Between F-Zero and the Mario Kart series, Nintendo is getting a bigger chunk of the arcade market here in Japan and their latest joint release with Sega is starting to pop up in arcades all over the country. It’s actually an arcade port of… a GBA game?
With it’s simple graphics and game-play Rhtyhm Tengoku looks pretty refreshing next to an enormous and intimidating Beatmania IIDX 14 Gold cabinet, and it’s probably the most intuitive rhythm game next to Space Channel 5. I haven’t found a copy of the GBA game to play yet but I can only assume the controls and game-play are pretty much the same, there are huge directional buttons and A and B’s on the arcade cabinet. The advantage of the arcade game is it’s two-player mode (exclusive to the arcade version) so whether you’re good or bad at the game you can have fun playing it with a friend. Check out the official site (Japanese) for a little bit of info and some really awesome background music.
