The Day The Music Lived

For some reason, it’s taken more than twenty years for games companies to realise that most video games are a bit off-putting to normal people.

Many of us do not necessarily want to be an orc warchief or a space pirate: we'd rather be a pop star, which is why music games have become so popular so quickly.

The rhythm action genre, as it’s often known, is almost entirely dominated by Japanese developers, with the first modern incarnation being 1996’s PaRappa the Rapper for the original PlayStation.

Not only did the game look completely unique, with its weird paper thin cartoon characters, but the gameplay was completely revolutionary.

All you had to do was repeat a string of button presses at the top of the screen, keeping the original rhythm and not missing out any symbols.

It was a purposefully simple concept but it’s now the basis for almost all subsequent music games, no matter how they try to dress things up.

PaRappa’s success saw Konami pounce on the idea and turn it into the hugely successful Beatmania series of games using pressure sensitive dance mats.