Rhythm Heaven Iceberg Megamix explained

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The Love Rap and Tap Troupe sections have me SO SHOOK.

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/secret759 📅︎︎ Apr 01 2021 🗫︎ replies

Finally somebody did a rhythm heaven one!

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/AgentShrub 📅︎︎ Apr 01 2021 🗫︎ replies
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JAN MISALI: recently, I collaborated with the webcomic artist and Love Lab expert Jasmine Wright to create this Rhythm Heaven iceberg image. it compiles entries from three different Rhythm Heaven icebergs with a fair share of new things to form the single most comprehensive Rhythm Heaven iceberg possible, making it the Rhythm Heaven Megamix of Rhythm Heaven icebergs. now, depending on the reason you clicked on this video, you could know exactly what I mean by “Rhythm Heaven iceberg” or that could be just a random sequence of three words. so uh, an iceberg image is this meme format where you have a bunch of, things, organized so that they get increasingly obscure or cursed (or obscursed) as you get further down the image, and Rhythm Heaven is, I mean if you don’t know what Rhythm Heaven is you’re in for one heck of a learning experience watching this video! pretty much immediately after Jasmine and I released Rhythm Heaven Iceberg Megamix, several people replied saying that they’d like to see a video explaining it. so, we figured, who better to make a video explaining our iceberg than us, the people who made it? so, that’s what this is. JASMINE: Of course, with over 200 facts on the iceberg, this isn't something I'd want to leave jan Misali talking about alone, which is why I'm here! If any of you recognize the name "Weird Mario Enemies," then you should probably know that I'm one of the writers of that blog. Talking in-depth about obscure video game trivia is kind of my thing, and given that I helped make the iceberg in the first place, I feel pretty qualified to help with this video. JAN MISALI: now, as you’ve noticed, this video is extremely long, but it’s broken up into sections, so feel free to take breaks. without further ado, “let’s we go, amigo!” I’m jan Misali, JASMINE: And I’m Jasmine Wright! JAN MISALI: and this is the Rhythm Heaven Iceberg Megamix explained. JAN MISALI: there’s a whole bunch of parodies of Remix 10 and Ringside, both from Rhythm Heaven Fever, usually replacing characters in the game with other characters. Ringside parodies were actually my introduction to the Rhythm Heaven series, and a lot of other Rhythm Heaven fans had a similar experience. JASMINE: Rhythm Heaven Reanimated is a collaborative project that released on August 21, 2020. The video stitches together all the medley remixes in the series, and has each minigame reanimated by one or more fans. It's an impressive project showing the passion of the Rhythm Heaven fanbase, and has been acknowledged by both Tsunku, the series' producer, and Ko Takeuchi, the series' art director. Much like jan Misali and Ringside parodies, this is actually what got me into the series in the first place! These things being the first two entries on the iceberg wasn't so much a deliberate choice as much as a really cool coincidence. JASMINE: Timotainment is a popular streamer that, in 2020, started streaming the Rhythm Heaven series. Highlight reels of these streams can be seen on their YouTube channel, while the full streams can be found on Twitch. Combined with Rhythm Heaven Reanimated, these factors led to Rhythm Heaven getting a bit of a popularity boom starting in 2020! It's nice to see more people appreciating the series, but it also has made copies of the games notoriously hard to find as of late... JAN MISALI: Ko Takeuchi, the art director for the Rhythm Heaven series, has drawn a whole bunch of fanart of internet memes, which he posts to his twitter and tumblr accounts. depending on how you feel about the memes in question, it ranges from really cool to just kinda embarrassing. okay, no, it does get much worse than just kinda embarrassing, but that’s for later. much later. JASMINE: Rhythm Heaven Gigamix is a huge Rhythm Heaven mashup, it's nearly half an hour long, and contains bits of almost every Rhythm Heaven minigame, save for Rockers. It even throws in some Endless Games and Remixes, for good measure! While there has been some criticism drawn to it, examples being some segments lasting too long, some minigames like Glee Club and Blue Bear not working how they're supposed to, and the aforementioned lack of Rockers, it's still pretty impressive. I mean, it's a half-hour long Rhythm Heaven mashup! JASMINE: Donk-Donk is an oddball minigame, in which a group of guys resembling tuning forks bang themselves against one another to keep a rocket afloat while switching between two different forms of a triplet rhythm. It's well-known for its surrealism, which is acknowledged by the game itself in the US translation. Examples include the alien in the practice informing that it's time to do "that thing [they] do", and the characters being referred to as "Uh… these guys?" in the cast call after the credits. JAN MISALI: the first game in the series, Rhythm Tengoku for the Game Boy Advance, was never officially released outside of Japan. however, there’s a really popular fanslation out there called Rhythm Heaven Silver, making it not super hard to play Rhythm Tengoku in English if you want to. JASMINE: Barista is a dog! It might seem a little odd to fans just getting into the series, but really, each subsequent title has only made this fact more and more apparent. It's especially obvious in Megamix, where he can always be seen behind the cafe counter, and can regularly be chatted with to learn tidbits about his life. JASMINE: It's easy to get Marshal and Chorus Kid mixed up due to their similar designs, both are small, white humanoids with cat-like "3" mouths and fangs. But they are not the same! Marshal serves the role as the host of Rhythm Heaven Fever and is playable in Night Walk Wii, while Chorus Kid is in Glee Club and Munchy Monk Wii. They have minor design differences, mainly that the Chorus Kids wear a bow tie, and their fangs are only visible when their mouth's open. Of course, given that Chorus Kid was treated as a "mascot" for Rhythm Heaven DS, it's likely that Marshal's design was trying to capitalize on this success. It could be argued that Marshal is meant to be the same "species" as the Chorus Kids! JASMINE: In the Rhythm Heaven Fever cast call, the Fork from Fork Lifter is treated as a character, mostly because the minigame needs to be represented somehow. While there is a character seen holding the fork in the results screens, they don't show up in the cast call, likely in part because they aren't in the minigame itself, and also because the Fork being treated as a character is funnier. JAN MISALI: completing all the main challenges in Paprika World (excluding the “Super Hard!” ones) unlocks this set of challenges featuring characters from the WarioWare series, as a fun connection to Nintendo SPD’s most popular series. there’s a few more of these connections, but this is the biggest one. JAN MISALI: some of the advertising for Rhythm Heaven (DS) featured Beyonce! POP SINGER: I suppose! BEYONCE: I suppose, ah! JAN MISALI: there’s a 2-star review of Rhythm Heaven (DS) on Common Sense Media from 2009 that includes the sentence “This game is being promoted by Beyonce in a TV commercial” as the third sentence in a three-sentence paragraph about how this game is frustrating because you need to have a good sense of rhythm to play it. JAN MISALI: in both Working Dough games, Mr. Game & Watch shows up in the background. towards the end of both minigames, he ends up riding one of the balls, but this is not accidental! in Working Dough 1, it’s revealed he’s the pilot of the spacecraft, and is supposed to be there, with See and Saw being on standby in case he doesn’t make it. JAN MISALI: you can join the applause at the end of Fan Club 2! just a fun little detail you might have missed. JAN MISALI: there was a leak for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U known as the Gematsu Leak, which made a large number of claims for what characters would be included in the then-upcoming game. all of the characters included in the leak either made it to the final game or were confirmed to have been planned for the final game, with the exception of Chorus Kid. however, there’s unused data for a series icon labeled as “rhythm” alongside the rest of the series icons for playable characters, which implies that at some point in development there was in fact going to be a Rhythm Heaven character in Smash for. JASMINE: If you get a Perfect in every main Rhythm Heaven Fever minigame -- Night Walk and the Tengoku bonus games aren't part of the Perfect campaign and thus aren't counted -- you unlock Endless Remix, an Endless Remix of Endless Games. Well, sort of. Only Munchy Monk and Mr. Upbeat -- or Manzai in Japan, we'll get to that, are included in the remix, while Wake-Up Caller and Lady Cupid are excluded. However, three entirely unique Endless games show up in the remix! How they work isn't explained in-game, but I've got you covered. For Basketball Girls, press A and B the beat after the other girl says "Go!" and release half a beat later. For Frog Princess, the frog will croak twice. Hold down A for a beat, and release a beat later. This is curiously the only Rhythm Heaven Fever minigame that requires holding just A, instead of A and B, but there's no punishment for holding B as well. For Chameleon, a fly will show up and buzz three times. If the fly is nearby, signified by a high-pitched buzz, press just A, but if the fly is far away, signified by a low-pitched buzz, press A and B! The other two endless games function exactly as they normally do. JASMINE: During the zoom-outs in Lockstep, portraits of a real human face can be seen. This face is no other than Johann Sebastian Bach, edited to have a small mustache, for some reason. Bach is seen smiling on the onbeats, and frowning on the offbeats. Lockstep 2 uses the same picture, but edited to have an afro wig reminiscent of The Clappy Trio. Interestingly enough, DS Remix 6 has its own unused portrait. This image is also Bach, but not the same one used elsewhere. Since DS Remix 6 never zooms out at all during the Lockstep segments, this picture goes completely unseen in-game. JAN MISALI: this is an endless game that was cut from international versions of Rhythm Heaven Fever, and replaced with Mr. Upbeat, an endless game from Rhythm Tengoku. or like, technically, Manzai was removed and Mr. Upbeat was inserted before the rest of the endless games, offsetting the unlock requirements for all of them. anyway, the minigame has two birds performing a manzai routine, a type of standup comedy common in Japan, and was cut due to its heavy focus on Japanese dialogue making it difficult to localize. JASMINE: Love Lab is a minigame in Rhythm Heaven DS about scientists falling in love. It's a cute minigame, one of my favorites, in fact! But have you ever looked off on the right side of the screen? Barely hidden off-screen is a third scientist that catches the chemicals you throw, since throwing chemicals is pretty dangerous. This character is kind of weird, though, he always wears a costume resembling a squirrel or a chipmunk, and we have no idea what he looks like underneath. There's not that much lore for him, so he pretty much exists to stand around and be weird. But it's not like his presence is a huge secret. He shows up in official art, official comics, and if you're bad enough at Love Lab, even on the results screens! Pretty much anyone who's played Love Lab knows this guy exists, but his presence is pretty weird nonetheless. JAN MISALI: in 2007, Nintendo collaborated with SEGA to make an arcade version of Rhythm Tengoku. there’s a bit of unique content too, like tempo-up versions of the first row, and two-player versions of several minigames! JAN MISALI: anyone remember StreetPass? pretty much every game for the 3DS that uses it puts it in a forgettable side mode, and Rhythm Heaven Megamix is no exception! Figure Fighter VS might look like a competitive multiplayer version of Figure Fighter, but you’re actually fighting against a CPU player set at a difficulty level derived in some way from the data StreetPass got from whatever 3DS you just passed by. oh, also, the music here is reused from Rhythm Fighter, a two-player Rhythm Toy from Fever. JASMINE: While at a glance the Screwbots may seem tiny, something their voices probably help contribute to, SCREWBOT: oh yeah! JASMINE: they are not tiny. The epilogue screens for the minigame show this, showing the Screwbots dwarfing a human factory, and the Industrial Espionage reading material puts their exact height at 200 feet, or 40 meters in Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise, two heights that do not sync up, but both get across the idea that these guys are tall. During the cast call at the end of the game, the Screwbots can be seen on a television screen, since they'd be too big to fit in the Cafe. Here they're shown to be taller than buildings! JAN MISALI: almost every minigame in the series uses a 4/4 time signature, with exactly two exceptions. in Rhythm Tengoku, there’s “まほうつかい” (Mahou Tsukai), known as “Wizard’s Waltz” in Rhythm Heaven Silver, and in Megamix there’s Blue Bear. both of these games are in 3/4. neither of them have sequels, the one non-medley remix Wizard’s Waltz appears in changes it to work in 4/4, and Blue Bear doesn’t even appear in any normal remixes! JAN MISALI: Rhythm Remix is a medley of Rhythm Heaven songs arranged by GENERIC. it’s pretty similar in concept to Gigamix, but it’s more comprehensive in its selection of music, and it’s also much shorter. I kinda prefer it to Gigamix, but both are great. also, calling it “GENERIC Rhythm Remix” appeals to me in the same way as the idea of an album called “(disambiguation)”. JASMINE: In DJ School, there are multiple instances of DJ Yellow saying he'll give the Student DJ the secrets he needs to look like a real DJ -- once in the practice, and once on the Superb results screen. This oddly-specific wording is not unintentional! The DJ School flier, gotten for getting a Perfect on DJ School confirms that DJ School isn't able to handle people looking to become real DJs, and specifically states that skills learned at DJ School include faking breathtaking breaks and pretending to pull off super-tight pitch shifting. JASMINE: At the start of Wii Remix 4, there's a random chance that the game will display either "There are roads that a samurai must travel." or "There are mountains that a samurai must climb." This doesn't have any real effect on gameplay, and will be noticed by most people that play the remix multiple times, but it is a cool detail! JAN MISALI: while here in North America we call this series “Rhythm Heaven”, in Japan it’s called “リズム天国” (Rhythm Tengoku), “tengoku” being Japanese for “heaven”. the “ten” in tengoku is actually the same word as the “ten” in Nintendo! in Europe and Australia, the series is called “Rhythm Paradise” instead, a regional difference that I’m personally completely fine with. Rhythm Paradise is a very reasonable name for this series, especially for the DS game, since two separate songs in in the original Japanese version have lyrics that contain the English word “paradise”! the fourth title is used in Korea, where the series is called “리듬 세상” (Lideum Sesang). this translates to “Rhythm World” in English. these four separate titles can make it a little confusing for fans from different parts of the world to talk about the series, especially for the third game, which depending on where in the world you are is called “Minna no Rhythm Tengoku” or “Rhythm Heaven Fever” or “Rhythm World Wii” or the absolutely incredible “Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise”! JAN MISALI: Rhythm Heaven Fever Repainted is a meme-filled mod of Rhythm Heaven Fever created as a collaborative effort by Lunchteam. I’m pretty sure some people like it, and like, good for them, I guess. the memes it references are just, not all that funny? and it’s not like they’ve just aged poorly, I remember this not being funny in 2017 either. there’s also like, way too many mashups where the joke is that it’s unpleasant to listen to. I would play one of those here, but uh, they’re unpleasant to listen to! JASMINE: In Rhythm Heaven, sometimes you'll hit barely off the beat, showing the action not being fully completed, but coming close. In Megamix, this is displayed as a small red circle on the edges of the screen. In the majority of minigames, this counts as a miss, and will automatically end a Perfect attempt. However, Rhythm Heaven DS does have a few exceptions to this rule, and counts these barely-misses as hits in a few perfect runs with precise timing, like Shoot-'em-up, Frog Hop, Lockstep, and their respective sequels. That being said, they still impact your score in a normal run; an all-barely run of Lockstep still nets a "Try Again." In Megamix, while all these games return, barring Lockstep 2 and Shoot-'em-up 2, none of them are spared this luxury anymore, making them all notably harder to perfect. That being said, there is one case where Megamix allows for barely-misses during a Perfect run, which is during Sick Beats in Final Remix, likely due to it having a unique "losing" condition. The Clap Trap endless game additionally counts barely-misses as hits, but the Clap Trap segment in Final Remix does not. JASMINE: A video from 2009 uploaded by Philip Cogar shows the "Lockstep Challenge," a proposed way to make Rhythm Heaven DS more challenging. In the video, Philip demonstrates the challenge by playing Lockstep on two separate DSs, exactly half a beat apart, and getting a perfect score on both of them. Given that Lockstep is often considered one of the hardest minigames in the series, this is pretty dang impressive! JASMINE: While Rhythm Heaven might seem like an assorted set of loosely-connected minigames, they are still all canonically set in the same world, and frequently characters that have a starring role in one minigame will