Happy New Year! How I decided to start 2024? By playing a game where its track list consists of songs from the 2000s or earlier. So, do you remember Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan? This is the Western version with English songs.

Gameplay is identical to Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. Tapping circles, dragging a ball, and spinning. Just like Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, there are some songs where the timing is strict and the final level is really hard. I got stucked there for a little bit, but I did beat it. Unlike Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, you can skip cutscenes here.

Both Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents are good games, so go with whichever.

Played this on my phone for retro achievements which worked perfectly well with my Samsung stylus.

Some of the song choices are psychedelically bad in 2023 (legit had a hard time with the 2nd to last song because the Hoobastank track was so awful) but the presentation and gameplay make up for it.

I played the pants off this game back on my DS and still hold that its one of my favorite games of all time.

Fascinating as a localization project. I've only played a bit of Ouendan but its pretty wild to completely overhaul your product for a different culture. Maybe Ouendan is even better but this is about as good as a game gets, to me.

Completion: Got a Perfect on every song and every difficulty, and achieved the Lovin' Machine (highest) ranking.

Review: Had this game as a kid and wanted to give it a try over a decade later. This ended up becoming a challenge to get a perfect in every single song/difficulty. Luckily it wasn't too hard to do, thanks in part to the fun and satisfying gameplay not making it feel at all like a chore. The visuals are good, the music selection is alright, and the story is absurdly silly. Overall just a good time.

Proof of Completion

Finished on the hardest difficulty.

My hands hurt

Still very fun and addicting but I honestly think the 2 higher difficulties kinda make the small problems I did have with the game more noticeable

Some boys kiss me, some boys hug me
I think they're OK
If they don't give me proper credit, I just walk away
They can beg and they can plead
But they can't see the light (that's right, that's right)
'Cause the boy with the cold hard cash is always Mister Right

'Cause we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl

Some boys romance, some boys slow dance
That's all right with me
If they can't raise my interest, then I have to let them be
Some boys try, and some boys lie
But I don't let them play (no way, no way)
Only boys that save their pennies make my rainy day

'Cause we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl

Living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl

Living in a material world (material)
Living in a material world
Living in a material world (material)
Living in a material world

Boys may come, and boys may go
And that's all right, you see
Experience has made me rich, and now they're after me

'Cause everybody's living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl

Living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl

A material, a material, a material, a material world

Living in a material world (material)
Living in a material world
Living in a material world (material)
Living in a material world

Living in a material world (material)
Living in a material world
Living in a material world (material)
Living in a material world

Elite Beat Agents is a wacky rhythm game designed by a Japanese studio with an obvious affinity for western culture. The game is a fun time, but the experience is ultimately carried by its absurdity rather than its rhythm gameplay.

As a trio of government agents, you are tasked with helping people across the world with their dilemmas. These dilemmas range from minor (e.g., helping a jock impress his babysitting high school crush) to world ending (the final level has you thwarting an alien invasion). The way you help these folks? By tapping along to the beat, of course!

In addition to the bizarre scenarios you find yourself in, the music adds another dose of strange to the atmosphere. Surprisingly, for a nintendo published title, the levels don't use original tracks. Rather, they use famous (covers of) western pop hits from across the decades, ranging from Avril Lavigne to Madonna. The pairing of the scenarios along with the off brand music is where I found the bulk of my enjoyment while playing this game.

Elite Beat Agents is competent and responsive when it comes to the gameplay, but makes some choices which I didn't find to be satisfying. EBA gameplay uses the vocal track as the basis for its rhythmic tapping. This made me feel like I was at a disadvantage when playing a song I wasn't already familiar with. To their credit, most of these songs are well-known and loved, but losing due to an unexpected vocal hook never felt great. Since the vocal track tends to be more unpredictable in its rhythm, I also found myself glued to the bottom screen most of the time, trying to figure out when to tap next rather than paying attention to the elaborate cut scene unfolding on the top screen. These gripes are by no means game breaking, but they did deflate the experience a little.

There are at least 4 difficulties to choose from and I found the middle 2 to be the most satisfying experience. The "easiest" difficulty was made harder by the need to simplify the vocal rhythms into fewer notes whereas the hardest difficulty (that I unlocked), would put me at risk of carpal tunnel syndrome if I kept playing. If you are looking to check this game out, I would recommend starting out on the 2 star difficulty and going from there.

Elite Beat Agents is not my favorite rhythm game on the DS (Rhythm Heaven forever!), but it's competent at what it does and unique enough that I would still recommend checking it out if you have the opportunity.

You ever go back and watch, like, Shrek or some shit and then you're like "wait a second, since when was 'Bad Reputation' in this? And how does it work so well?" That's every single stage in Elite Beat Agents. A dozen and a half action-packed vignettes concerning characters trying to do anything from babysitting to drilling for oil to surviving on a remote island, accompanied by a licensed music track that, more often than not, feels lyrically contradictory to what's actually going on in the story. And as you're walkin'-and-a-talkin'-and-a-movin'-and-a-groovin'-and-a-hippin'-and-a-hoppin'-and-a-pickin'-and-a-poppin', you might ask yourself... How? How is it that these specific soundwaves, produced by these low-quality DS speakers, originally devised by pop stars who were already outdated by the time this game released, are able to compel my stylus to fly across the bottom screen so quickly? And with such precision? Because, even if you ignore how genuinely witty this game is, parodying at once both American movie montages and the concept of rhythm gaming itself, it's so utterly mechanically satisfying at a base level. There are few, if any, video games that bring me more joy than what I feel whenever I manage to drag myself out of the red with a perfect string of beats as the EBAs pick their heads up and start chanting in tandem to my actions during the most frantic section of "Sk8er Boy" or "Material Girl." And, yeah, the two scoring systems are at odds with each other, on higher difficulties you can die just because there's too large of a gap in between notes, and spin beats don't serve much of a purpose. But, having just now finally completed the game with the Divas after leaving them sitting on "Without a Fight" for the last who-knows-how-many years, I think I can safely admit to myself that I simply do not care. Most of the time, whenever I'm playing a different rhythm game, I just think about how I could be playing Elite Beat Agents instead. And whenever I think about Elite Beat Agents, I usually think about how they managed to cram three minutes of blatant sexual innuendo into a Nintendo game, and how it happens to air while you're playing as an anthropomorphic representation of a teenager's bloodstream. Or I think about how it presents the most painfully melodramatic Christmas story of all time, focused on an anonymous family that you have absolutely no connection to... and how it still works on an emotional level just because Chicago happens to be playing in the background. But, mostly, I just think about how, whenever I hear any of these songs in isolation, I can still visualize the pattern of in-game beats that appear during each section of the track. Music lives.

Started on the second difficulty and could not get into this game at all. When i however swotched to the easiest difficulty and worked my way up to the seond and third this game really clicked for me. The satisfying taps along with the music are ao satisfying and the song selection and covers of said songs are amazing and iconic. Im gonna be honest i did not care about the intro comic book cutscenes because they were so slow but the art style and animations are so charming. This game may have some weird timing and trial and error however the gameplay loop really clicked with me.

This game is so iconic. It's Osu but with a story and charm and fantastic maps on a fantastic music selection. It introduced me to Canned Heat, one of my favorite Jamiroquai songs. There's everything to love here and honestly? Nothing to hate. It either is for you or isn't, but it can't be denied that what it does, it does well.

I stopped playing before I got to the hardest mode and I don't really have the time to get back up to where I was again, and that might be one of my biggest gaming regrets honestly. For experienced Osu players it might be a bit of a bore, but for casuals like me it's a fun gauntlet with a rewarding challenge spike!