Old School Musical
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About the Game
What has 60 amazing chiptune tracks, a loony story mode, 32 different chicken types to fight, and takes you on a tour of all your favorite retro games? It’s Old School Musical of course!
Tib and Rob are the heroes of a wacky adventure that will teach them where all of the bugs in our favorite games come from.
Have you ever played a rhythm game before? Well, this is like that, but much better! With each note, you are responsible for the success of our two heroes’ quest. Swing your sword and shoot with your spacecraft to the beat of chiptune tracks from Dubmood, Zabutom, Hello World, Yponeko, Toriena, mistermv and Le Plancton.
What people are saying:
- “This game is so retro, your TV will grow a cathode-ray tube” – Cathodic Magazine
- “the gaem iz ful uv bugs lmao” – Kevin Ididntgetthescript
- “The display resolution of this game is so low that I’m 20 years younger now” – Santa Claus
- “Francis, stop playing video games, it’s time to eat!” – My mom
TLDR:
- 50 chiptune tracks
- Awesome guests: Dubmood, Zabutom, Hello World, Yponeko, Le Plancton
- A story mode with 20 nutty levels
- A multiplayer mode with up to 4 players
- Chickens
Steam User 93
I can't even begin to describe just how amazing this game is. I knew i was going to enjoy it from the start, but i didn't expect what i got at all. I got something way more amazing. The story mode is about maybe 2 or 3 hours worth of gameplay. But the real real fun begins AFTER you have beat the game. The "Chicken Republic" mode add's an extra 50 whole levels of fun. It add's random effects to the gameplay making things very interesting. It slowly get's exceptionally hard even on normal. If you wanted a challenge you'll get it. I also feel like this game should come with a warning before you start it up because a lot of the Chicken Republic levels could easily give someone a seizure (js) So be careful of that. also there's sooooo many references in this game to other games even tv shows. Some examples...
-Mega Man
-Dragon Ball Z
-Metal Gear Solid
-Last of us
-Pokemon
-Rick and Morty
-Metal Slug
-StarFox
-Ninja Turtles
-Zelda
-Half Life
-Final Fantasy
-Back to the Future
-Steven Universe
-Skyrim and Gosh so much more. I could not stop smiling when i played this.
I can't see myself getting the hardest mode achievements though which sucks cause theres A LOT of them. The game on normal mode was good. I don't know how people can perfect the hardest difficulties, It's just way too much. As much as i love Rhythm games i can never play on those modes, Which is a shame cause i want those achievements lol >< In any case this game is beyond fantastic, for sure my most favorite Rhythm game now. Definitely has alot of replay value as well. For the price it is being sold at, I'd say it's a steal. There's just so much love in this game.
Hell no, You won't regret it.
Steam User 29
Old School Musical
The video game parody equivelant of Excel Saga, and if you know what I'm even talking about you know you're in for a treat. Non-stop blisteringly funny and self-aware gamegeek humor with a constant barrage of grin-inducing references, which should tell you enough to know if this is your jam.
Old School Musical is the kind of arcade purist rhythm-game that could give Groove Coaster a run for its money, easily. Does it have the legendary and iconic musical pedigree of game composers the likes of Zuntata? Not quite. But it does have the energizing and nostalgic chiptune jams of modern day chiptune pioneers like Zabutom, Dubmood, and Hello World and that's -almost- just as good.
Most of all, it's just pure distilled finger-blistering fun.
The References!
Old School Musical is chock-full of the best kind of video game references, the kind that dig deep and hit every sort of geek right in the nostalgia hard. From the most obvious and recognizable Pokemon battle sequence to old arcade rarities and even more notable and impressively obscure 16-bit PSX RPG rarities later on. Through all the eras, both good and bad, and into the new indie age of modern accessibility blended with nostalgic associations brings a constant barrage of memorable and recognizable imagery and of course melodies.
Old School Musical is a total smorgasbord of the most memorable and honestly sometimes pretty surprising references to long-lost memories of the golden-age of gaming. There's quite literally something for everyone here starting with the more obvious tropes related to Pokemon, Rockman, A Link to the Past and of course the NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
There's all kinds of ridiculously fitting mashups up iconic titles like a space opera-centric stage with tributes to R-type, Gradius, and even some recognizable SNES Star-Fox bosses thrown into the retro mix. There's Metal Gears, there's Zeldas and Links, and even a cheeky Metal Slug homage titled simply; Iron Snail.
Honorable mention for most hilarious moment goes to the classic Outrun cameo, suddenly interrupted with a shocking Road Rash tribute. Nice and brutal.
Gameplay
The rhythm game mechanics employed by OSM are as classic as the references contained, with the core timed directional presses seen in classic rhythm titles from DDR to Bust-a-Groove to Space Channel 5 and some sections of fast-scrolling tabs to hit on the beat similar to the retro Gameboy Bemani titles and their simplistic portable take on the arcade hit rhythm formula.