appear as cameos in another. Three minigames in particular, Freeze Frame, Cheer Readers, and the Munchy Monk endless game in Fever, have several of these character cameos that long-time Rhythm Heaven fans should have fun identifying. I could go over them all, but this video is long enough as is, just know they're there, and they're neat! JAN MISALI: this is another fun connection between Rhythm Heaven and WarioWare! there’s a doll of Ashley from WarioWare on Saltwater’s desk in the Cafe, by the museum. now, since Ashley herself appears in the Wario... Where? version of Tap Trial, that sorta implies that Ashley is a real person in the Rhythm Heaven universe, making it, a little weird for someone to own a doll of her. probably best not to think about it. in WarioWare Gold, if you dial “CAFE” on one of the in-game phones, you get a bit of dialog from someone who’s pretty directly implied to be Saltwater, who says: “Oh, I've got an Ashley story, believe it or not. We put an Ashley doll in our café, and ever since then, we've had a lot more customers coming in than usual. Can't help thinking there's some hocus-pocus behind it all. But if you find any other Ashley stuff, I'd be interested.” JAN MISALI: Rhythm Heaven Megamix didn’t exactly have, the biggest localization budget. one of the most notorious aspects of this is the new vocals used for Space Dance. even though Space Dance was already in English, a new dub was recorded for it, which pretty much everyone agrees sounds worse. SPACE DANCERS: and pose! and pose! SPACE GRAMPS: and pose! SPACE DANCERS: and pose! and pose! SPACE GRAMPS: and pose! SPACE DANCERS: let’s sit down! SPACE GRAMPS: let’s sit down! JAN MISALI: the reason for this change might have been so it could sound more natural to first-language English speakers, similar to the change to the already-English audio cues in Cheer Readers, but the change from “turn right!” to “and pose!” is such a huge downgrade. JASMINE: "The Mysterious Rhythm League" is something that shows up many times throughout the series. They judge your performance in Remixes, and many of the letters seen in Reading Material are attributed to them. We don't know much about them, I mean, they're referred to as "mysterious" in-game, but we do know that Space Gramps from Space Dance is a member, as well as Captain Blue Bird from. Blue Birds. JASMINE: Paddlers are space aliens, and while they may appear humanoid, the finer details of their biology don't necessarily line up with anything on Earth, most notably their diet. Some of the Reading Material in Rhythm Heaven DS is brief descriptions of characters encountered throughout the game, one of them being the Paddlers from Rhythm Rally. Here it's stated that they live on a diet of ping-pong (though paddleball also works fine) and that if they stop playing, they'll grow tired and weary. An official comic backs this up, showing them getting tired in the middle of Space Dancing, and using a game of ping-pong to re-energize. Speaking of that! JASMINE: While it feels like it should be pretty obvious from a glance that the Paddlers and Space Dancers are meant to be the same characters, for some reason fans like to dispute this, bringing up the aforementioned Character bios as proof, as if Paddlers have to always be playing ping-pong or something. But tons of official material states that they're the same, such as the aforementioned comic, the Japanese version of that character bio, that states some Paddlers become Space Dancers, and various other places where the names of these characters are used interchangeably, like the description of the Freeze Frame audience in the Supporting Cast 1 reading material, and the Japanese description of the Fruit Basket 2 Rhythm Item. Based on the description of the Paddlers in Japanese, it can be inferred that they are Paddlers by default, and Space Dancing is just something they do for fun. Why they wear less clothes while Space Dancing, I'll leave to the imagination. JAN MISALI: Remix 5 in Rhythm Heaven (DS) introduces a cue for Dog Ninja that isn’t used anywhere else. DOG NINJA: Here we go! JAN MISALI: it’s kinda unclear exactly why it’s here, since Dog Ninja’s cues are already pretty readable. I think it was just to fill the empty space between inputs in this remix. JASMINE: Monkeys are a pretty big thing in the Rhythm Heaven series. There's what, nine distinct Rhythm Games featuring them? Among the most noteworthy is Tap Trial, one of the first minigames to feature monkeys prominently, except for the one time where it didn't. In one brief segment of GBA Remix 7, there's a new skin of features pigs instead, complete with new sound cues. That being said, the monkey can still be seen in the background, staring out the window! JASMINE: The song in Monkey Watch plays at 160 beats per minute. The monkeys high five every other beat, meaning that the second hand moves eighty times in a minute. At least, that's if it only had yellow monkeys -- The offbeat pink monkeys appear in pairs, meaning the watch effectively "skips" a second whenever they show up. So really, the Monkey Watch doesn't move at a consistent speed at all! The Monkey Watch advertisement, obtained by perfecting the minigame, does not explicitly advertise it as a timekeeping device, however! It primarily advertises it as something meant to improve the owner's mood. The advertisement even explicitly states that people using it might show up late to meetings, but won't be upset about it, since it is medically impossible to frown after looking at it. Seriously, they asked some science guys about it! Or at least that's the case in Rhythm Heaven Fever, in Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise, the advertisement plays it more straight as a watch, though it does still remain hesitant to call it reliable. JAN MISALI: even though the four Rhythm Rockets in Launch Party all count down from different numbers, three of them have the exact same timing: you press A on the third beat. ironically, the one where you don’t press A on the third beat is the one that actually counts down from three! you don’t launch when it gets to one, you launch when it gets to zero, so for this one you press A on the fourth beat. JASMINE: The Dazzles are real people, or at least they are in Rhythm Heaven DS. The character designs of the Dazzles in that game are based on THE Possible, the idol group that performed the original Japanese version of Love Ooh Ooh Paradise. In Megamix, the Dazzles were redesigned, much like the Pop Singer from Fan Club, but unlike Fan Club, the song from The Dazzles was not re-recorded, so I'm not sure who the new Dazzles are based on, if they're based on anyone at all. JAN MISALI: this is the other main example of how Megamix didn’t have much of a budget for localization. in Japanese, Lush Remix, Machine Remix, and the staff credits all have vocals, but these vocals were never properly localized. TOKIMEKIST: [singing] ときめきのストーリー (Tokimeki no Story) [the vocals are removed, and replaced with a MIDI trumpet] JAN MISALI: given how incredible the localization for Fever was with its vocal songs, (the English version of Dreams of Our Generation is a thing of beauty!) it really is a shame that these three tracks weren’t given the same treatment. JASMINE: Courtney is the name of the main character in Fruit Basket, but this isn't something you'd find anywhere in-game. Additionally, most supplemental material for Rhythm Heaven Megamix, like the comics, is only in Japanese. So where does Courtney's localized name come from? It comes from the Nintendo Badge Arcade, which had a set of badges based on Fruit Basket! JASMINE: While the Lumbercats being gay is not something that is lost in translation, given how much they comment on how handsome and strong the Woodcutter Bear is in the practice, the joke surrounding their character design is. In Japanese, "ネコ" (neko), the word for "cat" is also used as slang for a gay bottom. Or at least that's what it says on the Rhythm Heaven Wiki, a search for this term on Wiktionary states that this is lesbian slang specifically, which would contradict with this statement a bit. This is why you research your icebergs more in-depth before posting them online, kids! JASMINE: The Moon Rabbit is a common figure in East Asian folklore, where the craters on the moon are frequently interpreted as a rabbit pounding with a mortar and pestle. The contents of the mortar vary from culture to culture; in the Japanese version, it's mochi! The narrative behind Bunny Hop involves the rabbit falling from the moon, and needing to hop on the backs of sea creatures to make his way back. At the end of the minigame, the rabbit makes the final hop to the moon, and the silhouette of a rabbit pounding mochi appears! JAN MISALI: on the left side of the screen in the GBA version of Karate Man, there’s a meter labeled “flow” that keeps track of how well you’re doing. every time you successfully time an input, the flow gauge increases by one, and if you miss any, it resets. in the broader context of rhythm games as a genre, having a “combo meter” like this is a pretty normal thing, but literally nothing else in the entire Rhythm Heaven series works the way this flow gauge works. while there are other minigames where properly timing multiple inputs in a row has some sort of visual feedback, in Karate Man this has an actual consequence for gameplay: if you try to hit a rock with a flow gauge that isn’t full enough, it doesn’t work. it just feels so out of character for a Rhythm Heaven minigame to do something like this, especially for the very first minigame in the series! when Karate Man returned in Megamix as Karate Man Returns!, the flow gauge was completely removed. JASMINE: In Rhythm Tengoku, one of the pieces of Reading Material is an interview with the batter from Spaceball. In the interview, he mentions his love of rice balls, and his girlfriend who is good at making them. Interestingly, though, whenever someone brings up the strange masks he puts on throughout the minigame, he simply responds with confusion. Q. Why do you wear masks in the middle of the game? A. What's this about? Q. Why do you wear rabbit costumes, for instance? A. I don't know what you're talking about. Before the Spaceball batter can answer the question, time runs out and he leaves the room. JASMINE: Cheer Readers and Double Date are both minigames with a high school setting, and the Cheer Readers epilogues show these are in fact set at the same school. The boy from Double Date shows up in focus in these epilogues, and the better your performance was, the more he will be motivated to study. JAN MISALI: the original idea behind Rhythm Tengoku was that it would be like Brain Age, but it would be focused on training your sense of rhythm. the game was called Rhythm IQ, and the different minigames were sorted according to what rhythm concept each one was made for. however, as development progressed, the educational aspect slowly became less prioritized, and the game was renamed to Rhythm Tengoku. however, the name “Rhythm IQ” stuck around internally. also, at the end of Ringside in the Japanese and PAL versions, you can see that the TV station the Interviewer is from is RIQ-TV, RIQ standing for Rhythm IQ. JAN MISALI: AngryTapper, a prominent member of the Rhythm Heaven custom remix sub-community, has made a couple of custom remixes based on Shimo’s Nico Nico Douga medleys, with a remix of the 10th anniversary version of Kumikyoku Nico Nico Douga in 2017 and another remix of Nico Nico Douga Ryuuseigun in 2019. these two medleys have the same theme, being based on songs that were popular on the Japanese video streaming website Nico Nico Douga in the mid-to-late 00s. as such, there is a lot of overlap between the songs sampled in them, and so AngryTapper’s Ryuuseigun remix references the Kumikyoku remix wherever this overlap occurs. there’s a whole video going over all this stuff on AngryTapper2, which I think is real cool! JASMINE: Just playing Marching Orders makes it sort of ambiguous what exactly the Squadmates are training for. Marching? Being able to "stop like a pro?" The results screens give a bit more context, showing them on an alien rescue mission, but even more context appears to be given in Shoot-'em-up 2, where the Shoot-'em-up Radio Lady shows up dressed as a Squadmate. Does this mean she's a Squadmate, too? JAN MISALI: one of the games in Endless Remix, called “Chameleon” on the debug menu, has the same theme as Tongue Lashing from Megamix; both games are about chameleons eating flying insects. in fact, in Japanese, Tongue Lashing is called Chameleon too, making the connection even stronger. JAN MISALI: the Confession Machine is one of the Rhythm Toys in Tengoku. it maps buttons to voice clips of individual words, with the A button randomly being either the word “love” or the word “hate”, as a way of randomly generating confessions. during playtesting, this was one of the more well-received parts of the game. JAN MISALI: there are several somewhat obvious issues with Rhythm Heaven Silver. it kinda tries to be somewhere between a direct translation of Rhythm Tengoku and an official-looking localization, and as a result it’s not that great at being either of them. there’s a bunch of examples where Silver just completely misses the point of a minigame, and parts where it inserts some fanon content, and like, it calls Polyrhythm “Built to Scale” even though in Japanese it’s literally just called the English word “polyrhythm”! it doesn’t even have the same Japanese title as the other Built to Scales! JAN MISALI: Ryan “Chongo” Mitchum, most well known for his appearances in SnapCube’s Real-Time Fandubs, RYAN CHONGO: god I love football! JAN MISALI: is also the creator of a significant number of mashup albums. among these mashups are like a dozen distinct mashups sampling Monkey Watch, many of which are contained in Rhythm Valhalla. the dude just really likes Monkey Watch! JAN MISALI: as I’ve already mentioned, Rhythm World Wii is the Korean version of Rhythm Heaven Fever. this version of the game has a lot of really interesting differences from the other versions, since for various reasons all references to Japanese culture were completely removed. you can look them up on The Cutting Room Floor, I’m not gonna go through them all here, but a whole bunch of characters were redesigned, and also there’s a couple things that were changed to make them look less like the flag of imperial Japan. JASMINE: In Rhythm Heaven Megamix, the Rhythm Item for the Karate Man prequel is a soccer ball, and is the first in a line of "Karate Memories" that show Karate Joe's past. Karate Joe mentions that as a child, he always wanted to play soccer, but that his dad wouldn't let him, saying he couldn't leave the house until he masters karate. To this day, it is stated that even as a grown man, he lives in his father's basement. JAN MISALI: in Megamix, skill stars are earned by nailing one specific input somewhere in a minigame. however, Quiz Show, the worst minigame, doesn’t care about rhythm at all, so there isn’t any specific input anywhere where a skill star could go. so instead, you get a skill star by, deciding to follow the rhythm, and copying the host’s patterns. JAN MISALI: the little guy from Night Walk didn’t actually originate in the Rhythm Heaven series! his name is Play-Yan, and he’s from a media player for the Game Boy Advance called Play-Yan, where he’s featured as part of the music selection UI. he also shows up in one of the visualizers for the 3DS’s built-in MP3 player! Akfamilyhome, the creator of one of the icebergs this iceberg compiled entries from, has a great video about the Play-Yan media player on his channel if you’re interested in learning more about it. JASMINE: In Rhythm Heaven Megamix, the Rhythm Item for Space Dance is a fake mustache. The text is as follows: Per space tradition, the One Who Stands on the Left is a great master selected every 50 years. The OWSotL must grow a mustache. If he or she does not grow a mustache, a fake mustache is secretly procured. Given that the mustache's design is identical to Space Gramps', this is likely meant to imply that Space Gramps is one of those people that has failed to grow a mustache! JASMINE: Characters in Rhythm Heaven aren't always drawn consistently! The most obvious examples include characters that got redesigned in Megamix, like the Pop Singer, the Shoot-'em-up Radio Lady, and the Dazzles. Of course, there are plenty of more minor inconsistencies that might be harder to notice. Take Munchy Monk, for example! Sometimes he's drawn with sleeves, sometimes he's not! Sometimes his eyebrows are thicker, sometimes they're thinner. Sometimes his robe has red stripes, other times it's completely blue. While very few other characters quite have this degree of inconsistency, it's not like there's not other inconsistencies. For more examples, the Mysterious Lab Tech's costume sometimes has fingers, while other times it doesn't, and Captain Blue Bird had an eighth note on his cap in Rhythm Heaven DS that was removed in Megamix! There's probably more, but I'll leave those for you to find. JAN MISALI: Rap Men and Fan Club are both minigames where the lyrics to the song are the cues. on top of this similarity, however, both games have one specific cue in common, being the word “かもネ” (kamone) at the end of a line. RED RAPPER: おいしい かもネ (oishī kamone) YELLOW RAPPER: ウン! ウン! (un! un!) POP SINGER: [singing] 甘えたいけれど (amaetaikeredo) 恥ずかしいかもね (hazukashī kamone) MONKEYS: かもね、はい (kamone, hai!) JAN MISALI: in Fan Club, this was translated as “I suppose!” for the English version. JAN MISALI: the entire concept of Shrimp Shuffle comes from a pun that only works in Japanese. the Japanese word for shrimp is “エビ” (ebi), so “A B C” sounds like “shrimp sea”. ANNOUNCER: A B C! SHRIMPS: Together! JAN MISALI: you can also see this pun in the results screens in the Japanese version of this game, which feature a big letter C in the background. Super Smash Brothers for Nintendo 3DS has Sneaky Spirits JAN MISALI: which is to say, in the Smash Run side mode in Smash for 3DS, one of the enemies that shows up is a Sneaky Spirit! this is one of only three enemies in Smash Run from a series that isn’t also