Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Anime Club - Rhythm Heaven Fever

It was by pure happenstance that I discovered it - a genius little video game for the Nintendo Wii that combines colorful graphics and catchy tunes all into one big ball of fun.

It's name? Rhythm Heaven Fever.

Genius.

It's pretty brilliant. Players must unlock increasingly difficult challenges by hitting their Wii remote buttons in time to the music. There are also some games 2-player mode that are unlock-able.

And it's only $11.99 on Amazon.

I noticed that it was created by a Japanese music producer, so I thought it would be perfect to try with my Anime Club. I set up in our large meeting room utilizing both of our projector screens. I hooked up 2 Wii systems (1 library-owned and 1 personally-owned) and secured 2 copies of the game.

(Note: The first time I did this program, I didn't realize that you had to unlock the games so they aren't all available from the get-go. So what I did the second time was take the game home and spend an evening with some of my video gaming friends unlocking all of the games ahead of time. That way, my anime teens could just pick and choose which songs they wanted to try from the full list. You can then copy the game to an SD card and use it on multiple Wii consoles. It's up to you how you want to run the program though.)

I also set up some tables in the middle of the room and put out some paper and pencils so that the teens that didn't want to play could just hang out. And of course, I had a snack.

The teens loved playing the game so much, they ask me to do it every year. I usually plan it for March since it coincides with Teen Tech Week.

It's a very low-prep program for a big payoff!

Do you ever do video gaming with your anime club? What games do you play?

2 comments:

  1. I had a teen bring in his own copy of a Vocaloid Miku Miku Dance game and we watched him play it - it has a lot of performance-style visuals and the music is something most of the kids love. We've also played BlazBlue, Naruto Shippuden games, and some DragonBallZ games at anime club!

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  2. Oooh thanks for the suggestions, Eden. I will have to try some of those with my teens!

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