Template:RhythmGame

RhythmGame

Documentation

This template provides basic information for Rhythm Games, Rhythm Toys and Endless Games, used at the top of their pages. The parameters for this template include:

• Title: The name of the Rhythm Game. By default uses the page's name, but can be changed. If a game has a discriminator, it should be omitted (example: Built to Scale (DS) should overwrite this with "Built to Scale"). If the name is Japanese-only, the Japanese text should be used here, even if the name can be directly rendered in English (example, Toss Boys should overwrite this with "トスボーイズ"). For cases where the name across multiple entries may be in conflict, this should use the name from the latest entry released.
• Image: An image representing the Rhythm Game. By default uses the {{RhythmGame/image}} subtemplate, which automatically creates a tabber to show the prologue for the game from every entry it was included in. This relies on the page name being included in the file's name, with the pattern being "File:Prologue [Console] [Page Name].png". If for whatever reason this does not work directly, this parameter should be set manually. For Rhythm Toys and Endless Games from prior to Rhythm Heaven Megamix, this uses the preview on the left of the respective menus, as they do not have prologues. If the game somehow does not have either of these, a screenshot of gameplay is acceptable.
• Number: The number of the Rhythm Game, counting from the first game played. For Endless Games, Rhythm Toys and Extra Games, the menu icon for their respective menus should preceed the number. For Rhythm Heaven Megamix, where the order of games is non-linear at some points of the story, and a selection of games is playable only through the Museum, the number is based on the order seen in the Museum. Gate trials are counted as the same as the respective Endless Game. For games that appear in multiple entries, use the template {{Console}} to show the respective icon before each number. should only be used for games exclusive to the arcade version of Rhythm Tengoku, while using for games that appear in both.
• Needed: How many Medals are required to unlock this game. Typically only relevant to content in the Medal Corner.
• Needed: How many Perfects are required to unlock this game. Currently only relevant to Endless Remix.
• Needed: How many Duo Medals are required to unlock this game. Typically only relevant to Two-Player Endless Games.
• Needed: How many Flow Balls are required to purchase this game from the Shop.
• Version: What "version" this game is set to internally. Contains a tooltip to this page with an explanation.
• Gift: What Gift the player receives through the Perfect Campaign for this game.
• Song: For games that have a song, formatted with a ♪ symbol followed by a link to the song's page (example: "♪ Struck by the Rain")
• High Score: The pre-existing high score for Endless Games. Rhythm Tengoku and Rhythm Heaven provided such high scores for the player to beat, while Rhythm Heaven Fever and Rhythm Heaven Megamix do not. As such, the latter should be set to 0.
• Stage: Uses the {{Stage}} template to provide a list of icons for the full stage this Rhythm Game belongs to. This is useful for quick navigation between games and stages.

If a parameter is left blank, it will not be shown. This template, and some of the templates used with it, also automatically place the game in all relevant categories, as such it is discouraged to manually put categories in the pages themselves.

BPMs

For those wondering why there is no BPM parameter:

• This is information that the game does not explicitly provide during gameplay. As such, it would have to be discovered through datamining the games, or otherwise externally measured. An issue arises however when you have to consider what would be the best objective way to show this information. In a lot of cases, this would just be a single number which shows how many beats per minute the music is. This gets complicated however when one has to consider the following:
  • Games with tempo changes in the middle of the game. This may be simple for games such as Tap Trial or Power Calligraphy, which change the tempo only a handful of times throughout the song, but some games such as See-Saw or Iai Giri change the tempo very often. Displaying each and every tempo the song gets to would be comprehensive, but quickly bloat the infobox. Extrapolating only a few BPMs (such as the base tempo, fastest and slowest) would alleviate that problem, but it would lead to incomplete information. This point also counts for games whose tempo was changed in later appearances, such as Quiz Show being slowed down from ~138 BPM in Rhythm Tengoku to 120 BPM in Rhythm Heaven Megamix, as well as any differences during Practice, in the Studio, Music Corner or Soundtracks. Many Endless Games change the tempo over time as a means of raising the difficulty, which opens the question of should every tempo change in these games be documented as well.
  • Due to the refresh rate of the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS families of systems not being an exact 60 FPS, the tempo for sequenced music in games played on these systems is effectively slower than what the internal value suggests it should be. For example, a game in Rhythm Tengoku set to 120 BPM internally would actually play closer to 119,455001139212 BPM on original hardware due to this. This discrepency would mean the objective, internal value would be inaccurate for what the player perceives during gameplay, and as Rhythm Tengoku can be played on multiple models and consoles, through emulators, and an arcade port, each with their own differences in refresh rates, what the exact effective tempo would be can vary quite a bit. The same holds true for sequenced music in later games to potentially lesser extents.
    • Streamed music does not provide a completely objective number either, due to being stored as the duration of the song in beats and duration in seconds divided by the sample rate. This creates tiny inaccuracies in tempo, for example Karate Man Combos! is set to 402 beats and 4 287 988/32 000=133,999625 seconds. Diving the beats by the seconds and multiplying by 60 fps, we get 180,000503732753 BPM. This can be reasonably rounded to 180 BPM, with the decimal difference being negligible, though the exact decimal can also be unclear.
  • Some games may "feel" as a different tempo to what the game considers it to be. For example, Rap Men is, disregarding refresh rates, internally 180 BPM, but "feels" like 90 BPM during gameplay. This has led to disagreements over whether the number should be the more objective internal value, or the more subjective one.

Being that this information is not shown to the player, and as such is not necessary to play the game, this puts into question what benefit there would be to showing it on the infobox.One could raise the same question about versions, however that parameter is something that can be more objectively determined, and a reasonable solution is easy to find when a subjective label is needed. So far, no such agreed upon solution has been found for BPMs.

• The difficulty in finding an objective number, and subjective measuring being prone to errors, would also mean including potentially incorrect information.