Sound Fantasy

releases on TBD

Sound Fantasy, titled Sound Factory during development, is an unreleased video game for the Super NES/Super Famicom. Designer Toshio Iwai was inspired by his earlier interactive installation art piece titled Music Insects, to develop a video game at Nintendo between 1993 and late 1994. The completed product was inexplicably canceled by Nintendo, and the game's key elements were later developed into Maxis's 1996 PC game release titled SimTunes. Sound Fantasy contains eccentric concepts and untested game mechanics. Music games, especially on home consoles, were not popular in the early 1990s, and it wouldn't be until much later in the decade that they gained mainstream attention. The Sound Fantasy prototype contains four different games in one cartridge. Pix Quartet was inspired by Toshio Iwai's Music Insects. There are four insects of different colors, where the player can select different insect to each represent a different instrument. They crawl all over the screen, where the player can draw. Insects that crawl over a colored pixel make a note. Each color represents a different note for each insects. Sample Demos can be loaded to demonstrate the capabilities of this game. Beat Hopper contains three different modes: A-type, B-type and Training. A-type is a rhythm game in the style of Q-bert, where an insect on a pogo must make every block disappear after stepping on it as many times needed. Each block makes its own sound and the order does not matter. The player can improvise a song with each block. B-type requires the player to follow a path of blocks that appears every time the player touches one. The player must make as many steps as possible without losing three lives. Ice Sweeper indicates two modes: A-type and B-type. This game is a Breakout clone with a few new twists added after a few stages, such as four bats controlled by a single player. Star Fly is inspired by music boxes, where the player can set a sequence of stars in the sky, to compose a song. A higher star corresponds to a higher musical note. The player may set the speed and the tone.


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The words "retro rhythm game" absolutely evoke dread from me. To my surprise however, this unreleased masterpiece is not only just as playable as it was in the 90s, but even more so.

Sound Fantasy is something else indeed. It's a rhythm game that's playable entirely with a mouse. With modern mouse technology allowing for adjusted scrolling speed and the works, this meant I could set my speed to the 2nd slowest option and it felt absolutely perfect in terms of smooth movement.

In fact, everything about the game is accessible. The Pix Quartet and Star Fly modes are rather freeform if one wishes to get their brainjuices flowing, but what really steals the show is Beat Hopper. This can be best described as Q-Bert meets a concert. Clicking on a tile of a different colour or size can affect the abstract world's background, the pitch of the instrument, how long it is played, etc. Not to mention, the number of lines within make it immediately obvious how many times the player is allowed to hop on each square. If the player jumps outside an allowed hitbox, they lose hitpoints but the game is actually very generous, perhaps even too generous. It's easier to show than tell, here I suppose

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1048770623805079633/1101973056248889344/PERFECT.mp4

The real kicker is that the player has 2 means of progressing through a level; they can either clear every square like a badass, or they can left-click to progress through a stage automatically. This means there is a risk and reward element where the player can either clear with a high score, or save a life to continue. I think the system would be improved if the player was required to return to the center square for the auto-progress, but as is it's my one minor flaw.

Also yes, this means speedrunning the game entails just mashing left-clicks. And that's hilarious https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1048770623805079633/1101973575579222108/sneedrun.mp4

I've been thinking about this game a lot today. How with the rhythm genre being so non-existent, this could have very well been a breakout hit. It really makes one wonder just how often games came out that could have defined a genre, only to be canned behind the scenes because, say, a publisher didn't think it would make bank. And with how creepy the box art is, perhaps they were right

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1048770623805079633/1102015917589794916/SoundboxJP.jpg