Before there was Guitar Hero, there were other games which pitted your rhythmic abilities to the beat of music. Some gamers may not be familiar with them but those who played these titles will remember the offbeat game graphics and catchy music. Of course, we’re talking about PaRappa the Rapper and Unjammer Lammy. Masaya Matsuura, the creator of the games, said that the effort to make more non-violent games is or should be at the top of the list for game publishers.
He made his statements at the GO3 Conference in Australia last week. He told Gamespot AU that, "Making good games that everybody can play is a very high priority for the game industry, because if we make games like X-rated videos, the industry won’t grow. Nintendo is very smart to appeal to a much wider group of people because it is what’s required now."
But Matsuura indicated that the music rhythm games are beginning to lose their appeal in Japan because of a lack of innovation and creativity in making these games — a condition which seems to be prevalent throughout the game industry. "It’s very difficult to make brand-new systems for music-based games that involve more than just pressing buttons according to rhythm. Of course, we’ve tried several [other approaches] already, but unfortunately some of them are not successful."
Matsuura’s vision may be the wave of the future for the industry as Nintendo has already proven that there is a large market for non-violent video games. Whether we see a major shift by other game companies to shift their energies to the production of more casual games is still too early to predict. But according to Matsuura, this will be the inevitable outcome.
