Unison: Rebels of Rhythm & Dance Game Sample - Playstation 2
0Original Air Date: August 08th, 2009
Unison (UNiSON) is a relatively obscure ryhthm game released near the launch of the PS2 by Tecmo. It was the first ever rhythm game in the U.S. for the system and I believe the second in Japan (only beaten by Dance Summit 2001, aka Bust A Groove 3 [BaM]). Made somewhat to cut into the popular Bemani genre and partially to improve their image with a younger demographic (they did create and/or participate in the Deception series, Dead or Alive series, and Fatal Frame games after all), the game became a cult classic, but didn't sell very well, thus its limited production run in the U.S. and (surprisingly) Japan.
The game is sometimes compared to "THE iDOLM@STER", but the games in and of themselves are quite different, and Unison is naturally more basic as it is much older. The game was unique for having (at the time) beautiful visuals for a game in this genre (sure beats arrows moving on a screen), fluid motions and the emphasis of an all-girl dance group. The Japanese and U.S. games have a few similar songs, but most are different. The U.S. game was also designed to have easier progression.
In this game, the mysterious "Doctor Dance" wants to return rhythm and dance to the fictional futuristic city of Twin Ships, where dancing has been banned by Emperor Ducker. To do so, he trains three pieces of eye-candy how to dance as good as he can to mesmerize the denizens of Twin Ships by Hijacking Ducker's popular music show and broadcasting their own show over his.
The idea of the game is very simple. The game is broken up between story scenes, practice scenes, live shows, and more story scenes. The three girls, Chilly, Trill, and Cela, act as different difficulty settings and dance differently, with Chilly (the fiery girl) being the hardest and Trill being normal. There is no Easy difficulty in this game and this game has a fairly steep challenge curve, which might turn some people off. The game must be played with the analog and motions must be followed almost precisely, which becomes very difficult when you have to start basically drawing your motions as if you were playing DS mini-games...it's an idea that wasn't really attempted much (if at all) before in a rhythm game, or at least, not to this degree.
Thankfully, the system works with a little practice and that's what makes Unison unique and fun. The story is also a nice touch and clearly has a heavy anime style to it, which was pretty rare for a U.S. game...four other games that functioned in an "episodic" manner like this that I can think of was Evil Zone for the Playstation, Parappa The Rapper 1 & 2, and Um Jammer Lammy. It's good to play a rhythm game with some story. Enjoy.
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