Trigger Happy
Dance Dance Revolution and Beatmania are very literal applications of videogame rhythm. But rhythm is also important in games that are not explicitly predicated on musical interaction. Giving the keynote speech at the 1999 Game Developers’ Conference in San Jose, Shigeru Miyamoto emphasized this point exactly: “I feel that those directors who have been able to incorporate rhythm . . . in their games have been successful.” We can break this idea down into three components.
First, nearly all action games rely on the player’s basic ability to use tactical timing, by which I mean pressing a certain button to produce an action at exactly the right time. Many old platform games such as Miyamoto’s own Super Mario Bros, for instance, demand great accuracy in jumping and in controlling your character’s skids so he doesn’t fall off platforms. A racing game such as Sega Rally demands tactical timing in manipulating the joypad or wheel so that the player’s car rounds a corner in a controlled skid. A
Tactical timing also incorporates demands of highspeed reaction: in this way, we rapidly take account of
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