64Beats

64Beats is a homebrew minigame by JvPeek released on 13 December 2024. It was released for the 2024 N64brew Game Jam. It’s a rhythm game where you have to press the buttons as the arrows fly past their mark.

You can get the ROM from its download page by using the password minigamemadness and the source can be found here. Note that this is the same ROM that includes all the other minigames released for the competition.

About 64Beats

64Beats is a rhythm game, think Dance Dance Revolution but on the Nintendo 64. Music starts playing as arrows fly up towards their mark, and its up to you to press the corresponding button according to the rhythm as they fly past. It’s as simple as that.

The closer your hit your mark, the more points you get so it’s important to get your timing right. All the arrows are equidistant so it’s easy to get it right once you get into the rhythm.

There is just one music track in the game, and it’s called Deflowering by Emax and TRSI. It was originally released in 1993 for its own competition called The Party 93, held from 27th-29th December ’93. The original song was over 3 minutes long, but this one has been trimmed down to 37 seconds.

The arrow directions are generated randomly so every time you play the game you’ll get a different sequence. Every player gets the same sequence so nobody will get a hard pattern while others have it easy.

Review and conclusion

64Beats is a simple game, all you have to do is time your inputs correctly as the arrows pass by. For a minigame, the most important thing to do is to be able to pick up and play with as little prep as possible and this game does that very well.

As for being a rhythm game, it works but that’s about it. You’d usually expect the pattern of arrows to correspond to the beat in the music (which I feel it does), but they are randomly generated so there’s no real sense of ‘song’ to it. The song is also very short, it feels as though it finishes right as it starts to get going.

It’s also the submission that has the fewest lines of code in the whole game jam, clocking in at only 612, in front of Furball and Underground Grind which have 669 and 758 respectively.

Being the first game in the jam alphabetically, it’s short, sweet and to the point. A great way to prepare for what is to come.