Sound Voltex Booth

Sound Voltex Booth is a new rhythm game I've come across during my travels around the various Japanese game centres and despite the strange name it is a hell of a lot of fun.

For those of you that need a western comparison, I suppose this game is most similar to DJ Hero, but even that is a pretty bad comparison as the control schemes are completely different.  It's your standard rhythm game though, notes flow down the screen and you hit the buttons in the right order not to fail the song. 

What you are probably noticing in that picture though is the two little turny knobs on the left and right side of the buttons.  There are notes in this game that take the form of long bars that you need to trace with an indicator in order to get the points.  In order to make that indicator move, you turn the knobs.  It's a very simple control scheme but the game still feels challening, and the way in combines button notes with the knobs can actually be rather challenging on the higher settings. 

Speaking of the settings, there are 3 difficulty levels in Sound Voltex Booth; Novice, Advanced and Exhaust.  I've not had too many runs of this game yet as I've only just started playing, but even on Novice the game can still be a bit of a challenge depending on the song.

As you can see in the above image, the Exhaust mode is locked, so I hope to god you brought your e-amusement pass card.  For those of you who don't know, an E-Amusement pass looks like this.

The E-Amusement pass is a stat card that works basically for all Konami games (IIDX, Jubeat, DDR and more) and having one is basically a requirement to enjoying any Japanese coin op rhythm game.  You see, playing without one is fine but the song list is actually pretty small.  As you play with a registered card though, you gain skill points and unlock points in order to get new music to play through.  Also having one of these cards allows you to access any new songs they upload to the game via the internet and they are not expensive to get hold of, about 300 Yen from a little dispensing machine inside the arcade.

So if you ever find yourself in Japan, give this game a spin.  If you don't ever come to Japan, or never plan to then cross those fingers and hope that they release a console version for you to import, but I don't think it's likely.

Just as a little bonus I've uploaded 2 gameplay videos so have a lookie see.