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.
The Love Rap and Tap Troupe sections have me SO SHOOK.
Finally somebody did a rhythm heaven one!