daigasso! band brothers | electroplankton

these are two amazing ds titles, freshly imported from japan via hong-kong. play-asia.com have fantastic shipping with ups – the items were invoiced 12:30 am tuesday, despatched from hong-kong 9pm tuesday night, and they arrived at my door 1:45 today (thursday).
absolutely brilliant.

daigasso! band brothers is fantastic – a fresh rhythm game, it branches out (eventually) into almost playing a musical instrument, as each of the eight buttons (four dirrections on the d-pad, then ABXY) each can represent a note in the musical octave. eventually the left trigger acts as a sharp, and the right trigger adds another octave – that’s a whopping 32 possible notes… daunting! very daunting – until you get into the swing of playing. it actually starts to make a lot of sense, and after a while, you get used to what each song will throw you. i must say the screen touching is a bit silly, but apparently later on they pull it out all together.
because there is limited space on the ds cart, sounds are basically triggered like midi, no 32bit 44k samples here, but it really adds to the charm – the game is overflowing with cheese, and it’s very very tasty XD it’s impossible not to fall in love with the cheesiness of the sound, especially after my initial run (eight times doing all the different instruments) of seasons. with timing, it’s fairly tight, but as i’m a musician and accustomed to studio conditions, in reality it’s fairly loose – on par at least with rhythm games. i absolutely cannot wait to start making my own tunes and co-opping them with heaps of players – and only one cart!

presentation is fantastic – i only wish i could read japanese so i could transalte all the dialogue in it, but it isn’t necessary to play the game at all.

as for electroplankton,
i think this may simply be one of the best things ever coded for anything ever.
electroplankton isn’t a game – i don’t know what you’d call it – more like an interactive music program. it consists of ten different ‘plankons’/areas/whatever, where you touch the screen to effect what’s happening on screen and consequently produce sound. some of them have highly complex math involved in them, though this happens to a greater or lesser degree, though every one of the planktons is still fun.

instant favourite is hanenbow where tiny planktons are launched from a leaf to bounce off other leaves connected to a stem, each of which will produce a sound when struck. the launching leaf and the sound leaves all can be angled, and actual angles in degrees can be displayed on each item by pressing the A button. pressing select cycles through four different configurations of launcher and leaf-stems. each time a leaf is struck, it’s sound changes slightly, so the more it is struck, the farther along its sound evelotion it progresses.

next favourite would have to be rec-rec, which features several two-bar loops that can be selected on the fly with up and down on the d-pad. four fish swim from right to left on the screen in exactly the two bar time-frame. touching a fish will activate it to record on its next pass, and there you have it – you just go for it! basically it’s a two-bar four channel loop sampler – and i must say, the drum-beats you can select are all fantastic – there is even a metronome track for precision recording!

obviously some of these can be messed around with for hours and hours, but i must say volvoice is a bit of a gimmick, as you just record a sample, then touch different symbols to hear your sample altered in different ways. it’s funny, and great to show people, but ultimately not something that you get immersed in.

i must say that luminaria is great in theory, but it’s too easy for all of the planktons to get caught on the same track – you really have to think a lot about separating them. it’s possible, and probable if you fiddle enough, but it is easy for them to follow eachother. one interesting element is that the ‘area’ wraps around so if a plankon disappears off the right edge of the screen, it will track onto the left side along its original trajectory.

final thing about electroplankton – it has an ‘audience’ mode, which basically is a few pre-recorded sessions and random events in each of the plankton areas. you can jump in and participate any time you wish, but if you leave it, it will take care of itself and cycle slowly through the ten planktons. some of the planktons produce fantastic ambient sounds, and these would be great to just plug into a stereo and leave going, as the manual heartily encourages.

two fantastic purchases i am more than happy with. don’t expect me to write here often, as any waking moment i’m not with friends, at work, eating or sleeping, i’m going to be dsing until my head falls off.

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April 17, 2005

WOOOOOOOT I can’t believe I’m here typing a note. I should be playing Band Bros!!!! YAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!!! So addicting and cheese-tastic. And Nanocarp rules all other ElectroPlanktons.