Music Games

A music video game depends upon the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs. Music video games may take a variety of forms and are often a form of puzzle game due to their common use of "rhythmically generated puzzles".

Music video games are distinct from purely audio games in that they feature a visual dimension leading the player through the game's soundtrack.

Music memory games test a player's musical memory. The two major regions of musical memory that are tested in current games are short-term memory and eidetic memory. These two types of games can be seen as directly analogous to the simple children's games of Simon says (which tests short-term memory) and Pelmanism (which tests eidetic memory).

Sight-reading music games vary according to which aspect of the music serves as the focus of gameplay. They may concentrate on rhythm, musical notation, pitch and or volume.

Rhythm games challenge the player to press the right button at the right time or to move in time with the music. The popularity of these rhythm-based games has created a market for specialty input devices such as dance mats and electronic drums.
A pitch game is more complex. It tests the player's ability to match the pitch of a piece of music provided by the game. Players use their voices and a specialized microphone as input and they are scored on their tonal accuracy. these also involve rhythm, pitch, notation and even volume.

Music management games involve the management of a musical band or group or the production of music videos. Although the direct interaction between music and the player is considerably limited in music management games, the games nevertheless center on the musical nature of the management tasks of scheduling, producing, and promoting music stars.

Guitar Hero/ Rock Band games are a fast growing section of the music game genre that encourage multiple play on guitars and drums. Players respond to coloured indicators on screen in time with a variety of prerecorded band tracks from several music genres. The vid clip of the Big Bang Theory 'group' give you a taste of what is possible...