Let’s jump back into the time machine for a minute to the late 2000s, a time when rhythm gaming was going through a massive boon. It seemed like everyone and their grandma had access to some variety of fake plastic instruments that could be used to play rhythm games, and titles likeGuitar HeroandRock Bandwere almost everywhere you looked. It was a glorious time, filled with music, fun, and late-night parties that probably kept the neighbors awake because of how loud and click-clacky those instruments were.
However, we’re jumping back to a year that was not nearly as glorious: 2009. With the big success of the rhythm game genre came a wave of developers and publishers looking to cash in at every opportunity, thusflooding the market with an excessive amount of gamesthat diluted the value of the genre and resulted in its untimely death in the early 2010s. As a result of this casualty, not only did the genre fall off, but one game that could’ve been an excellent reset for the genre didn’t get a chance to break through, and that wasDJ Hero. It was a truly inventive new take on rhythm gaming, but one whose biggest positives were also its greatest undoing.
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DJ Hero Was Far Too Fun
DJ Hero was a unique take on the “plastic instrument” rhythm game formula, ditching the rock music associated with Guitar Hero and Rock Band for a more club-oriented soundtrack and the use of a DJ turntable. Gameplay-wise, it featured all of the elements of turntablism that are popular among DJs, including scratching and crossfading, allowing players to truly emulate the feel of being a DJ. The soundtrack was also largely comprised of tracks that mixed two individual songs, as DJs are known to do, allowing players to mix multiple songs together into one defined track.
It was clever and fun, bringing an exciting new twist to the genre that was easy to get into, but tough to master. The mechanic difficulty of combining scratching and crossfading, while also spinning the effects dial, activating Euphoria (DJ Hero’s version of Guitar Hero’s “Star Power”) and rewinding songs was plenty challenging, but developer FreeStyleGames was able to strike a perfect balance with the game. The turntable was easy to get accustomed to, and the way the single-player campaign was organized did a fantastic job getting people accustomed to songs to allow them to push into higher tiers. There were also a select few songs that allowed players to use their old Guitar Hero controllers, adding a small multiplayer component to the game.
The setlist was also rather massive, with over 90 mixes in the on-disc soundtrack alone, all unique to the game and all pulling from a variety of different genres. Unlike Guitar Hero, which often had to limit itself to rock music (which is the heaviest on guitars), DJ Hero was under no such pressure; it could pull from whatever genres it needed to create a diverse playlist of club-ready jams. The mixes themselves featured several popular artists, and the setlist as a whole was strong enough that it could stand on its own even without the game accompanying it.
A year after the first game’s release, it got a sequel in the form ofDJ Hero 2. Even with only a year in between the two games, DJ Hero 2 was a wholesale improvement on the first game with a lot of excellent new features and improvements. Where the first game only allowed one DJ turntable at a time, DJ Hero 2 offered two-player multiplayer, while also adding vocals to allow even more players to get in on the party. There are also new gameplay features that allow players to utilize more freestyle play, creating a greater sense of freedom akin to what real DJs are offered. In a lot of ways, DJ Hero 2 feels like the perfect rhythm game, and it’s a fantastic entry that stands among the best of Activision’s rhythm-centric games.
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It Just Never Stood A Chance
Sadly, DJ Hero’s chances at success were taken away by a variety of factors, chief among them being the time in which the game was released. As previously mentioned, 2009 was the year whena new rhythm game came out every time you tied your shoes. Naturally, it was going to be hard to continuously sell gamers peripherals, as once they had one guitar, there wasn’t going to be a huge need to buy more. Developers attempted to compensate for this by releasing more software, but all this resulted in was a massive glut of rhythm games flooding store shelves, many of which felt indistinguishable from one another. Even when the number of games came down in 2010 and DJ Hero 2 was one of only two titles available, it was far too late for it to make an impression. Not even the most unique or perfect rhythm game could’ve saved the market at the time.
Beyond the games themselves, though, the economic crisis of the late 2000s certainly played a big part. These rhythm games were not cheap back in the day, and when you combine that with an economy that was working to pick up some broken pieces, it was always going to be tough to convince people to buy expensive peripherals for new rhythm games. After all, DJ Hero launched at a $120 price tag, with a $200 price attached to the “Renegade Edition” bundle (which also came with a joint Jay-Z and Eminem CD). That’s a lot of money to spend on a video game, especially for customers uncertain as to whether the game would have much shelf life. When it came to peripheral-based gaming at the time, it made more sense for players towait for motion-controlled peripheralsthe PlayStation Move or Kinect, two accessories they could be confident would be compatible with a wider variety of titles.
Interestingly enough, DJ Hero also got hurt by an element that other rhythm games didn’t struggle as much with: its greater focus on single-player gameplay. Much of the appeal of previous games in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series was their success at being multiplayer games, being a staple party game for much of the late 2000s. In DJ Hero’s case, though, with the exception of the select few songs you can play with a guitar, much of the game is played solo. And sure, that makes sense in the context of being a DJ, and the game was better for focusing on one player, but it severely limited the party-ready nature of the game. And by the time DJ Hero 2 came along and added multiplayer, it simply didn’t matter. DJ Hero was a game people didn’t care about enough the first time, so a second verse wasn’t gonna be much more interesting than the first.
It felt like the very things that made DJ Hero a good game were the very things that limited its commercial success. And it’s a shame: DJ Hero went against the grain in a pretty big way and could’ve taken the rhythm game genre in a much-needed different direction. Especially given that we’re in a time when pop and hip-hop have taken center stage over rock music, DJ Hero could’ve seen a bit more success if it waited things out and read the wave of the music industry a bit better. There’s even a chance itcould’ve found a touch more success if released today. Sadly, it never got the chance to, but DJ Hero remains a very memorable game that deserved a far greater chance than it got.
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