Genius Products Inc. (GNPR)

[fredman]

First Look At Scratch: Ultimate DJ

With music games taking so much space on store shelves these days, it’s tough to imagine retailers being receptive to yet another music game that comes bundled with a unique controller. “If we had told them that we were making another rock and roll game, it would have been next to impossible,” says Mike Rubinelli, senior vice president of game development at Genius Products. Once those buyers learn that Scratch: The Ultimate DJ tackles an as-of-yet unexplored aspect of music gaming, he says, those opinions soon change.

Rubinelli and 7 Studios’ Dan Lehrich stopped by our offices recently to show off that new game. While it’s still in the early stages, it’s clear that there’s more to the game than it being the simple “Guitar Hero with a turntable,” concept that people assumed when the game was announced a short while ago.

Trained as a musician, creator Lehrich started his career in the games industry at EA before moving on to 7 Studios. While he worked in the audio department professionally, he spent his off hours developing game concepts—including the one that would ultimately be shaped into Scratch.

While Lehrich is a fan of games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, he’s quick to recognize that ultimately these games play like sophisticated versions of Simon says. Music is more than just pressing buttons in a prescribed order, he notes. A large part of playing music hinges on impulsively trying new things and exploring the moment. Aside from some of the drum fills or freestyle-vocal sections that well-known rhythm games offer, that level of freedom hasn’t yet been explored. If players try to create variations on a defined riff, at best they’ll hear some odd notes before eventually getting booed off the virtual stage.

Lehrich says he hates that aspect of rhythm games. If a person takes a chance and picks up a Guitar Hero game for the first time, they’ll probably fail out in short order. On the flipside, if a person is completely skilled at the game they’ll be rewarded by hearing the original master track of a song, which will sound the same way each time it’s played. Lehrich’s approach is different. In Scratch, players are free to improvise to the tracks as they play. As familiar-looking notes cascade down the screen, would-be DJs press corresponding buttons on the controller. In addition to getting points for hitting those notes—which can represent basslines, drum parts or other instrumentation, depending upon the individual song—players can add additional button presses and earn more points. Those extra notes utilize samples from the actual songs, so they don’t sound completely out of place, either.

The keyboard aspect is something we’ve seen before, in slightly different formats, and there’s a reason for that. Lehrich says he doesn’t see the point in switching the colors around just for the sake of doing so, using the example of how FPSs have settled on some of the same controller conventions. Instead of forcing players to learn a completely different scheme, 7 Studios has taken advantage of a starting point that music-game vets will be comfortable with and then building from there.

Where Scratch parts ways most significantly with other games in the rhythm-game space is its controller. In addition to the keyboard buttons (which are supposed to represent the buttons on an actual sampler), the controller sports a turntable and a fader switch. Lehrich says his wheel is far more sophisticated than superficially similar controllers. It’s fully analog, which means that players can interact with sounds in ways not possible before. He demonstrated by playing a sample repeatedly while spinning the wheel. He dragged it slowly, which resulted in a croaking, shuffling sound. Moving it faster made the sound skitter and increase in pitch, until it resembled something from a cartoon. When coupled with the fader switch (a left/right spring-loaded switch), he whipped out some faithful-sounding approximations of the kinds of sounds you’d expect to hear from a hip-hop DJ.

That’s all well and good, but how does the game play? We weren’t able to get our hands on it at its pre-alpha stage, but we did see Lehrich spin his way through a few songs—including The Gorillaz’s “Feel Good Inc” and Tech N9ne’s “Slacker.” During the demonstration, he strayed from the designated note path plenty of times, and everything continued on—the screen didn’t dim, the crowd didn’t boo and there weren’t odd noises. The notes that would have been played had he participated were silent, but it wasn’t jarring in the least. As he scratched during specific areas, a meter filled up, similarly to the Star Power in Guitar Hero. Once it was filled, he activated a tentatively named “Scratch Solo,” where he transformed, scribbled and more for points. At that point, the song-specific keyboard sounds were replaced with sounds from what he called Battle Records. Think of them as user-selectable five-sound clusters of sounds, as varied as animal calls, robots, “Oh yeah”s and other hip-hop staples. If the library of about 50 packs isn’t satisfying enough, players will be able to plug in a USB mic and record their own custom samples.

Improvisation is a big part of the game, but don’t expect to get very far if your noodling isn’t up to par. The game detects turntable tricks and converts them to points (more than 300 of those tricks are included, which are derivatives of a core set of around 20), and the game rewards proper timing and rhythm in both the turntable and core keyboard areas. Lehrich says one of his design inspirations has been the Skate series. Players aren’t limited to a certain number of unlockable tricks in those games. Instead, an individual’s skill level is the barrier that needs to be overcome. He says a moment that really made him realize what Scratch’s team had accomplished with the hardware came when noted turntablist Mix Master Mike came to test it out, and was able to make sounds that nobody on the team had heard before.

Subcultures can be brutally honest (or just plain brutal) when members perceive outsiders as being exploitative. That’s something that 7 Studios has been keenly aware of, and they’ve taken steps to ensure that the game is a respectful (but over the top) homage to hip-hop culture. Hip-hop producer Quincy Jones III has been tapped as a resource during the game’s development, helping out with everything from brainstorming the playable characters to helping select some of the game’s 60 tracks. As much as we might respect Jones' opinions on music, there's one particular tidbit that's especially interesting: While Lehrich wouldn't elaborate, he said that people would be able to interact with music that they have saved onto their console's hard drive in one way or another. Interesting...

Everything seems to be stacking up quite nicely, with Scratch representing a style of music that hasn’t yet been given its full due in the gaming space. Without getting our hands on the game and playing it for ourselves, it’s tough to say how successful the game is overall. At this point, all we can tell for certain is that the separate pieces look like they could fit together into a fun game. We’ll have to wait and see whether or not that’s the end result. Look for it this summer on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Source: http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200902/N09.0223.1531.21262.htm?Page=1