represented by a playable character or stage, the other two being Bacura from Xevious and Pooka from Dig Dug, both of which being Namco-owned series intended to be connected to Pac-Man. this is another piece of evidence that strongly suggests that a Rhythm Heaven character was intended to be playable in Smash for originally. JAN MISALI: the cues in these games have the same timing: the single-step in Micro-Row has the same timing as eating one dumpling in Munchy Monk, the triple-step is the same as eating three dumplings, and the whistle in Micro-Row 2 is the same as eating two dumplings! there is still a meaningful difference, however, namely that there’s a cue for eating one dumpling in Munchy Monk, but the single-step in Micro Row is just something you do every other beat if there isn’t a cue. while this is a significant difference conceptually (which in Rhythm Heaven matters quite a bit!), functionally speaking the two cues work the same way. JASMINE: The Eyewitness Accounts reading material in Rhythm Heaven DS gives a history of Munchy Monk's story, spanning from Munchy Monk to Munchy Monk 2, with DS Remix 4 in the middle. Hilariously, Munchy Monk is treated as if he's a cryptid of some sorts, even referred to as the "hot new mystery monster" despite just being some guy that can eat a lot. The passage interviews various people that have seen Munchy Monk recently, including a bear! "OK, so, yeah. I was all hungry for dinner, right? And I saw this guy, and I was all, 'yeah, he'll do!' I started to sneak up on him when he went and chowed down on, like, a dozen dumplings all at once. It kinda made me sick to watch, so I just kinda left him alone, you know?" Really, more than anything, this passage is just funny. Everything from the fact they're interviewing a random bear in the woods, to the bear casually admitting to planning to maul Munchy Monk is just really funny to me. The writers should pat themselves on the back for this one. They've earned it. JASMINE: Charging Chicken is an Endless Game introduced in Megamix where the player must charge a electric car by holding for the number of beats the game specifies. This is contextualized in-universe as being the number of yards Mr. Chicken is traveling. While Mr. Chicken only travels distances of a few yards at a time, every two rounds, the screen will display a message showing their apparent location. These start as different countries, but get more absurd as the game progresses, eventually traveling to different planets, and finally to the future. Needless to say, these distances don't exactly check out when compared to their real-world counterparts, especially if it's taken into account that the game randomly selects a distance to travel. JASMINE: While Employee 333-4-591032 and Munchy Monk have never been officially connected, it's likely that they're meant to be the same character. They have nearly identical character designs, and the face the Employee makes during the "Double up!" cue is the same as the one Munchy Monk makes at the end of Munchy Monk 2! It can also be seen that the Employee opens his mouth a little when slapping away a spider, perhaps a reflex from slapping his wrist to eat a dumpling? JASMINE: I love the art in Rhythm Heaven just as much as anyone else, but something that bothers me is how much Ko Takeuchi sucks at drawing distinct female characters. Looking at male human characters from Rhythm Heaven, there's a decent array of diversity when it comes to body types, facial features, and so on and so forth, but when it comes to women I'm sure you could fit about 95% of them on a scale with Tap Girl on one side and Lady Golfer on the other. It's not like there aren't any women that don't fit on the scale! It's just that you can probably count them all on your fingers, and a good chunk of them are just ones that are stylized completely differently, or are so obscure that they hardly even count. On the side of non-human characters, a majority of them follow the tried and true old trope of designating a character is female by making them pink, and giving them eyelashes and a bow. Miss Ribbon is an especially hilarious example, being named for the fact she's a woman, and the accessory that designates that she's a woman. She's like, the common ancestor of all Pink Girl Female Characters. I'm not saying this problem is unique to Ko Takeuchi, but like, that doesn't make it suck any less. Look at the Pitcher and Lady Golfer and Ann Glerr and like, those all just look like the same character! And it's not like this is uniquely a Rhythm Heaven problem, given that WarioWare, another series with art by Ko Takeuchi, has largely the same issue. Come on, Ko! You can do a bit better than that! JASMINE: In Rhythm Tengoku, there's an Endless Game where you work in a factory to finish making the heads of mannequins. The heads of these mannequins have identical facial features to the Clap Trap doll, implying that that might be what the finished version of the mannequin looks like! JAN MISALI: we don’t get to see any of the wrestling matches that happen inside the Rhythm Arena, but it can be inferred that in the Rhythm Heaven universe, wrestling is something that requires a sense of rhythm. the Rhythm Heaven universe is one where everything is governed by rhythm, including things that aren’t part of the actual minigames. JAN MISALI: in an Iwata Asks interview about Rhythm Heaven Fever, Masami Yone, one of the game’s sound directors and composers, said that he wanted the cavemen in Bossa Nova to, quote, “express how much they like each other”, saying “When I saw those cute pictures, I thought, I’ve got to give this an edge!”. JASMINE: Does anyone like playing Quiz Show? I know I don't. It's almost universally agreed to be like, the worst Rhythm Heaven minigame. Fortunately, Megamix has a way to cut down the total number of times you have to play it, by just a little bit. When Quiz Show shows up for a perfect attempt, go to the practice instead of the main game, and aside from advancing through dialogue, do absolutely nothing. Although you're failing the practice, you're not failing the game itself! And if the game is over, without any incorrect inputs, then you must have perfected it, right? JASMINE: DS Remix 6 has a lot of fake-out transitions between Space Soccer and Lockstep, where the player is expected to start keeping the beat in Space Soccer, and continue in Lockstep. However, these transitions are timed exactly on the beat Lockstep starts, and tapping exactly at the timing of the transition leads to the input not being registered. This has caused many people grief when going for perfect, including myself. If you can remember the timing of these transitions, remember to aim slightly late for Lockstep! Even if you barely miss what should be counted as an input, in Rhythm Heaven DS, barelies in Lockstep count as hits in a perfect run! JASMINE: The cues for Tangotronic 3000 are identical to the ones in Frog Hop, with the head-spin two-step being equivalent to "ya-hoo!", the triple-step cue being equivalent to "yeah, yeah, yeah!" and the finishing pose being equivalent to "Spin it, boys!" Of course, the minigames aren't totally identical, given that Frog Hop requires the player to make an input every beat alongside the cues, but it does allow Tangotronic to replace Frog Hop in custom remixes that use just the Frog Hop cues, which some people took note of when porting DS Remix 7 to Megamix! JAN MISALI: there are a lot of connections between Rhythm Heaven and WarioWare, strongly implying that the two series take place in one connected “Made in Heaven” universe. from WarioWare, you’re only a couple of degrees of separation away from the mainline Super Mario series, through Wario Land and Super Mario Land. unless of course you’re okay with just saying Wario appearing in Megamix counts as enough of a connection to the Mario series, which was enough for the Super Mario Wiki! however, even though there’s plenty of references to WarioWare in Rhythm Heaven, there’s very few references to the rest of the Mario franchise, with the exception of the “Rhythm Kart” banner in Freeze Frame. JAN MISALI: Built to Scale in Rhythm Heaven (DS) is all about musical scales. the piano melody ascends in a scale, and you flick the stylus when it gets to the fifth note in the scale. the Fever minigame with the same title, however, has nothing to do with scales! so the name “Built to Scale” makes much less sense for this one. the reason the name was kept is because in Japanese, both games are called “組み立て” (Kumitate), which means “assembly”. JAN MISALI: most minigames in Rhythm Heaven (DS) use “tap” and “flick” as their two inputs. however, there’s exactly two minigames (besides remixes) that use the “slide” input. Love Lizards uses the slide mechanic as its only input, using it to emulate playing a güiro, and Love Lab uses the slide mechanic alongside the tap and flick. it’s likely that Love Lizards was intended to be a tutorial introducing players to this slide mechanic, but since Love Lab is the only other game that uses it, that would mean that Love Lizards is a tutorial for Love Lab. JASMINE: Gigamix is infamous for excluding Rockers, but some people would argue it doesn't have Fireworks, either. This isn't completely true, Fireworks does show up very briefly during the GBA Remix 5 segment, but the thing is, unlike every other minigame, Fireworks doesn't get its own segment outside of GBA Remix 5. So depending on how you look at it, Gigamix might be missing Fireworks as well! JASMINE: Okay, I'm going to talk about this one because it's something that annoys me to no end. The Dazzles is one of the minigames that gets a sequel in Rhythm Heaven DS, a sequel which changes pretty much nothing. To put it more technical, four audio cues are changed, but the input timing is exactly the same as the first game. The rest of the cues are completely identical to the original game. It has the same BPM, it's equally as long, this sequel functionally does absolutely nothing different from the first Dazzles game. This mostly annoys me because there's a handful of really good minigames in Rhythm Heaven DS that don't have sequels and totally could've had them, like. We could've gotten DJ School 2, or Dog Ninja 2. We could've gotten Love Lab 2! I love Love Lab! But The Dazzles has a vocal song, and there's a bias for those, so I guess they just had to do a sequel for it. I just wish they, you know, changed it in any tangible way? Because as it stands, it's just The Dazzles a second time. I've never been that huge on The Dazzles. There are plenty of other minigames I would much prefer having to play through again. JASMINE: Official merchandise for Rhythm Heaven does exist, but it is notoriously hard to find! Examples include these hairy vegetable plushes that could be won in an arcade game, and these towels that were available for Club Nintendo in Japan. Of particular note, however, are these Flipper plushes. They were likely supposed to promote Minna no Rhythm Tengoku in Japan, but were never officially released. However, we have this one image of them, confirming their existence. I'm pretty sure these are like, the Holy Grail for Rhythm Heaven fans, but who knows if we'll ever see them show up anywhere. JAN MISALI: like many minigames, Power Calligraphy had some major character redesigns for the Korean version to remove references to Japanese culture. but while the dancing characters here were redesigned, most of the written characters here were kept the same! even though this game is pretty specifically about writing Japanese kanji, kanji are similar enough to Korean hanja that the Rhythm World localization didn’t feel the need to change this for a Korean audience. however, one of the characters was changed slightly, the face at the end. this isn’t a real kanji or hanja, it’s just a face made out of different characters, but the ear there is very distinctly the hiragana “る” (ru), so the Korean version replaces it with the number 3. JASMINE: The main connection between Mako and the Love Lab scientists comes from the extreme similarities between the minigames’ music. Both are relaxing songs with a BPM of 103 featuring non-lyrical vocals by the same guy. While no in-universe link has ever been made between the two, the musical similarities are very noticeable, and fans have taken to interpreting this as a deliberate connection. It helps that Mako has a very similar shade of brown hair to her supposed father! JASMINE: Speaking of characters that people like to say are related, a number of fans have connected Forthington from Air Rally with Spitz from the WarioWare series. Both are yellow cats with red noses, and given the number of crossover between the WarioWare and Rhythm Heaven universes, many fans have linked the two through their design similarities! JASMINE: In GBA Remix 1 and GBA Remix 7, there is both a single cue that uses a version of The Clappy Trio with four lions instead of three. This is an unusual change-up from how the minigame usually works, and not entirely necessary, given that doing the same thing with just the last three beats would probably work just fine. But Tengoku loves having its fair share of early-installment weirdness, doesn't it? The Conductor from Glee Club is stated to be a former member of The Clappy Trio. While some may link him to this fourth lion, I wouldn't count on it. An official comic seems to suggest he's the lion you play as in the original minigame! JASMINE: The Missing Pig can be seen almost as a reverse of the fourth Clappy Trio member. In the case of the former, an extra member is added to a trio, while here a member is removed from a quartet! The Missing Pig is a big less weird than the fourth Clappy Trio member, given that Board Meeting is consistently played with three pigs for the duration of the remix, and since removing a pig fills a niche that couldn't be as easily done with four. That being said, it begs the question of what happened to that fourth pig! This is the last distinct appearance of Board Meeting in Rhythm Heaven Fever, is there a greater narrative happening in the background that we're not aware of? Or am I looking into things too much again? JAN MISALI: while in the Rhythm Tengoku Complete Music Collection the song from the GBA version of Karate Man is just called “カラテ家” (Karateka), the same name as the minigame itself, the song technically has an official title: “Karate Rhythm”. like every song with lyrics in Rhythm Tengoku, you can unlock the lyrics for Karate Rhythm, but unlike the other songs, Karate Rhythm isn’t given its own lyrics card, and instead it’s included as part of the Rhythm Poem Collection unlocked after getting a perfect in Mahou Tsukai. JASMINE: Although at the end of the Tap Troupe, the Tall Tappers are shown to be incredibly tall, in the cast call at the end of the games, they fit pretty comfortably behind the counter, with regular-length legs. Compare to the Screwbots from earlier, which are so huge they have to be shown separately on a TV screen! The Tall Tappers show up in person just fine! Why are the Tall Tappers so short? Are they bending at the knees? If so, how many knees do their legs even have? Or perhaps their legs are not naturally that long? Just another weird Rhythm Heaven mystery for the ages. JASMINE: Rhythm Heaven re-uses audio a lot. Probably more often than you'd think! Megamix has a lot of the more obvious examples, such as the "Ready?" from Tap Troupe being re-used in Tangotronic, ANNOUNCER: Ready? JASMINE: the Ringside "Huh" being re-used in LumBEARjack, LUMBERCATS: Nya! Nya! WOODCUTTER BEAR: Huh? JASMINE: and so on and so forth. But there's less obvious examples too, like a Japanese Bossa Nova voice clip being re-used for Cam, CAM: Hmm! JASMINE: and the male Love Lizard's squeak being a super sped-up "tch" from DJ School! [the same clip from Love Lizards twice, the second time slowed down revealing that the squeak was, in fact, the “tcho!” from the Scratch-o cue in DJ School] JAN MISALI: in late 2020, footage for a Rhythm Heaven-themed visualizer for iTunes was uncovered. this visualizer was lost media for a period, but thanks to the dedicated efforts of the community, it has since been found and preserved. JAN MISALI: Rhythm Tengoku was released in 2006, but its development started in 2002 with a prototype drumming game created by lead designer Kazuyoshi Osawa. this demo is very different from the game Tengoku eventually became, but the Drum Lessons sidemode is a remnant of this early idea. the fact that development started so early somewhat justifies one of the strangest design decisions for Rhythm Tengoku: the decision to release it for the Game Boy Advance, a handheld which in 2006 was already obsolete thanks to the DS, and which had the absolute worst sound quality of any gaming system. JAN MISALI: the series producer and lead composer, Tsunku, is a celebrity in Japan, as the producer of a significant number of popular idol groups, and was formally the lead singer of the rock group Sharam Q. Tsunku was concerned that if his name was featured in the marketing for Rhythm Tengoku, people would assume that it’s just another celebrity endorsement game, or a game that uses the Tsunku brand as a license. however, he still wanted to have some sort of presence in the game, and that’s what the Samurai Drummer is, a character that serves as a stand-in for Tsunku who isn’t literally Tsunku. JAN MISALI: originally, Rhythm Tweezers had you plucking hairs from actual photographs of members of the development team instead of the cartoony root vegetables featured in the final game. this was changed because it was too gross. JAN MISALI: Tsunku plays GBA games as though the Game Boy Advance is a portable drum machine, placing it down on a surface in front of him instead of actually holding it. this is probably why the main campaign in Rhythm Tengoku doesn’t use the shoulder buttons at all, since if you don’t know how to hold a GBA the shoulder buttons are hard to access. JASMINE: Towards the end of Megamix's story, Tibby explains that the life cycle for Heaven World residents eventually leads to them becoming palaces, much like his mother, and that it will happen to him too. One of Tibby's friends, Colin, seems