere, I never heard about this video game until one day that my husband talked about it. He said that he tried it out and that it was pretty fun and maybe even addicting; and so for the sake of my own curiosity, I told him to take me to the Game Stop store so that he would show it to me. Although the cover isn't very attractive (in my opinion), I was surprised when I actually tried it out for myself, it is fun and it's challenging.
The game has ten sets of stages and five sub-stages per set. And each set has four original sub-stages and they also have a new remix. Think of it as... A rhythm review of the last stage you passed, hope that makes some sense. In the seven stages and above, are second versions of the earlier stages in the game but with a much more harder difficulty level, (it's challenging!).
At the end of every stage you pass in the game, you will be rated and you will receive on of the four ranks: "Superb, OK", "Just OK", and "Try Again". If you are ranked "OK" or "Just OK", you will be able to continue on with the next stages, as for Superb, not only will you be able to advance to the next stage but you will also receive a gold medal! Try Again, well, you obviously going to have to redo it again until you pass, sometimes it's hard.
But aside from all the fun this game has to offer for music and rhythm lovers, I ask myself, could it be possible for this game to be educational in musical terms as well as fun? In my opinion, I think that in a way yes, the game can be somewhat educational. Because aside from all the funny characters and the cute songs, you actually have to count in order to be in rhythm with whatever music is played.
Rests and measures are often there if you just look at it as a blank staff and as you hear the music, in your mind you can see or just imagine that whatever musical note is played it is being placed in the correspondent line or space in your imaginary measure. As well as rests, the rests values like for example; I played a stage that involves birds, and there is a part where you have to think half rests in a measure and its value to be able to go with the current rhythm (this is what I do). And if you get good at it, and just listen to the music, you can even play this perfect with your eyes closed!
It can be educational in my opinion and I recommend this video game to some of my friends, at least so they could try it out, most of them even got addicted to it after they tried it. And somehow I have a feeling that I'm getting addicted to this game too! I doesn't hurt to try new things, so why not try it and maybe you would end up surprised of how fun and challenging it is!
