NES Replica of Squid Beatz 2

I completed this game in February 2024.


Gameplay Notes

The timeline auto-scrolls to the left. When a colour target overlaps the dotted squares, immediately press the specific input(s) to successfully clear it.

Many players struggle with the controls at first, as one colour target is bound to all controller buttons + directionals, with the other to all triggers + bumpers. This means each colour can be accessed from the exact same half of the controller, as opposed to each colour being dedicated to all inputs on each opposite.

When redesigning this game for the NES controller inputs, I kept the same core control scheme, basing one colour on buttons and one on directionals. Due to the lack of inputs to use though, one 'combo' colour target became impossible, as you cannot press two opposites of the NES D-Pad at once.

Gameplay Videos

Custom Song & Charting



What is this game?



"Beatz" is a 2D rhythm game. It's based on Squid Beatz 2, a minigame within Splatoon 2.


Additional Notes

Squid Beatz 2's audio visualizer is strange, as it positions the audio frequency bars exactly half off-center horizontally, then wraps them back around, resulting in the middle of the visualizer generally being the lowest. Personally, I don't think this looks very good at all, so the visualizer in my remake goes from a traditional lowest-left to highest-right instead.

For another personal negative of the original, I always found both the level charting and timing of the 'Fresh' hits to be somewhat 'off' - the latter likely caused by the game's absurdly high input lag, and the former likely from my inexperience with other rhythm games.

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