Rhythm Heaven Groove is Coming to Save Music Games

Rhythm Heaven Groove is Coming to Save Music Games

Plastic instruments? No! Little screamy dudes and broken-hearted karate men? Yes!

Nintendo kicked off its June 9 Nintendo Direct presentation with gameplay footage for Rhythm Heaven Groove, which is coming to Switch and Switch 2 on July 2. This was the proper and correct thing to do, as we've been waiting years for new, substantial news about Rhythm Heaven—ever since 2015's "Megamix" for 3DS. The series' producer, musician Mitsuo "Tsunku" Terada, returns to the series following a battle with laryngeal cancer. Even though he lost his vocal cords in the fight, he's ready to make some music again.

And we're sure ready to make music alongside Tsunku and the Rhythm Heaven series' menagerie of goofy-ass characters that sing, jump, dance, and otherwise undulate to the in-game beats. Its critters range from sweet-faced idols singing catchy pop songs to pinprick-eyed goblins with wide, fanged mouths that broadcast guttural screams. They've been making noise in the Rhythm Heaven games since the series debuted on the Game Boy Advance 20 years ago, and it's long been the job of Rhythm Heaven fans to massage all this mismatched discord into music. Rhythm Heaven games are amongst the snappiest, most joyful digital music experiences ever made.

Rhythm Heaven's character roster is its secret weapon in an industry that gets tired of music and rhythm series pretty quickly. You could write a book about how Activision ran the Guitar Hero games directly into the ground, but the glut of licensed music games and the mandatory plastic junk needed to play them gradually put everyone in a bad mood. Not even the charms of Rush can soothe the restless dreams of subdivision-dwellers with limited closet space.

Rhythm Heaven for the humble GBA feels like a stripped-down experience next to the splendor of a full Rock Band setup, but that's the point. It's just you, the “A” button, and a bunch of frogs, goblins, and some dude named Karate Joe whose life's struggles are reflected across each new song he trains to in each Rhythm Heaven game. Rhythm Heaven's characters are so beloved that the Direct's overview trailer for Rhythm Heaven Groove is already seeing some mock-panicked comments about Joe's absence from the video. He's dead in Honeybee Land! Maybe he ran afoul of the Munchy Monk or the Wandering Samurai!

Rest assured that these jokes are not using made-up places and characters. This is canon lore. There is indeed a Munchy Monk in Rhythm Heaven. Jury's out on whether or not he's capable of hiding a body, but he did have a baby in between the first game and Rhythm Heaven Megamix. You might say "That baby is just a clever way to fill the space caused by the 3DS's wider resolution versus the GBA’s,” and you'd be right. It is clever, and it's a great demonstration of how Rhythm Heaven's sharp writing, bonkers sense of humor, cute aesthetic, and (of course) killer music merge into a one-of-a-kind music game experience.

Nintendo made a conscious and correct choice when it opened the Direct with Rhythm Heaven Groove and followed the show with a live demonstration on Treehouse. People who love Rhythm Heaven games love them a whole lot, and it's high time for the rest of the world to understand why our obsession with round, wailing creatures is a valid celebration of music.