to have already started the process. The spot on Colin's stomach resembles a door, and as an official comic reveals, it is one! It is likely this is one of the first steps of a Heaven World resident transforming into a palace. JAN MISALI: one of the most fun remixes in the series is the eighth remix from Rhythm Heaven (DS). part of what makes it exciting is how the song starts getting faster towards the end. however, in the OST version, Remix 8 is at the same tempo throughout! not only that, but the OST version’s tempo is different from the starting tempo for the in-game version, sped up from 171 BPM to the much faster 182 BPM, which I think was so the OST version wouldn’t be noticeably longer than the in-game version. JAN MISALI: in Launch Party, there’s voices in the background that are kinda hard to make out over all the static and music and sound effects. if you listen closely right at the start, they’re saying, “Now launching on our mission to find where rhythm comes from.” “Copy that. You guys are already heroes.” JASMINE: The wartime setting of Blue Birds is pretty much the defining theme of the minigame, from the harsh captain to the flashbacks of the birds training in a military camp in the background. Specifically, it seems to be wartime era Soviet Russia, which especially becomes obvious in Blue Birds 2, where the Blue Birds are seen training in the snowy wastes of Siberia and wearing ushankas. JASMINE: There have been a couple instances where cue timing would be changed during localization. One in Frog Hop, and one in Wii Remix 9. In Frog Hop, a single "ya-hoo!" was removed during the line "Don't you know that that is just so square?" Or at least it was in Rhythm Heaven DS, in the Megamix version it's still there! BANDLEADER: [singing]「なんでも悩む」 青春は ("Nan demo nayamu" Seishun wa) FROGETTES: [singing] みんなが立ちよる乗継駅 (Minna ga tachi yoru noritsugi-eki) アホイ! (Ahoi!) アホイ! (Ahoi!) BANDLEADER: [singing] Kids these days, they just worry too much FROGETTES: [singing] Don’t you know that that is just so square? BANDLEADER: [singing] Kids these days, they just worry too much FROGETTES: [singing] Don’t you know that that is just so square? Ya-hoo! Ya-hoo! JASMINE: Additionally, in Wii Remix 9, the Tambourine sections were changed as well! CANARY CLUB: [singing] 輝きたい 愛されたい (Kagayakitai Aisaretai) 輝きたい 愛されたい (Kagayakitai Aisaretai) ANETTE MARIE COTRILL, AIMEE BLACKSCHLEGER: [singing] I just wanna shine, I wanna be in love now I just wanna shine, I wanna be in love now JASMINE: Given that these are both vocal tracks that had their lyrics translated, it's likely that these changes were made to reflect the new lyrics of the song a bit better. That being said, the absent "ya-hoo!" in Frog Hop always manages to catch me off-guard. JAN MISALI: the tutorial for Hole in One has the golfer hitting golf balls into a whale’s blowhole. this is suspiciously similar to something that happens in the episode The Marine Biologist from the fifth season of Seinfeld, where Kramer hits a golf ball into a whale’s blowhole. KRAMER: A “Hole in One”, huh? JAN MISALI: this was almost certainly an intentional reference, especially considering that Ko Takeuchi seems to be a fan of Seinfeld. JAN MISALI: in Rhythm Paradise (DS), Karate Man (along with all other games) had its audio cues fully dubbed into multiple different languages. however, while the translated versions of Struck by the Rain were carried over into Rhythm Paradise Megamix, the translated audio cues were not. VANESSA CEBRIAN: [singing] El corazón ha dicho "basta" y ya no aguanto más ANNOUNCER: ¡puño pie! VANESSA: [singing] El corazón ha dicho "basta" y ya no aguanto más ANNOUNCER: punch kick! VANESSA: A la ruleta jugué, y todo perdí [music fades out] JASMINE: Okay, I'm actually gonna be spending my time debunking this fact, because I cannot accept that Stomp Farmer is just some regular guy, and I have evidence that he isn't. You Stomp Farmer deniers better watch out, because I'm coming at you with the cold hard facts. But first, I should probably explain where this misconception comes from. The man on the Business Card is named "Clodhopper Pickens," and the name is additionally used in some of the Character Bios in the reading material describing Stomp Farmer. Additionally, calling the number on the card with the phone toy leads to a voice clip of the "Hm." sound effect from Crop Stomp playing on loop. So far, evidence seems to be stacking up that these characters are one and the same, perhaps Stomp Farmer is just what the Business Card man looks like in work clothes, right? But here's where this theory gets flipped on its head! If we look at the original Japanese version, the name on the Business Card is different from the name in the Character Bios, and the name in the Character Bios is consistent with the end credits! The way I like to see it, Clodhopper Pickens and Stomp Farmer are two separate characters working in the same industry. I mean, sure you can go with the work clothes theory, but that doesn't change the fact Clodhopper Pickens has an entirely different facial structure and head shape, and it also doesn't explain how his "work clothes" turn his skin green somehow. JASMINE: According to the Rhythm Tengoku website, the Quiz Host is an ancient demon king that feeds off of people's anguish. In the modern day, he runs Quiz Show, as the contestant's anxiety provides him with all the human anguish he needs. Of course, you don't need to go to the website to learn this, making it far enough in the Quiz Special endless game reveals a more and more prominent demon form over time! I guess it's fitting that a demon that thrives off of human anguish is hosting one of the series' most universally disliked minigames, huh? JAN MISALI: the monkeys in Animal Acrobat and Jungle Gymnast don’t have names, which for Rhythm Heaven characters isn’t that unusual. however, in the French version of Rhythm Paradise Megamix, they were given names, “José l’acrobate” and “Emma”. so, this pair of monkeys is a unique case where the only official name for a character comes from specifically the French localization! JASMINE: The doctor from Sick Beats is another interesting example of a character with an obscure official name. In Rhythm Heaven Megamix, there's an unused text string for Sick Beats that would've acted as its description in the museum. Unlike the other unused Endless Game descriptions, which are re-used from the Challenge Gates, however, this text string is completely unique! "We've got an outbreak of an unknown virus! Help us, Dr. Cutlery!" This text uses the name "Dr. Cutlery" to refer to the doctor, but this name hasn't been seen anywhere else. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has a spirit of this character, but generically refers to him as "Sick Beats Doctor." JAN MISALI: there’s a few unused music tracks in the files of Rhythm Heaven Megamix, including Remix 10 from Rhythm Heaven Fever. another unused track is the title theme from Fever. the inclusion of these tracks, as well as just how much of Fever made it into Megamix, might suggest that earlier in development Megamix was meant to be a 3DS port of Fever. however, it’s more likely that these audio tracks were just meant for testing purposes and never were intended to appear in the final game. JAN MISALI: the Wandering Samurai is a recurring character in the Rhythm Heaven series, one of the few characters to be playable in every game. in Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise, the Wandering Samurai was given a new name, Samurai Steve, as a parallel to Karate Joe. this name had never been officially used before and has not been used since: in Rhythm Paradise Megamix and the PAL version of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate he’s called the Wandering Samurai. JASMINE: We've already talked about the Barista, the little dog that runs the cafe, but did you know than an official comic shows that Barista's backstory? It starts with the Barista as a puppy, lost in the rain, when he's found by a person that gives him his headphones. While initially he's shocked by the music, he feels reluctant to give them up. The Barista then acts as a companion to this person as they both grow up, eventually leaving the Barista on his own. Eventually the Barista starts working at the cafe, which is where he is today. Of course, that's not all the Barista lore this series has to offer, in every game of the series, you can talk to the Barista and he'll tell you little stories from his life! Give it a shot the next time you boot up a Rhythm Heaven game! He might not always be especially chatty, but it's always worth a shot! JASMINE: In a piece of Reading Material giving Ann Glerr's fishing tips, she characterizes the Pausegill as a "cautious fish that invests in mutual funds and treasury bills." I'm not sure if this is supposed to be taken literally or if it's just a really, really baffling metaphor, but it's amusing either way. JAN MISALI: so, picture this: a rock star walks into a game development studio and says “hi everyone I’m looking forward to working with you on this cool new idea I have for a game about music” and the game developers all look at each other and go “music? what’s that?” and the rock star is like “you don’t know about music?” and the devs say “no, all we know is video games” and the rock star smirks and says “well it’s a good thing I’m here then!” and pulls out a guitar and Sound of Music style starts singing a song teaching everyone the basics of what music is. anyway, during the development of Rhythm Tengoku, Tsunku signed the entire development team up for dance lessons, so they could train their sense of rhythm. they specifically danced to the music used for Remixes 1, 2, and 4 in Rhythm Tengoku. there’s videos of some of these lessons that have surfaced online. JASMINE: All versions of Megamix, regardless of region, use a small set of generic fonts for the title cards of minigames introduced in Rhythm Tengoku, Rhythm Heaven DS, and Rhythm Heaven Megamix. However, while the Japanese version of the game simply re-uses the title cards from Minna no Rhythm Tengoku exactly, other versions don't use the Rhythm Heaven Fever title cards, instead redesigning them with the same generic fonts used elsewhere. JAN MISALI: if you press L and R when playing music or watching the Epilogue slide show in Megamix, it activates the secret drumming mode, where you can press different buttons to play different drum samples over the music you’re listening to. it’s like a spiritual successor to the drumming mode in Tengoku. this mode is only mentioned in one of the Barista’s randomly-selected comments, so a lot of fans can go all the way through Megamix without ever hearing about it! oh, also, there’s another somewhat connected thing that I gotta mention, so uh, on March 22nd, 2021, youtube user Azura discovered that if you press A, L, and R while playing Figure Fighter in Megamix, the muscle doll farts. this easter egg went unnoticed in the game for like six years. this absolutely would have been given its own entry on the iceberg if we had known about it while we were making the iceberg image itself, but at the time of recording it’s only been like a week since its discovery! JAN MISALI: there’s some documentation for the existence of a not-for-resale kiosk demo of Rhythm Heaven Fever. it’s pretty hard to find any information about it, but it’s probably real. even though it’s really obscure, we didn’t put it super low on the iceberg because it’s not all that cursed. I mean, there’s plenty of NFR versions of Wii games, it’s completely normal that there’d be one for Fever too. JAN MISALI: a lot of minigames in the first three games in the series have moments that are judged far more heavily when determining your final score, to the extent that missing that one input in an otherwise perfect run can turn a “Superb” rating into “Just OK”. Megamix gets rid of this in most cases, since the Skill Star system serves the same purpose of giving one important moment in a minigame more weight than the others, but using positive reinforcement instead of negative reinforcement. however, Skill Star inputs are still counted heavily when determining the score, and in games like The Snappy Trio, missing them can still turn a Superb into Just OK. JAN MISALI: the elegantly titled Rhythm Tengoku Gold Domestic and Overseas Editions Complete Vocal Collection features many, but not all, of the translations of the songs from the second game in the series made for the international releases. despite being called “complete”, three songs are only included in Japanese despite having translations: the sequel version of Struck by the Rain, and the non-sequel versions of Thrilling! Is this love? and Love Ooh Ooh Paradise. more significantly, the Korean translations recorded for Rhythm World are completely excluded! the reason was just because Rhythm World hadn’t been released at the time this soundtrack was made, it’s not like, a weird bias against the Korean translations. JASMINE: There's a set of Rhythm Heaven DS comics showing the backstory of the DJs from DJ School, and I'm not sure if they were meant to be gay, but like, oh my god. They are so gay. So like, in this series of comics, the student DJ gets invited by the Rap Men to see the Battle of the Bands, but the student DJ, being the awkward person he is, gets overwhelmed and goes into hiding, remarking he doesn't like it there. But then, he's noticed by DJ Yellow, who calmly explains he struggled during his first time there too, offers him a drink, and tells him to enjoy the show. And after that whole interaction, we see DJ Blue blushing and remarking that DJ Yellow seems like such a gentle person, and like, there's a rainbow behind DJ Yellow in the panel right before that and. Yeah! They're gay! They go out for drinks together at the end of this whole arc, they're gay! Good for them! Good for them. JASMINE: So sometimes at the Cafe in Megamix, characters that showed up in the story mode will be there, and much like the Barista, you're able to talk to them, learning little details about their life. In one of the conversations with Trey, he mentions offhand that he's 5,000 years old, and that his grandfather is a thousand years older. While this is probably just meant to be a joke reflecting the longevity of trees, it also has some shocking real-world implications. Because Prometheus, verified to be the oldest individual tree at the time of writing, was around 4,862 years old when it was cut down, maybe a bit older. Regardless, if we are to take this into account, this means that Trey is older than any individual tree that has ever been verified, and again, his grandfather is a good bit older than that! I mean, there are still a couple of clonal colonies that have lived to be over twice as long, but for an individual tree, this is very, very impressive. JASMINE: Did you know that some features from Rhythm Heaven games that didn't make it into Megamix can still be found in the game's files? This includes the small Fillbot, from DS Fillbots 2, and the Electric Fish from Night Walk 2. The small Fillbot is fully coded, and can be modded into the game, but no such code exists for the Electric Fish, though it does have associated audio files! There are other unused features like this as well, such as the "No Peeking!" sign from Rhythm Tweezers that was used in GBA Remix 8 alongside brand new left and right-hand variants, and the double-step cue from Wii Micro-Row 2. These things have come in handy for the Rhythm Heaven modding community! JASMINE: Speaking of unused content in Megamix, lots of graphics that were never used in the first place made it in as well! Examples include a camel that was meant to appear in Tap Trial 2 in place of the giraffe, and an animation of the Chorus Kids crouching. Neither of them appear in-game, but the camel's legs do appear on the Tap Trial 2 title card, hinting that it may have originally been planned to appear after getting scrapped the first time. Of course, it's also possible that when redrawing the sprite sheets, they didn't pay attention to whether or not a graphic was used, and just tried to update everything they found. It's just a little interesting that this is in the game at all! JASMINE: In Drummer Duel, there's a little dude that is fully sprited, but never shows up in the game proper. He is fully animated, though, and likely was meant to stand between the two teams, signaling which player is up to drum. I have a feeling he was scrapped from the game due to Rhythm Heaven DS's aspect ratio, which would make it so he'd never be fully visible at any given moment, but it is kind of a pity. I like this little dude! In the final version of Drummer Duel, the switch-off between players is signified by the screen panning and audio cues. JASMINE: Remember how The One Who Stands On The Left must grow a mustache, or wear a fake one? You know who has no mustache at all? Cosmic Girl. Cosmic Girl is not One Who Stands On The Left, and Cosmic Dance is not a form of Space Dance. That being said, it's not like Cosmic Dance is without its own rituals! According to this game's Rhythm Item, the Cosmic Hat, it's Cosmic Dance instead of Space Dance because of the hat, which makes everything like 1000% more cosmic. It's possible that the hat is to Cosmic Dance what the mustache is to Space Dance! JAN MISALI: during the gameplay in Rat Race, the rats always reach the cheese and celebrate at the end no matter what you do, but if you get a Try Again, the epilogue screen shows that they were unsuccessful. [cinemasins ding] JAN MISALI: the prequel version of Flipper-Flop in Megamix has a song that doesn’t quite fit its gameplay. see, the rhythm of the music here would fit the triple-step cue much better than the flipper-rolls! [a clip of the prequel version of Flipper-Flop, with the audio cues edited to fit the music better] JAN MISALI: it’s likely that which cue this game uses was changed late in development. JAN MISALI: some people have a lot of trouble with Monkey Watch, and part of the reason for that might be that the tutorial at the start of the game does a pretty bad job explaining how the rhythm works. “High five as they pass after you hear ‘Ooki