When Harmonix Music first blossomed out of a computer music group at MIT in 1995, it wasn't for the purpose of making video games; rather, it was for making it possible for nonmusicians to experience the joy of actually making music. It makes sense, then, that the most significant defining characteristic of Frequency, Harmonix's first rhythm game, was its unique philosophical perspective on the relationship between the music and the game.

Frequency reveals the inner workings of your favorite techno songs.

Rather than just making you a slave to the beat, where you were rewarded for rote memorization and punished for mistakes, Frequency involved you in the process of creating music--a marked difference from the way Japanese rhythm games had handled music up to that point. The game would put you on the inside of an octagonal tunnel, and each side of the tunnel represented a different element of the song that you were going to "play"--be it vocals, guitars, synthesizers, or drums. Each side was covered in gems that corresponded to the buttons on your controller. If you played the sequence correctly, you would hear the instrument in question--play it for long enough and it would start playing on its own, freeing you up to move on to another element of the song. Even though you were playing with scripted patterns, Frequency gave you a sense of creative control. And if that wasn't enough, the game also included a remix mode, which gave a surprising amount of freedom to would-be producers. It almost made the Dual Shock 2 controller feel like a musical instrument in and of itself.

Frequency was also the first rhythm game to place the focus on licensed popular music. Up until then, rhythm game soundtracks were populated almost exclusively with music recorded specifically for the game in question, making the rhythm genre all the more impenetrable to those without a taste for Japanese pop culture. By including recognizable artists and songs, Frequency made the genre more accessible to American audiences and added weight to the gameplay--it's one thing to hear a song that you know playing in the background of a game, it's another thing entirely when you're taking an active role in how that song comes together. With access to artists signed to the Sony music label, Frequency cherry-picked songs by some of the best and brightest electronic-dance-music artists of the time, including BT, The Crystal Method, Meat Beat Manifesto, Orbital, and Paul Oakenfold. Harmonix also used Frequency as a platform for some internal music projects, most notably the indie electro-pop trio Freezepop, which has since appeared in nearly every game developed by Harmonix.

Yet another take on rock-rhythm games.

Harmonix coupled its broad collection of dance music with a hyperstylized techno-futuristic visual style that screamed cyberspace. The wire-frame tunnel that you flew down was planked with alien circuitry and crackled with glowing energy. Meanwhile, outside the sound tube lay an abstract landscape of polygons, video screens, and Day-Glo raver art (imagine Tron in a dance club, and you're halfway there). It was a vibrant look that complemented the rest of the package almost perfectly. With its confluence of thoughtful, inclusive game design, killer licensed music, and strikingly unique visual style, Frequency brought some American style to the distinctly Japanese genre of rhythm games, and the result still stands as one of the best rhythm games ever.

--Ryan Davis, Associate Editor

Laying Tracks. Submit a Review of Frequency!