oo!’” what you’re actually supposed to do for this cue is high five on the offbeat of the next two beats, which is really the same rhythm as the normal beat in Monkey Watch where you’re high fiving on beats two and four in the measure, just twice as fast. maybe if Monkey Watch had explained this idea better it would be easier for people to get the hang of it. JAN MISALI: as a Wii game, Rhythm Heaven Fever was originally supposed to have motion controls, but the final game only uses buttons. while the reason stated for this change is that it was too exhausting to play, another factor was almost certainly that using motion controls for something that needs precise timing just doesn’t work very well. even though the change to button controls was a pretty fundamental one, there are still a lot of remnants of motion controls in the game if you know where to look! Hole in One, Fork Lifter, Tambourine, Monkey Watch, Air Rally, Figure Fighter, Packing Pests, Micro-Row, Samurai Slice, Catch of the Day, Exhibition Match, Donk-Donk, Bossa Nova, and Karate Man all map the A button to something that would make perfect sense as something you could use the Wii Remote’s motion controls for! it’s very likely that the switch to button controls happened very late in development. JAN MISALI: the game Polyrhythm is named after the musical concept of a polyrhythm, where multiple different rhythms are played at the same time. despite this name, none of the rhythms involved actually count as polyrhythms. Polyrhythm 2 on the other hand really is all about polyrhythms! the whole sequel builds up to this moment here where you play a 4:3 polyrhythm, tapping with your left thumb three times in the same time it takes to tap with your right thumb four times. personally, I think this is a great way to introduce the concept of a polyrhythm. it’s just kinda weird that they saved this for Polyrhythm 2 and didn’t put any real polyrhythms in Polyrhythm 1! JASMINE: I mean, can you think of any other reason why they'd leave out fan-favorite minigame DJ School? It's because the DJs are gay and Nintendo is homophobic. Those are just the facts. JASMINE: Fortunately, not all hope is lost, as there is a Megamix mod that ports DJ School to the game! A modder named Chloe was able to work with the engine of The Dazzles, and with artistic help from dexiedoo and Katie1118, made an impressive version of DJ School optimized for Megamix. While it's not totally perfect, there's a couple notable visual glitches when playing on-hardware, it's still really well-made, especially when considering how hard it is to port full minigames to Megamix. The only three other examples of this ever happening are DS Built to Scale, the Tambourine segments in Wii Remix 9, and a "dumbed down" version of Donk-Donk in Wii Remix 6! JASMINE: On the subject of gay people and Rhythm Heaven modding, there are mods for Love Lab that make the game gay, in both wlw and mlm flavors! This isn't to disrespect the couple in the base game of course, I still love them, they're a great Bi4Bi couple, it's just that there aren't really Rhythm Heaven minigames about a gay couple falling in love, and I figured I could modify my favorite minigame to add these options. Oh right! I made this mod. I guess this segment is kind of a shameless plug, but to be fair! It was jan Misali that said we should put this on the iceberg, so really this is on him. Anyway, the mods pretty much take care of everything Love Lab related, from the main minigame, to Remix 4, to even minor appearances like the Battle of the Bands audience and the end credits. Especially fun is the Lab Journal reading material, which in the wlw version is a simple pronoun swap, but in the mlm version becomes a backstory for the Squirrel Man instead! Check it out, if you feel like it! JAN MISALI: there’s an unused alternate title screen for Airboarder in Rhythm Heaven (DS) with an early beta design for the Airboarder. the design has no googles, has a red jumpsuit with cyan sleeves, and is riding a blue board. also, this design has a rounder head that looks a little bit like the redesigned Airboarders in the Megamix version of this game. JAN MISALI: Big Rock Finish C is the fastest song in the entire Rhythm Heaven series, at a whopping 290 BPM. since it’s so fast, it also has increased leniency for its inputs. there’s a glitch in Megamix related to this, if you quit Big Rock Finish while Big Rock Finish C is playing, this increased leniency can carry over to the next game you start, which can make other games easier! there’s also hacks for the game that make this far more powerful, known as “amplified BRF exploit”. there’s a lot of goofy things that can happen with it. JASMINE: Does anyone really care about Bouncy Road? Like, it's not the worst minigame in the series, but it also doesn't really excel at anything in particular. Like, for as much as Quiz Show sucks, it at least has pretty interesting theming. For Bouncy Road, there's nothing that stands out as being really, really good. I mean, if you really, really love Bouncy Road, then more power to you, but general consensus around Bouncy Road seems to be a feeling of utter ambivalence. And that ambivalence extends to the characters, themselves! In their official character bios on the Rhythm Tengoku website, it is mentioned they are indifferent to the Spheroids and their work, and in one of the Megamix comics, they have a conversation about wishing they could appear on-screen for a change. JAN MISALI: this is a Japanese pun from a piece of Reading Material from Rhythm Tengoku, a manzai routine between Ao-kun and Kii-yan from Toss Boys. Kii-yan says “洗剤的なアルミ缶” (senzai-tekina arumi-kan), detergent-y aluminum cans, can improve with practice. Ao-kun corrects him, because he obviously meant to say “潜在的なリズム感” (senzai-tekina rizumu-kan), potential rhythm sense, instead! JAN MISALI: one of the Megamix comics reveals that the Barista’s goat was sold to him by Saffron. another shows that even after having sold the goat, Saffron still walks her, since Barista is too small to do that. I think that’s just sweet. JAN MISALI: I already talked about Saltwater’s phone call in WarioWare Gold, but there’s a bit more! both Game & Wario and WarioWare Gold contain microgames that reference Rhythm Heaven, with one featuring the Wandering Samurai in Game & Wario based loosely on his minigame from Rhythm Tengoku, and a microgame based on Rhythm Tweezers in WarioWare Gold. Game & Wario has a lot of little cameos too, there’s the monkey and the Chorus Kids in the opening cutscene, the onion from Rhythm Tweezers in the intro to Ashley’s minigame, and there’s the Reporter and Wrestler in the intro to the Pirates minigame. in WarioWare Gold, there’s a plush of Tibby from Megamix in the cutscene before Mona’s stage, and there’s a bit of flavor text that says Mr. Sparkles goes to the same gym as the Wrestler from Ringside. the Made in Heaven connected universe is very real! JAN MISALI: Watashime Slug is a Japanese musical duo that, well I mean look at them! they sure do look a lot like the Rockers, don’t they? the connection is a bit deeper than that, however: the vocalist, Soshi, performed the song “WISH 君を待てなくて” (WISH Kimi o Matenakute) for the fifth remix in Rhythm Tengoku before the group was formed, and later also provided vocals for Lonely Storm in Rhythm Heaven Fever. so, it seems pretty likely that the visual similarity between the Rockers and Watashime Slug was very intentional. JASMINE: In Rhythm Heaven Fever, the sprite sheet for Tap Troupe interestingly shows a set of sprites in the art style of Rhythm Heaven DS. Rhythm Heaven DS itself has a full unused song with the code-name "Tap," and a large number of sound-effects associated with it. [clip of the unused “Tap” song] JASMINE: Given that this is much more than any other unused game has, it's likely this minigame was scrapped late in Rhythm Heaven DS's development. Putting together the DS-style sprites and the unused "tap" song suggests Tap Troupe was originally intended for Rhythm Heaven DS, got scrapped late in development, but was revived for Rhythm Heaven Fever as the version of Tap Troupe we know and love today. OK! JASMINE: In the Japanese version of DS Remix 9, a voice saying "Down!" can be heard right before the start of Space Soccer sections. This sound cue is not in localized releases of the game! Interestingly, this sound-effect is re-used from the scrapped DS tapping game just mentioned, but it's unknown why it's used to cue the start of Space Soccer. That being said, I do have a theory! I have a feeling that Space Soccer might have been the minigame that replaced DS Tap Troupe! Alongside the "Down" cue, the unused Tap game's sound effects include the "Kick" and "Toe" from Space Soccer. Both are games where the player keeps a consistent beat, and if Space Soccer was added late in development, it would explain why there's no official artwork of the Space Kickers! Obviously, there's confirmation on this, and I could be off-base, but if I'm right, then I'm glad we live in the timeline where we got both these games, given they are two of my favorites. JASMINE: This is mostly just a joke theory -- I'm well aware that the English Space Dance voices are likely just the result of Megamix not having that much of a localization budget. That being said, they do fit Cosmic Dance a bit better than they fit Space Dance. COSMIC DANCERS: And pose! And pose! COSMIC GIRL: And pose! COSMIC DANCERS: And pose! And pose! COSMIC GIRL: And pose! COSMIC DANCERS: Let’s sit down! COSMIC GIRL: Let’s sit down! JASMINE: Is the English Space Dance voice intended to be Cosmic Girl? It'd be confusing, seeing the localizers prioritizing the sequel over the base game, but at least it would make the English voices make just a little more sense. JASMINE: So people aren't sure of the identity of the Blastronaut, the pilot of the ship in Shoot-'em-up, but what if I were to suggest that Blastronaut isn't the pilot of the ship, but rather the ship itself? It's not a totally unlikely theory! In the cast call for Rhythm Heaven DS, Blastronaut is named, but isn't shown in the credits, Shoot-'em-up Radio Lady holding the ship is. But what if the ship itself is Blastronaut? I mean, if it's to scale in the end credits, then the pilot of the ship must be pretty dang small! And like, there's a small face on the cockpit of the ship, what if Blastronaut has been hiding in plain sight all along? The Model Spaceship Rhythm Item in Megamix notes that the ship has a very detailed cockpit, but no pilot. But what if the cockpit IS the pilot? Have you ever thought of that?! Have you!? JAN MISALI: just like Remix 8 from Rhythm Heaven (DS), Karate Man Senior in Rhythm Heaven Megamix has a tempo that gets faster during gameplay, but not in the OST version. okay, not the OST version. there is no Rhythm Heaven Megamix OST. but like, the version of Karate Man Senior extracted from the game’s files. the version you’ll find reuploaded to youtube if you look for the Megamix soundtrack. the version you can listen to in the museum. that version doesn’t have the tempo increase or the key change in the middle of the song! since this literally is the audio file used during gameplay, the only explanation I can think of is that midway through the game the song dynamically adjusts its playback speed. JASMINE: According to the Rhythm Tengoku website, Tram and Pauline, the characters from the minigame of the same name, do not have a sense of rhythm. This piece of lore mostly interests me because it creates a sort of divide between the in-universe lore of the characters and the out-of-universe lore of the game itself! Even if you have a remarkable sense of rhythm, that doesn't mean the characters you control do! JAN MISALI: the phone from Rhythm Heaven (DS) has a different keypad design in every version of the game, the biggest difference between regions being the ‘5’ key. in Rhythm Tengoku Gold, it’s an eighth note, in Rhythm Heaven (DS) it’s an eighth note with a descender instead with the number 5 written on it, in Rhythm Paradise (DS) it’s just the number 5, and in Rhythm World (DS) it’s an eighth note again, but a smaller one compared to the one in Rhythm Tengoku Gold. JASMINE: There's a lot of Rhythm Heaven characters you can consider trans. I mean, if you're not a coward, then you can say everyone is trans, and you'd probably be right, but if you are specifically one of those sticklers that needs in-universe evidence… then there's still a lot of characters you can call trans! For some examples, the gender of the character was changed between games, such as the Pinwheel Girl in Samurai Slice and the Squadmates from Marching Orders. For other examples, there's a character of one gender in one minigame, that is replaced by a character of a different gender in another minigame, like the Golfer from Hole in One, the factory worker from Built to Scale, and the three Synchrettes from Splashdown. And sometimes, an animal character doesn't follow real-world sexual dimorphism, as is the case with The Clappy Trio. All these characters are now canonically trans, because I say so. But if there's one character that is more obviously trans than anyone else, it's the factory worker seen in the results screen of DS Fillbots 2. Unlike some of the other examples here, she has the same facial features and body type as the character she's replacing from the first Fillbots, and if that wasn't enough, she's straight-up superimposed on a light blue and pink background reminiscent of the colors of the trans flag! Unfortunately, she doesn't make a return in Megamix, but I want her to know that I am so proud of her. Trans rights! OK! JAN MISALI: in 2016, a series of Rhythm Heaven themed badges were created for Nintendo Badge Arcade. you know, the thing we mentioned eight hours ago when talking about why we know Courtney’s official English name? well, those badges started being released in early 2016, quite a bit before the official North American release for Rhythm Heaven Megamix was announced! as early as February 2016, there were badges available in the US with designs that at the time were from a Japanese-exclusive game with no word of an official localization. most of the characters featured in these early badges already had official English names in the previous Rhythm Heaven games, but the Space Umpire from Spaceball had his official localized name revealed in the Badge Arcade months before Rhythm Heaven Megamix was announced! I mean, okay, his name is “Space Umpire” in Japanese too, but like, this was still an official English name given to a character from a game that as far as anyone knew at the time would never be released outside of Japan! JASMINE: In Rhythm Heaven Megamix, the Rhythm Item for The Dazzles is an ice-cube tray, with the description remarking that it looks incredibly familiar, referencing how it resembles the boxes seen in the background of The Dazzles. The only size comparison we have for The Dazzles compared to other characters is the results screens for DS Karate Man 2, which could debunk this theory, since the Dazzles are shown to be pretty small but not that small. But that was in Rhythm Heaven DS, and the Rhythm Item is in Megamix. Those were the Dazzles of old, remember that Megamix introduces a new set of Dazzles. Perhaps these Dazzles are smaller than the old ones. Perhaps this is the smallest set of Dazzles there has ever been. And maybe, these days, their show is filmed live from inside an ice tray. JAN MISALI: during the development of Megamix, Tsunku was diagnosed with throat cancer, and had surgery to remove his vocal cords. there’s one song contained in Megamix with vocals performed by Tsunku, the song from Sumo Brothers. [clip of Tsunku singing in Sumo Brothers] JAN MISALI: considering the timeline of Megamix’s development, it’s likely that this was the last song Tsunku recorded before his vocal cords were removed. oh, he’s fine, by the way. he’s fully recovered, he just can’t speak or sing anymore, because his vocal cords were removed. JAN MISALI: the song for Machine Remix, “その一粒の大きな涙には” (Sono Hitotsubu no Ōkina Namida ni wa), is literally the only song with lyrics in the entire Rhythm Heaven series without an official extended version. Megamix had troubled development, with the closure of Nintendo SPD and Tsunku’s throat cancer both happening mid-development. the game never got an official soundtrack release, but extended versions of “ときめきのストーリー” (Tokimeki no Story) (Lush Remix) and Classmate (the credits theme) were performed live, and an extended version of I’m a lady now (Honeybee Remix) was released separately. it’s likely that just like every other Rhythm Heaven vocal song, an extended version of Machine Remix does exist, but if it does, it’s never been heard by the general public. JASMINE: In Rhythm Tengoku, the Squadmates can be seen without their helmets in the credits, showing them with short hair. However, they received a redesign in Megamix, with longer hair. This longer hairstyle appears to be taken from a piece of fan art dating back to 2008 by Ryo Hirao, which shows the Squadmates with nearly identical hairstyles. JASMINE: One of the Glass Tappers has blue hair stylized almost identically to Ao-kun, from Toss Boys. Some fans have noticed this, and have come to theorize that this character is an older Ao-kun. It's not like the characters are identical. The Glass Tapper's hair is a darker shade of blue and his facial structure is notably different from Ao-kun's. However, it sort of begs the question of why such a specific hairstyle in such a specific character would be used for two completely different characters. If this Glass Tapper isn't an older Ao-kun, I wouldn't be surprised if he was at least related. Maybe he's Ao-kun's dad or something. JAN MISALI: there’s an unused harder version of Rap Women in the code for Rhythm Tengoku with more frequent cues and many offbeat inputs. [clip of Rap Women by Kazu] JAN MISALI: it’s not accessible in the final game, probably because it doesn’t fit the music that well. or maybe the song for Rap Women was changed partway through development, and the whole minigame was remade to fit the new song? who knows! JASMINE: Remember how Karate Joe is a grown man that lives in his father's basement because he has yet to master karate? Well the French version of Megamix goes even further with this, having him state that he's still living in the basement at the age of 55, placing emphasis on just how long he has lived with his father. JAN MISALI: there’s a lot of little differences between Rhythm Heaven Fever and Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise, but this one just feels kinda silly. in Love Rap, one of the audio cues is “Fo’ sho’!”. even though Beat the Beat uses the same audio clip for this as Fever, the speech bubble says “For sure!” instead. I think the reason this is different is because in the UK non-rhotic English is more common, so spelling out phonetically that the R isn’t pronounced makes less sense. JASMINE: In the sound files for Ringside in Rhythm Heaven Fever, there's a handful of short voice clips that appear to be outtakes from the Reporter's voice actress. Let's give them a listen! REPORTER: Ehhh?? Ohhh! Ehh- [giggles] JASMINE: It's unknown why these were left in the game, but they are neat! JAN MISALI: in Rhythm Tengoku Gold, if you dial 44♪82831♪ on the phone, you hear the music from Rap Men from Rhythm Tengoku, including sound effects from the game. [clip from Rap Men, with Japanese voices] JAN MISALI: even though Rap Men was never dubbed into English, this phone call was! in Rhythm Heaven (DS), if you dial 555-ROCK-OUT, you get a glimpse into what English Rap Men would have sounded like. [the same song, but with English voices instead] JAN MISALI: this is another unused version of a minigame in Rhythm Tengoku, a version of Remix 1 that has Tap Trial instead of Rhythm Tweezers, and also is like a full minute longer! yeah, and I thought GBA Remix 1 had pacing problems as is! JAN MISALI: and another unused minigame, but this one isn’t a beta version of something in the final game: this one is completely unused! in this game, you’re a drummer repeating patterns played by a Monkey and Tanooki. there’s assets for other completely unused games in the files of Rhythm Heaven games, but this is the one that’s the closest to being actually playable. JASMINE: The wording of "Spider-Free Candy" is a little… weirdly specific, don't you think? Like, why would they need to clarify their candy is Spider-Free? Shouldn't candy be Spider-Free by default? The logical implications of this is that candy in the Rhythm Heaven universe is full of spiders, and the candy packaged in Packing Pests is the exception. At least, it is if you do well. JAN MISALI: this next point was originally pointed out to me by a friend of mine, and she can definitely explain it better than me or Jasmine could. so, please give a warm welcome to my fellow youtuber, the incredibly talented Patricia Taxxon! PATRICIA: Aw geez, that’s really nice of you to say! Uh, thanks for having me. Okay, so, Tap Troupe is seen as one of the more difficult minigames in Rhythm Heaven. The musical idea it aims to demonstrate is a cut above in terms of complexity, that being the 4:3 polymeter commonly found in pop and dance music. [a couple seconds of tap troupe bam bam bam synchronized with the pre-chorus of Brittney Spears’ Till the World Ends] PATRICIA: The actual gameplay couldn’t be simpler to explain, though. Players are first prompted to tap a steady four-on-the-floor rhythm. Next, with a “Rea~ dy!”, we pause, and resume on a likewise steady 4:3 polymeter until a “Tap Tap-Tap!” prompts us to return to the original groove. We proceed, being asked to hold that polymeter for different lengths of time while still returning cleanly. That’s the basic idea. Now, I said this game was seen as one of the more difficult offerings, but some folks would rather attribute this to inconsistent prompting. See, the “Tap Tap Tap” that calls our return to the normal rhythm isn’t the same each time. Sometimes all three of the taps are the same distance apart, but usually the last tap comes early, and in one instance it seems purposefully delayed. This alone has given Tap Troupe a reputation for being moreso based on rote memorization than any other minigame available. This viewpoint has even been backed up by the Rhythm Heaven fan wiki, which lists each configuration as a different cue. However, as the entry states, Tap Troupe’s cues are entirely deterministic, and after hearing my explanation you’ll be able to play it comfortably without needing to focus on exactly which tap tap tap you’re gonna get. So in simple terms, Tap Troupe doesn’t operate under the same rules as other minigames. This isn’t a case in which the big fish goes omma nom nom and you need to count exactly three and a half beats to know when to yank on the line. As the tutorial states, Tap Troupe is about shifting between two different steady rhythms. The “Tap Tap Tap” isn’t a signal for you to perform any rhythm in particular, it signals the oncoming shift back into four on the floor, and on the last tap you’re expected to be within that groove irrespective of where it falls in relation to the rhythm you were performing up to that point. And as such, the last tap is always on beat, moreover, it’s always on the very next available beat within the original groove. When it seems to come early, it is because the polymeter had muscled itself into a narrower subdivision. When it comes late, it’s because the polymeter had drawn back exactly enough to leave the maximum distance (a quarter note) between taps two and three. When looking at it like this, it seems like a perfectly consistent tap configuration would be more confusing than what they did, and it would distract from the musical idea being communicated. It’s a good minigame. JAN MISALI: in the Iwata Asks interview about Rhythm Heaven Fever, it was revealed that some minigames in Fever were intended to use 3D visuals, like Rhythm Rally and Airboarder in Rhythm Heaven (DS). this art style didn’t really fit the snappy inputs in Fever that well, so this was scrapped in favor of the 2D visuals in the final game. unlike the motion controls, this aspect of Fever’s early development doesn’t really have any noticeable remnants in the final game, except that all the games place their 2D animated characters in a 3D environment, which is almost impossible to notice. this is why the minigames in Fever were able to be ported over to the 3DS in Megamix and make use of the system’s stereoscopic 3D display! JASMINE: In the story of Megamix, Trey mentions two legends relevant to the Lush Woods, one that states that the green light of the lush tower is enough to take one to heaven, and another slightly contradictory one that states that using only the green light will lead you to bumping your head on something, and actually you need a full rainbow of power to get there. Tibby is amazed when he hears there's another legend after bumping his head on something, and Trey mentions off hand that there's "tons of 'em," which implies legends that we as the audience just do not hear. JAN MISALI: right, so by now you know that when the Rhythm Heaven series was localized for Korea as Rhythm World, all explicit references to Japanese culture were removed. so like, what would they have done with The☆Bon Odori if Rhythm Tengoku was released in Korea? this game is about the Obon Festival, a traditional Japanese Buddhist custom about honoring the spirits of your ancestors. while there is a Korean equivalent to this festival, the Baekjung Festival, the Bon Odori is very specific to the Obon Festival, and it probably wouldn’t be enough to just keep the dance the same but change the character designs and rename it to one of the traditional dances performed at a Baekjung Festival. and also like, the Baekjung Festival isn’t as big in Korea as the Obon Festival is in Japan, so they’d probably be better off just making it a completely different holiday altogether. the difficulties for a hypothetical Korean localization of this minigame culminate in a single moment that’s gotta be the single hardest to localize thing in any game: a gameplay-relevant pun in a line that’s directly stating that the minigame you’re playing is based on something specific to Japanese culture. YAGURA-CHAN: [singing] ほら! まつりだ わっしょい! (Hora! Matsuri da Wasshoi!) DONPANS: [singing] どんど ぱんぱ どんど ぱんぱ (Dondo Panpa Dondo Panpa) YAGURA-CHAN: [singing] これぞ メイド イン ジャパン (Korezo Meido in Japan) JAN MISALI: like, it uses the “pan” in “Japan” as the cue! that’s so good! funnily enough, there’s actually a fan-made Korean version of Rhythm Tengoku, similar to Rhythm Heaven Silver, and it does remove Japanese cultural references throughout the game in the same way as the official Rhythm World games, except for The☆Bon Odori! also, it doesn’t even keep the “made in Japan” pun. JASMINE: In Rhythm Heaven Megamix, there is a song titled "I'm a lady now." You'd THINK that it'd be easy to interpret the lyrics of this song so it's about being transgender, but really it's unambiguously about becoming emotionally mature and there isn't much room for another interpretation. Once you reach the line "Don't treat me like a girl," I'm pretty sure the transgender interpretation is out of the water. HOTZMIC: [singing] Don’t treat me like a girl JASMINE: You know a vocal song you totally CAN interpret about being transgender, though? ANETTE MARIE COTRILL, AIMEE BLACKSCHLEGER: [singing] Someday you’ll find yourself and realize that you’re beautiful! JASMINE: No this obviously wasn't the intended reading, but it totally works! I mean, this remix even has Hole in One 2, which is one of the most transgender minigames in the entire series! Go and give the lyrics a look with this interpretation in mind, and tell me what you think! JASMINE: Rhythm Paradise on the DS has a number of minor differences from its North American counterpart, but most of them are things like spelling differences and changes made for clarity, like the Frog no longer saying the game is controlled entirely using the touch screen. As far as I can tell, there is only one line that was changed entirely, and it's this one. On the results screen for Love Lab, if you do poorly enough, you may see the line "Your toss timing was off." However, in the European release of the game, this line was changed to "Your lobs were lacking in rhythm." At a glance, this change may seem completely arbitrary, it's likely due to the word "toss" having some… vulgar connotations. Doesn't help that it's in a minigame that is quite literally about "making love." JAN MISALI: Rhythm Tengoku and Mother 3 have a lot of very specific things in common. they’re both Japan-exclusive GBA games, the final two first-party Nintendo games released for the system. both games had lengthy development periods, although Mother 3’s development took much longer than Tengoku’s. Mother 3 also has a combo system built into its turn-based battles where tapping the A button to the rhythm lets you hit an enemy multiple times in one turn. so, technically speaking, I can say that two of my favorite games are Rhythm Games for the Game Boy Advance released in 2006 that will never get an official North American release! JASMINE: Content warnings in advance for racism, specifically antiblackness. I'm not going to show any pictures, but I feel it would be irresponsible not to talk about this. In the original Japanese version of Rhythm Tengoku: The Best Plus, Trey's design was really, really racist, being drawn with big pink lips, bringing to mind the blackface caricature. Fortunately in localization, this design was changed, instead giving him a small pink nose and a simple smile. Or at least, it mostly was -- a series of 39 comics were written for Megamix, but most of them were only in Japanese. Only five were translated to English, one of which being the only one that has Trey, with his design unmodified. I should not have to be the one to tell you that this design is completely unacceptable. The blackface caricature is rooted in centuries of antiblack racism, and while I am glad that this character design was changed for localization, it never should have been drawn in the first place. JAN MISALI: while most of the major differences between the Rhythm Heaven and Rhythm World games involve references to Japanese culture, there are also some lore-related differences. in Rhythm World Wii, Mr. Upbeat was given a much more fleshed-out backstory than he has in the other releases. in the Korean version of the Reading Material “A Musical Term”, Mr. Upbeat says that he has a girlfriend he wishes to introduce to the player someday. and you know what? I think I would like to meet Mr. Upbeat’s girlfriend, she sounds great. JASMINE: On the Rhythm Heaven Wiki, the characters from Catchy Tune are given the names Praline and Araline. That being said, these names are not given a source, so I have no idea where they were gotten from. I'd look into this more, but honestly I think it's funnier to not know. It gives them such an air of mystique. Maybe someone just made these names up and the wiki has yet to correct it, I have no idea. Either way, it's funny. Maybe someone else can figure this out and we'll put it in the comments or description or something. Good luck! ...Okay so that's originally what I was going to leave this section at, but when preparing to record this, I realized I'd have to, you know, pronounce the names "Praline and Araline" which I could think of like, three distinctive pronunciations for, any of which could be accurate. I remembered seeing the names in Japanese somewhere and knowing they were pretty much the same. They weren't on the current revision of the page, but after looking a bit deeper I was able to find the names "プラリンとアラリン (Purarin to Ararin)" in the page's history. If these names are official, then this would be a very strange romanization, like, where did that final "e" come from? Additionally in the page's history I found that the page was renamed to this in July of 2015, which predates Megamix's localization by almost a year and means this specific romanization is by no means official. But there's still mysteries unsolved, namely whether the Japanese name is official to begin with! Again, I'm not going to look into this more than I already have, but if any of you want to, then go for it. ...And that's what I was originally going to not-quite-originally leave this section at but surprise of all surprises, when this video was almost finished, we got an answer to everything. jan Misali noticed the "Praline and Araline" page was deleted, and me, knowing what I know about wikis, figured that the page was likely renamed and the redirect was removed. I looked in the wiki's edit history, saw the page was renamed "Plalin and Alalin," and best of all, that these names were sourced! The names are from the Japanese version of the Nintendo Badge Arcade. All has been revealed. No more staying up late at night wondering just where those names came from. I guess it doesn't really warrant a level 8 entry anymore, but c'mon. This story is about the journey, not the destination. JASMINE: In Rhythm Heaven Fever, the "Final Words" material is attributed to the "Mysterious Rhythm League," which we mentioned like, twelve hours ago at this point. However, in other languages, it's a bit more specific than that, being specifically attributed to a member of the Rhythm League's Wrestler Fan Club. We still don't really know anything about what the Rhythm League is, but we do know they have a fan club for the Wrestler! JAN MISALI: Tsunku’s misconceptions on how you’re supposed to use a GBA may have influenced the design of Rhythm Tengoku, but at least there’s nothing about the game that actively requires you to use the GBA the same wrong way Tsunku does. now, Rhythm Heaven (DS) on the other hand, like, okay, Tsunku’s introduction to the DS was from trailers for Brain Age, right, one of the few other games that have you hold the DS sideways like Rhythm Heaven (DS) does. so like, did Tsunku know that that’s holding the DS sideways? there’s an unreasonably good chance that Tsunku thought that that’s just how you’re supposed to hold it. JAN MISALI: Beat City is a rhythm game developed by Universomo released for the DS in 2010. now, it might not be fair to call it a “knockoff” of Rhythm Heaven (I’m sure the developers behind de Blob had plenty of original ideas!) but it definitely takes a lot of inspiration from Rhythm Heaven. the basic presentation and gameplay is the same as Rhythm Heaven (DS), you hold the DS sideways and control the games with the touch screen. it’s got super repetitive music, and it relies on visual cues way too much. it’s kinda like Rhythm Heaven, but without the passion for music that makes Rhythm Heaven good! JASMINE: In Rhythm Heaven DS, there are sounds for an unused third Moai in Moai Doo-Wop. Additionally, there's audio files of Japanese words with the final syllable cut off, intended to be filled in with the moai "shout" sounds. MOAI 1: こんにち-わ (konnichi-WA) MOAI 2: さよな-ら (sayona-RA) UNUSED MOAI: ごくろう-さん (gokurou-SAN) JASMINE: Given that in the final game Moai Doo-Wop is a simple call-and-response minigame, it's likely this game was very different at some point in development. Perhaps it was akin to Glee Club, where you'd need to repeat the phrases said by the first two. Or perhaps it was something completely different, not being a call-and-response minigame at all. Really, all we can do is speculate, given we don't have much beyond the unused audio files. JAN MISALI: this is an unused Endless Game accessible from the debug menu in Minna no Rhythm Tengoku. this would have been a game about a long line of onions and cabbages passing a torch to one another to the beat of the music. Seika Relay is extremely unfinished, however, which could either be because the idea was dropped early in development or because data associated with it was removed from the final game to save space on the disc. in the international releases of the game, all of the associated assets for Seika Relay were removed, except for the version of the practice theme used for it. JASMINE: A debug menu in Rhythm Tengoku features a gameplay history screen with names of every Rhythm Game, Endless Game, and Rhythm Toy, as well as some unused ones. On this list is "リズムお習字 2 (Rhythm o Shuji 2)", or Power Calligraphy 2. Unlike the other unused minigames on this list, there is no leftovers of Power Calligraphy 2 aside from its name, making it more elusive than the unused Rhythm Tengoku games that do have proper leftovers. Speaking of unused Rhythm Tengoku games, in an interview with Hobonichi, over 20 scrapped Rhythm Tengoku games were listed, with some having no data in the game at all, giving us nothing more than their titles. [music from Board meeting] JAN MISALI: okay, but do you wanna hear about the single most cursed unused minigame? within the data for the Rhythm Items in Megamix, there’s a decent amount of data for Rhythm Items for scrapped short versions of other games, implying that during development there were intended to be prequels for Ninja Bodyguard, Flock Step, Cheer Readers, Double Date, Fork Lifter, Packing Pests, and, yes, Board Meeting. see, Board Meeting is one of the shortest minigames in the series, lasting less than 50 seconds. like, look, it’s already over in the amount of time it took me to just list what games had scrapped prequels. what would they have done for a shorter version? [the music for Board Meeting ends] JAN MISALI: and the thing is, unlike those other scrapped prequels where the associated data for them that’s left over in the final game is just strings of text, the Rhythm Item for the Board Meeting prequel has actual unused graphics! the implication here is that of these unused prequels, the Board Meeting prequel is the one that got the closest to making it into the final game. so now you know what you’re missing. JASMINE: In the Cafe, two of Donna's quotes seem to hint at the sapience of donuts in the Rhythm Heaven Universe. In one, she mentions hearing a donut calling her name: "So I was relaxing at home alone the other day… and I thought I heard someone say my name. I turned around, and there was this handsome donut on a plate. I know it sounds crazy, but… do you think it was flirting with me?" In another, she mentions reading a donut's autobiography: "Hi there! Do you read much? I sure do! The book I'm into now is called Emptiness: A Donut's Heart. It's fascinating to read a donut's perspective on things! You should read it. You'll never look at icing the same way again!" Whether this makes Donna's indisputable attraction to donuts more or less disturbing, I'll let you decide, but it certainly explains why she wouldn't want to eat them. But it's not enough to stop Beary in Blue Bear. Look at him go. JASMINE: In the GBA version of Quiz Show (the results screens were changed in Megamix), the "Superb" epilogue shows the contestant winning a world trip. A map is seen in the background, but it is noticeably missing a few countries, like Brazil and China. Is this a map of Earth as it appears in Rhythm Heaven? Because it would be odd if such large masses of land were just outright forgotten. That being said, both countries do remain to some degree! Both are some of the many crumbling landmasses you can visit in Charging Chicken. JAN MISALI: the singer of “I’m a lady now,” the song in Honeybee Remix, is Tsunku’s daughter, under the stage name Hotzmic. she was six years old at the time of recording. HOTZMIC: [singing] I’m so fed up; break me outta this rut. So can you give me passion from your heart? JAN MISALI: this is also the only new song written for Megamix that has been officially released! JASMINE: In Munchy Monk Wii, after getting a high enough score, various characters from Rhythm Heaven DS will start appearing as cameos in the background. The Research Scientists of Love Lab are some of those characters. That is not what this section is about. So one morning, my girlfriend was watching footage of Rhythm Heaven DS, when she noticed that the hand that gives you three dumplings in Munchy Monk looks more like a paw than a hand. Given that this hand is additionally orange, she connected it to the Mysterious Lab Tech from Love Lab, and at that moment, we had a breakthrough. So the three hands that feed you in Munchy Monk. Two of them have pale skin, but not the exact same shade, and the third is orange and animalistic. These pretty much perfectly line up with the Research Scientists of Love Lab. On one hand, this feels absolutely like a coincidence, but on the other hand… why would they repeat a design detail this specific! This goes even further than Ao-kun being related to the one Glass Tapper, since there we can at least see the guy's face and accept maybe it was a coincidence. But here, all we can see are the hands! It's very possible that there's a trio of scientists handing Munchy Monk way too many dumplings! Why would they be there, I have no idea! Is this just a project they're running on the side? Or is this helping to advance the research of love? Is this why Munchy Monk has a baby in Megamix? I mean, sure, it perhaps could be a coincidence, but Rhythm Heaven minigames reference each other all the time. Is this just an extremely obtuse reference the artists have been waiting for us to catch? JASMINE: But why stop at just Love Lab? What other minigames can we attach to Munchy Monk? And what impact do they have on the narrative? The Eyewitness Accounts reading material gives us a timeline, showing Munchy Monk, DS Remix 4, and Munchy Monk 2, but there's more we can add to that, given that two more games have released in the time since. Like, are the events of Munchy Monk in Megamix the same as the events of DS Munchy Monk? He has a baby now! That baby doesn't show up in any of the DS game's official art or sprites, so that implies the baby was born after the events of Munchy Monk 2. And what about Munchy Monk Wii? What if the baby grew up to be the handful of peas girl? And the Chorus Kid! Is that Munchy Monk's adopted son? A friend of his daughter? Either way, this puts the entire Glee Club story, which includes The Clappy Trio onto this timeline! And furthermore, handful of peas girl! She has a suspicious similar hairstyle to the girl from Kung-Fu Ball, who's not to say that's an even older handful of peas girl? And if that's the case, then she knows Young Cricket, who shows up in the Wario… Where? version of Munchy Monk, perhaps taking advice from a close friend to help Master Mantis with his training? There is so much you can write into the story of Munchy Monk, but this just gives the general picture -- I'd love to do a full video on this someday, and maybe I will! But for now, I'll just leave it at that. JAN MISALI: have you heard of the A button challenge for Super Mario 64? well, the A button challenge in Rhythm Heaven is the same thing: how many A presses does it take to beat a Rhythm Heaven game? or, more concretely, for any given Rhythm Heaven minigame, what is the minimum number of inputs necessary to get an OK rating? to my knowledge, this challenge isn’t like, a real thing that people are doing, but it should be! JAN MISALI: songs with lyrics in the Rhythm Heaven series usually are about one of a few specific recurring themes. there’s songs about love, songs about being self-confident, and songs about becoming an emotionally mature adult. Karate Rhythm mostly isn’t about anything, but there’s one line in here, “you are growing up well!” that seems to put it in the latter category. [This beat, you are growing up well!] JAN MISALI: can we talk about Horse Machine for a second? Horse Machine is the best Rhythm Toy in the entire series. Horse Machine has a few different songs for the player to press buttons along to, which increase in complexity. the final of these songs is the most complex, the only song in the entire series to use a 5/4 time signature. and like, at first you don’t even notice that it’s in 5/4, because it’s introduced so well as the rhythm of a horse running. “one-two-three-four-five one-two-three-four-five one-two-three-four-five one-two-three-four-five...” man, it’s so good! JAN MISALI: Mario’s Cement Factory is a Game & Watch game from 1983. the general look and layout of this game looks more than a little bit like Working Dough! considering that Mr. Game & Watch makes a cameo in this game, this very well may have been an intentional reference, in which case this would be another direct reference to the Mario franchise in Rhythm Heaven! JAN MISALI: the campaign of Rhythm Heaven Megamix has two distinct fakeout endings: one after completing Lush Tower, and another after completing the rest of the towers in Lush Woods. this is suspiciously similar to the ending of Remix 10 in Rhythm Heaven Fever, which also has two fakeouts before the real ending. JASMINE: Almost as fun as actually playing Rhythm Heaven is booting up one of the minigames and doing absolutely nothing. After all, the expressions the other characters make when you mess up can be really, really funny. And like, it doesn't just have to be that! Sometimes characters don't react at all, and given the situation, that can be just as funny! ...But have you ever considered the implications of these sorts of runs in-universe? What alternate stories can we interpret if you just stand around and do nothing? One of my friends, @MolaMolaMania on Twitter, looked into this, with some pretty hilarious results. Frog Hop: "This frog singlehandedly ruins an otherwise perfect performance, smiling the whole time, because he revels in it. When called out, he plays the victim" Tap Trial: "This girl joined the monkeys specifically to spite the giraffe who loves tap. Like the frog, she is always smiling, but she is even more malevolent, as she does not stand passively, but acts like she's about to tap each time, but never does. She then feigns exhaustion." Ninja Bodyguard: "This was the playable ninja's intended result. He is working with the quote unquote 'enemies' by pretending to protect the lord, so that he will stand still and be an easier target." Fork Lifter: "Fork is sentient and is trying to kill this man." That's all the examples they gave, but there's obviously more you can come up with. What Rhythm Heaven no-input narratives can you think of? JASMINE: While at a glance it might seem like the timeline of Ninja Bodyguard is obvious -- Ninja Bodyguard is set in the distant past while Ninja no Shison (better known ar Ninja Reincarnate) is set in the present day. But like, is it? I mean, in Freeze Frame, one of the cameos is of ninjas from Ninja Bodyguard. Freeze Frame takes place at the same time as everything else in Rhythm Heaven DS, if the background in Battle of the Bands is any indication. So if Ninja Bodyguard is set at the same time as Freeze Frame, and Freeze Frame is set at the same time as everything else, then this means the most logical explanation is that Ninja Reincarnate is actually set in the distant future! This probably means GBA Remix 5 takes place at around the same time. The future of Rhythm Heaven is one where everyone is a cool, cool delinquent. JAN MISALI: the city in the background of Exhibition Match is a stock photo of the iconic New York City skyline, and specifically a pre-9/11 stock photo, with the World Trade Center clearly visible. the implication of this is that either Exhibition Match is set before 9/11, or that Rhythm Heaven takes place in a world where 9/11 never happened. JASMINE: We all know about the squirrel man in Love Lab hidden barely off-screen. But what about the other off-screen scientist? At a glance, Love Lab looks like it only features three characters: you, your partner, and the squirrel man. But look on the far left side of the screen, and you'll notice the flasks are seemingly being thrown to your partner. Who's throwing them? Whoever it is, we have never seen this character. As opposed to the Mysterious Lab Tech, who shows up in results screens, official artwork, official comics, and so on, this MORE Mysterious Lab Tech has never been officially acknowledged at all! JASMINE: So like, I put this entry so, so low on the iceberg as a joke. Like, for the most part if a friend of mine got stuck on a Rhythm Heaven minigame and needed some advice to get past it, I'd probably be able to explain the basic musical concepts that are necessary to clear it. Love Rap is like, the one exception. If anyone asked me how to get past Love Rap, my best advice would be along the lines of "I don't know, you just gotta feel it. You just gotta vibe with it. If it feels right, it probably is." Of course, like any other Rhythm Heaven minigame, there's more to how Love Rap works than I could explain. And it would be disappointing if we didn't have that explanation. So hey, Patricia, do you think you could manage this one also? PATRICIA: Sure thing! Uh, thanks for having me! Again. Rhythm Heaven is interesting to me as a musician because it has a greater intention to get across the feeling of musical performance than basically anything else in its genre. Think about how many of the games have you as part of a duo or an ensemble. Flock Step, for example doesn’t need to be super difficult as much as it needs to FEEL like being in a marching band, Flipper Flop doesn’t need to be super intricate as much as it needs to FEEL as if you’re playing alongside three other musicians with a conductor, right there, learning to count in fours to keep in line with everyone else. Love Rap is similar, aiming to recreate the feeling of executing flows in hip hop. You play as one of two hype men for the famous M.C Adore, as she periodically shouts any of four different phrases at you over the course of two minutes. MC ADORE: Into you! LOVE POSSE: Into you! MC ADORE: Fo’ sho’! LOVE POSSE: Fo’ sho’! MC ADORE: Crazy into you! LOVE POSSE: Crazy into you! PATRICIA: Okay, uh, the song itself doesn’t actually resemble any existing hip hop music, but the actual inputs are pretty authentic. Let me explain. So, Love Rap has four cues. M.C Adore will choose between “Into you”, “Crazy into you”, “All about you” and “Fo’ sho” as phrases to bark at you and your co-star on the left here, and these act as cues for you to give an input in response right when the phrase is done, the amount of time being different for each. “Into you” and “Crazy into you” are easy enough, “All about you” is a bit tricky, but the steady stream of fo’ sho’s near the end is a massive conceptual roadblock for a lot of players, to the point of being a bit of a meme within the community. Naturally, I took a copy of the track into my DAW and charted the cues and responses manually so I could visually track the amount of time between them. Here’s what I found. Since the track is in triplets, I’ll consider the basic unit to be one triplet. Alright, so, “Into you” takes six triplets, [the “Into you!” cue] PATRICIA: “Crazy into you”, however, takes nine, [the “Crazy into you!” cue] PATRICIA: “All about you” takes seven, [the “All about you! cue] PATRICIA: And here’s the interesting thing, uh, “Fo’ Sho” has two distinct amounts of time between call and response. The first time it shows up we have 5, [the first “Fo’ sho’!” cue] PATRICIA: and the second time we have just 4. [the second “Fo’ sho’!” cue] PATRICIA: So that’s it, right? I found out why “Fo’ Sho” is the killer, it’s inconsistent. Hm... Okay, I’m sorry, something isn’t adding up here. Like, Love Rap hasn’t gotten a reputation for being inconsistent. Did you even notice that the Fo’ Sho’s were different lengths? Like, before I pointed it out? I mean, I didn’t! And people don’t have too much trouble doing well with this game despite the exact inner workings being pretty much entirely unremarked upon. So, the question remains: how is anyone good at Love Rap, in spite of not knowing anything that I just said? How does Love Rap work? Okay, uh, I need to come clean. Love Rap isn’t in triplets, it’s swung, and the difference between these concepts explains why this game still works. A triplet groove is when each beat is divided into three subdivisions. This is counted as “1&a2&a3&a4&a”, or “1plet 2plet 3plet 4plet”, if you’re spicy. Swing, on the other hand, is when a straight rhythm has its twos and fours nudged forward and each subdivision is read as a different alternating length. When a song is in triplets, everything is played as written and all the beats are the same length, while swing is a modification that is applied after the fact, making some beats last longer than others. The point of all this is that when playing Love Rap, I’m just not feeling all those tiny triplets I was showing earlier, I’m counting swung sixteenth notes. It’s not onetwothree onetwothree onetwothree, it’s one twothree fourone twothree four. The middle beat of the triplet never shows up. So, with this in mind, let’s revise our counts, this time using swung sixteenth notes as our basic unit. “Into you” takes four swung sixteenth notes, [the “Into you!” cue] PATRICIA: “Crazy into you” takes six, [the “Crazy into you!” cue] PATRICIA: “All about you” takes five, [the “All about you!” cue] PATRICIA: And here’s the kicker. In both cases, “Fo’ sho” takes three swung sixteenth notes. The first time, M.C Adore comes in on the onbeat, so our input comes after a long-short-long configuration. [the first “Fo’ sho’!” cue] PATRICIA: The second time, she comes on the offbeat, so it’s short-long-short. [the second “Fo’ sho’!” cue] PATRICIA: This adds up to an objectively shorter amount of time but a conceptually equal amount of beats. And that’s really what’s cool about Rhythm Heaven, like, the fact remains that even if you didn’t understand anything I just said, you can still get a perfect on Love Rap. In the words of hole in one monkey, it’s easier if you just relax into the rhythm. JAN MISALI: remember how “You need to work on your toss timing” had to be changed in Rhythm Paradise because of the slang meaning the word “toss” has in British English? well, if Rhythm Tengoku had been given an official English localization, Toss Boys would have had that same problem. also, like, Aka-chan is a girl, so calling them “boys” as a group doesn’t really make sense. so, yeah, an official English version of this game would absolutely have been given a different name. JASMINE: The SCP Foundation is a collaborative writing project, in which individuals can document SCPs, which are entities that the common public just should not know about, or otherwise violate natural laws of the universe. In North America, Rhythm Heaven Megamix was released as an eShop exclusive due to how the series has historically underperformed in the West, though it did release physically in Japan and PAL regions. While an official physical release of the game doesn't exist, it is something sought for by fans, but this entry jokingly treats it not just as something that doesn't exist, but shouldn't. Us simple humans were just not meant to see the North American physical release of Megamix, sorry. JAN MISALI: Rhythm Heaven (DS) is controlled entirely using the touch screen, until you get to Rockers 2, where you press the R button to bend pitch, or the L button if you’re playing in left-handed mode. despite this, you are still told at the start of the game that you’ll only need to use the touch screen. the shoulder buttons on the original DS aren’t as durable as the rest of the buttons on the handheld, and a lot of people have found after getting to this point that they can’t play this one minigame because their R button is broken. one of the earlier Rhythm Heaven icebergs this one was based on said that the use of the R button was a remnant of a build from an alternate dimension, which is a pretty good joke, but we thought it would be funnier to literally just have “The R Button” on our iceberg. most of the things at this layer are meta-jokes about the idea of something being labeled as obscure. JASMINE: Goat Ascension is purely a joke. In Rhythm Heaven Megamix, there is a goat pachinko minigame. It rewards the player with "mascots" of the story-mode characters every ten levels that replace the normal loading icon, and continues to give rewards up through level 200. While the minigame goes on forever, after level 200 the levels just repeat at random, and there's no further rewards for playing. Considering how tedious it is to get that far in the first place, most people aren't really begging to play past that point. However, this joke implies that after reaching some absurdly high level, the goat can actually ascend, and that due to most players quitting the minigame after level 200, this is simply a reward no one has yet to reach. There's no real basis in truth to this joke, but I find it incredibly funny, if only because it feels exactly like some sort of '90s playground rumor. JAN MISALI: in the demo version of Rhythm Tengoku, the phrase “おねだん ¥3,800” (onedan san senhappyakuen), meaning “3,800 yen please”, is inserted into every minigame included, in order to encourage people playing the demo to buy the full version. this one’s inclusion this low on the iceberg is another meta-joke. this information isn’t actually that obscure, anyone who is aware that there was a demo for Rhythm Tengoku knows about it. interestingly, this phrase was edited into some games that aren’t accessible in the demo version. Marching Orders, Spaceball, Karate Man 2, and Rhythm Tweezers 2 all have the same reminder of how much this game costs as the four games you can actually play in the demo. there’s also a glitched texture for Marching Orders 2 where this phrase would go! JASMINE: Doci Daci is a bootleg of Rhythm Heaven Megamix made for mobile phones, including all of your favorite minigames, like "Fork to Eat." It pretty much has all the hallmarks of a good bad bootleg. You know, slightly off-model characters, gratuitous spelling errors, blatant copyright infringement, and the general feeling the whole thing is being held together by duct tape. Anyway, the app can't be found on any app stores anymore, given its blatant copyright infringement and the fact it contains malware. Don't go searching for this app! And I don't mean this in a jokey, iceberg way, I mean, legitimately, for the safety of your phone, do not go searching for this app! I know getting to experience Human Rhythm Tweezers is tempting, but resist that temptation! Your phone will be grateful! People have posted videos of the app on YouTube if you're really, really curious what it has to offer, just watch those, instead. Oh, there's also a similar bootleg Rhythm Heaven app called Rhythm Heaven-Fever, with a hyphen between Heaven and Fever. It's pretty much the same sort of deal, but it has a couple original minigames, too! It has Rotation Sushi, which is decently well-designed, at least for a mobile game bootleg, and Trick on the Class, which isn't well-designed by any standards. JAN MISALI: in Rhythm Heaven (DS), if you get a rating of OK, one of the things the results screen sometimes says is “Hm...”. in Rhythm Paradise (DS), this was changed to “Hmm...”. not “Hm...”, “Hmm...”. why was this changed? why was it necessary to add one extra M to the “Hm...”? these are the questions that keep me up at night. I mean, it was probably just because “Hmm...” with two ems is a little bit easier to read! but still, what a tiny thing to change! JAN MISALI: technically speaking, the soundtrack for Rhythm Heaven Fever was never officially released. there was an official soundtrack for Minna no Rhythm Tengoku, and there was an official soundtrack for Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise, but not one for Rhythm Heaven Fever! and yet, even though Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise: The Soundtrack is the official European release for the soundtrack of the third entry in this series, its selection of music consists entirely of the “perfect” versions of the ten remixes in the game, plus the full version of Dreams of Our Generation. all eleven of these tracks are taken from the Minna no Rhythm Tengoku official soundtrack, so they all have Japanese audio, even though Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise: The Soundtrack was released exclusively in France, and even though the booklet included with it is in English. every single aspect of Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise: The Soundtrack is extremely funny to me. JASMINE: In Rhythm Heaven DS, the song for Remix 7 is an extended version of the first Big Rock Finish song. In-universe, all of these songs are cut short, so it begs the question of what the full versions would sound like. Unlike say, the full Machine Remix song, it's likely official full versions of these songs were never composed, and that the tiny versions we hear in Big Rock Finish are all that exist. But it would be interesting to hear extended versions of them, I mean, think of an extended Big Rock Finish C! That would be insane! JASMINE: The information on this iceberg is compiled from three separate icebergs, one of which had "Cosmic Dancers Popular" as a point about halfway down. On the Rhythm Tengoku website, it's stated that the Cosmic Dancers are popular in space which, sure, is an obscure fact, but is kind of underwhelming, don't you think? I mean, being popular in space feels like it could be something interesting if it was associated with some other character, but given this is a set of performers that already live in space, this trivia doesn't really come across as weird or surprising. It's an obscure fact, sure, but not really an interesting obscure fact. While this makes for pretty lousy iceberg trivia, what it IS good for is a meta in-joke that all of two people will find funny! And jan Misali and I are those two people. JASMINE: So we wanted to represent every main minigame on this iceberg, and like, we came pretty close, we kinda had to stretch for Splashdown and say "transgender characters" is a Splashdown fact, but then there's Showtime. Is there anything interesting about this minigame like, at all? I mean, it's the first minigame with monkeys in it. I guess that's something? But that's not like, iceberg-level trivia, and either way, Tap Trial is more responsible for monkeys becoming a big thing if we're being honest. Uhhhh, it's a pretty short minigame! It's what, 42 seconds long? But it's not the shortest, that's the Rhythm Rally prequel. Yeah, I got nothing. Sorry, Showtime. The most interesting thing about you is that you're totally uninteresting. JAN MISALI: “Pork Rice Bowls” are a running gag from First Contact and Second Contact. when humans first arrived on Mars, they left behind pork rice bowls which have since become very popular on the red planet. this joke is first introduced in First Contact, there’s a callback in Second Contact, and both games’ rhythm items have associated flavor text that references this. except, when the Martian first brings up pork rice bowls in First Contact, he says he’s just kidding! so like, are pork rice bowls popular on Mars or not? I think the faces of the scientists at Ground Control really say it all for this one. JAN MISALI: due to its connections through WarioWare, it’s clear that the Mario series is canon to Rhythm Heaven. but is the opposite also true? strangely, there are almost no references to Rhythm Heaven in the Mario franchise outside of the WarioWare games, even though the Mario franchise has referenced plenty of other Nintendo series in the past. the original Super Mario Maker has the “Costume Mario” powerup, which lets Mairo transform into different characters, and in those 153 costumes not a single one is a character from Rhythm Heaven! but it’s okay, you can have Mario transform into Shaun the Sheep. however, there is one thing in the Mario series that I think counts as a direct Rhythm Heaven reference, and that’s the Remix 10 sidemode from the mobile game Super Mario Run. like, it’s named “Remix 10”! that counts, right? JASMINE: So Boondog. He's a dog, but he's also a bee. Dogs have bones. Bees do not. I want to know about the Boondog skeletal structure. Every day we do not have a canon diagram of Boondog's skeletal structure, I spend seething. I want to know what Boondog's bones look like, Nintendo. I want you to show me Boondog's bones. I NEED you to show me Boondog's bones. ...If he has any, that is. If he doesn't then that's perfectly understandable, have a nice day. JAN MISALI: there’s a faraway land, located deep within Heaven World. this land is home to four of the best minigames in the series. Space Dance. Lockstep. Cheer Readers. Kitties!. four of the lands in Megamix have a corresponding tower, featuring the true versions of the four games and a remix. many have spent countless nights searching for Planet Tower, in the hopes that it would contain a remix of this unprecedented high-quality selection of minigames. do not attempt to find Planet Remix. you will spend the rest of your life searching for it. Planet Remix does not exist. JASMINE: In the cast call for Rhythm Heaven Fever, the Fork from Fork Lifter is treated as a character. But we all know the Fork is not a character. Fork is an inanimate object, right? The character that should be here is the man that wields it, not Fork. Earlier I mentioned the in-universe implications of a no-perfect run, and how in a no-input run of Fork Lifter, it can be interpreted as the Fork having sentience and trying to starve this man. Is the cast call perhaps the timeline where the Fork succeeded? While it is usually typical for the Superb results screen to be treated as the "canon" ending, this may not be the case for Fork Lifter. It should be noted that the man that originally wields the Fork does not show up in Remix 2 or Remix 9, and furthermore that Fork Lifter does not have a sequel. The original Fork wielder's only other appearance is in Remix 10, which if anything is a montage of clips from the events earlier in the game. By Remix 2, the original Fork wielder is gone. Are the new fork wielders in Remixes 2 and 9 perhaps the Fork's future victims? JAN MISALI: the Rhythm Heaven Wiki’s naming conventions can be a little strange at times. characters are referred to with official English names, if an English name exists, or with Japanese names if there is no official English name, even if their name in Japanese could be translated directly into English in exactly one obvious way. such is the case with Anata, the drummer character you play as in the Drum Lessons side mode in Rhythm Tengoku. “あなた” (anata) isn’t a name, it’s one of the Japanese words for “you”, and this guy is labeled as “anata” the same as plenty of other playable characters in the Rhythm Tengoku games, because, it’s you. we can be extremely confident that if Rhythm Tengoku had been officially released in English, this would have been translated as “You”. but it wasn’t! and so, his name is Anata. thank you, Rhythm Heaven Wiki. JAN MISALI: oh no, I’m gonna have to talk about Gamergate now, aren’t I? just, really general content warning here, I’m gonna be talking about Gamergate! I’m going to avoid getting more into the specifics of Gamergate here than I have to, but specifically I will be discussing misogyny. so, okay, Gamergate was, a thing, that happened in the mid-10s. now, given that you’ve watched this far into this video and you didn’t click off during the parts about trans headcanons, I’m going to assume that you’re chill, and that it’s okay for me to accurately describe Gamergate as a proto-alt-right harassment campaign that targeted several women in the video game industry. due to uh, the thing that Gamergaters were doing, reasonable people at the time criticized them, saying hey, you’re very obviously being misogynistic! and in response, Gamergaters created a mascot character, who was, a fictional woman, who agrees with them. this character has a name, which I refuse to include in this video. in 2016, Ko Takeuchi, who as you know enjoys drawing fanart of internet memes, drew fanart of, the Gamergate mascot character, which he posted to his twitter and tumblr. he deleted it shortly afterwards and temporarily locked his twitter account. unfortunately, most of what I can find from this event is from Gamergaters talking about it, which means researching the exact timeline of it required me to read through a bunch of stuff written by Gamergaters in 2016, which is an activity I wouldn’t want anyone to be subjected to. what I can say for certain is that, Ko Takeuchi drew this character in 2016, was informed of the hate movement that the character represents, deleted the fanart, and in 2017 he then drew her again. the implications of this are not great! people have speculated about why exactly Ko did this, and like, yeah, there are a lot of reasons why he might have drawn fanart of the mascot of a hate movement that don’t involve him being an actual supporter of said hate movement. maybe he just like, didn’t know who the character was, and drew her because he liked her design. and maybe when he deleted the fanart in 2016, he didn’t really understand why exactly people were upset by it, so when he drew her again in 2017 he somehow still didn’t know what she represents. and like, the fact the he deleted the fanart both times after being called out for it means he’s not like, openly in support of Gamergate at the very least. but I mean, why did he draw her a second time after he already knew people were upset the first time? I don’t want to assume that Ko Takeuchi is a bad person. I’d like to think that it’s possible that he just didn’t understand the implications of what he was doing. but making the same exact mistake a second time after being called out for it the first time is still pretty bad! JASMINE: ...But there's still one last fact on this iceberg. Let's not end this video on such a downer. Let's talk about the Space Dance Positive Emotional Aura! SPACE DANCERS: Turn right! Pa-pa-pa-punch! Turn right! JASMINE: Space Dance is a minigame from Rhythm Tengoku where you dance in space, as the title might suggest. And my gosh, it is just so impossibly happy. Look at all those blue guys! Look at them smiling! They are happy to be in space and dancing, and for all it's worth, I'm happy to join them. They ask me to turn right, and I say, "well, gladly!" :] But that's far from all, because this minigame features a full-fledged character arc! At the start of the minigame, Space Gramps just stands on the side, while everyone else does the dancing. But as it goes on, he starts joining in on some moves himself, and eventually starts speaking alongside the other Space Dancers. By the song's end, he's joining them for every move, and seems to be having a lot of fun doing it! Space Dance is such a happy game that even Space Gramps can't help getting in on the fun! And I mean, what's a good minigame without good music? The music in Space Dance is so, so delightful. I'm no music theory expert, so I can't go into extreme depth as to WHY it is such a happy song, but like, listen to it! It's delightful! Especially as it builds up to that one pa-pa-pa-punch, where the Skill Star is in Megamix. That one moment is so perfect, that it's still really good even with the English vocals. And like, I know we've been kind of mean to the English Space Dance vocals, and yeah, they are still inferior to the original, but in the end, Space Dance is still Space Dance! And can anyone really stay mad at Space Dance? I know I can't! And no matter what, Space Dance is just an absolute delight. It's a fun minigame with cute characters, a boppin' soundtrack, and so many little details that just show how much care was put into this game. Join with me, now! Turn right! Let's sit down! Pa-pa-pa-punch! JAN MISALI: thank you so much for watching all the way to the end of this feature length video. working on this has been a lot of fun, and hopefully you got something out of it too. huge thanks to everyone who I collaborated with to make this video: Jasmine Wright, Patricia Taxxon, and AnonUserGuy. there’s links in the description to where you can find all of their stuff. I’d also like to give a shoutout to AngryTapper and MF5K, the creators of the various Rhythm Heaven clip packs that I used for this video, as well as every other Rhythm Heaven video I make. they’re pretty much the reason these videos are able to be made at all. trust me, this is definitely not the last time I’ll be making a scripted video about Rhythm Heaven.
Info
Channel: jan Misali
Views: 210,689
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: jan Misali, Rhythm Heaven, Rhythm Paradise, Rhythm Tengoku, Rhythm World, iceberg meme, iceberg meme explained, Nintendo, music
Id: Ch1dycjHSL8
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 127min 26sec (7646 seconds)
Published: Wed Mar 31 2021
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