The challenge here in Old School Musical might not be totally up to snuff for old school rhythm game veteran, I'm not a professional but I've been playing enough to say I was around for the earliest incarnations of DDR and Beatmania and anything below the highest difficulty was a bit of a cinch when it came to the reflexes involved.
It could also be attributed to the repetitious and somewhat predictable nature of chiptunes if you've been gaming on them your whole life, but the upbeat energy and speed involved make the rhythm and timing just feel really damn good. So good that I could forgive that it didn't offer a super high skill ceiling, it didn't matter because with Old School Musical I was just having a good time and taking in the nostalgia. When the music is as good as it is in OSM, it just feels really satisfying to play no matter what the challenge.
Final Thought
What an underrated gem. What an overlooked masterpiece of music action. If you enjoy rhythm games in any way, shape or form you owe it to yourself to check this out right away. If you have a love for the lost but not forgotten eras of console gaming this deserves your attention for its overwhelming deluge of spot-on references and excellent rhythm content, both in the fantastic selection of music and in its simple yet solid mechanics.
This review made possible through the generosity, consideration and contribution of Review Experts(REXnetwork) and the developer/publisher.
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Steam User 21
Crim's Humble Opinion Curator
Old School Musical
A rythm reaction game stuffed full of nostalgia and chiptunes. There is plenty of content to keep you occupied here with around fifty chiptune songs. Twenty of those songs are experienced in story mode, while the rest you get by playing a mode that is unlocked after the story. There is also a multiplayer mode. It's easy to get sucked into the story with the pure nostalgia alone.
Mechanics
Old School Musical plays on the reaction rhythm genre. You watch characters perform things as you hit buttons or keys as they cross the center of the screen. The very first thing you see when you boot up the game is a calibration of video and audio; so you can get the best experience. After the story mode you unlock another mode which starts to add visual flairs and effects to make the game more difficult. With three difficulties the gameplay has a nice amount of adjustibility.
Artistic Presentation
This is where the majority of the awesome fantastics come into play with this title. There are plenty of different style of visuals all playing off on retro game titles. You can find references such as Megaman, Metal Gear Solid, Legend Of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and many others. It's especially great when they start mixing titles together such as Cruisin Usa and Road Rash. There is a nice variety of chiptune tracks from a sizable array of artists. Honestly the only lacking thing to me was the story. There was plenty of great humor in it but it just didn't really hook me. It's kind of okay though, because everything else in the game carries this title more significantly.
Final Thoughts
This is one of those out of nowhere excellent titles. I highly recommend giving it a go. There is plenty of content to get out of this title with the story mode alone giving you a good two to three hours. After five hours I still have a good 25 tracks to experience and can decide if I want to try to go for the hard mode achievements. Well worth the asking price. If you like nostalgia fueled rhythm games, check it out.
Steam User 14
One of the best rhythm games that I've played on steam for 2018.
Steam User 6
Old School Musical: A rhythm game with history
Old School Musical, further OSM, is a rhythm game, which pays homage to many old-school games a lot of older gamers played when they were young. More than that, it it also one of those rhythm games, which actually have a story mode, that adds a funny twist onto an already entertaining genre of rhythm games. Prepare your gamepads or keyboards and let's dive into this music-fueled adventure.
Gameplay
OSM does not do anything really special when it comes to the core gameplay mechanics. Majority of gameplay consists of you hitting notes coming from four major directions. Each of the major directions coresponds to one of your arrow keys or gamepad buttons. The only bigger difference between keyboard or gamepad is that the notes coming into the center of the screen are colour-coded to highlight which button to press. Second type of notes are what I would call bumper notes. The four keys get exchanged for two bumper-like markers and notes start coming from the bottom, giving place for a more hectic, spammy note set. Overall, the notes feel very precise and timed well. I did not feel like any of them were offset and if you feel like they are, you can always change the offset in settings to suit your preferences.
However, I did mention the core mechanics. Those come into play only in the main story of the game. Everything changes once you beat the game and unlock the end-game mode of The Chicken Republic. Not only does this mode bring back all the songs of the game, but it adds a ton of fun modifiers to the pile to amp up the challenge quite a lot. The modifiers include one of the developers dancing shirtless over your screen, kebabs falling from the top of your screen, everything spinning in a spiral, heavy snowing and many others.
The last mode you get is Arcade, which is your standard mode, where you play a song and get a rank achieved. Each song has three difficulty levels, each adding more notes or speeding up their approach speed.
The only issue which comes with many story-driven or single-player rhythm games is that you sadly cannot add your own songs and thus if you will spend countless hours on the game, you might get tired of hearing the same songs over and over (not that there would be too few of them).
Story
The story is the aspect that made me fall in love with this game. It is a story of two brothers who want to become heroes who will save the world. Everything starts with their Mom training them, which is represented by the first song of the game. However, everything goes horribly wrong and our heroes have to embark on the journey to save the world. And that is done by travelling into different worlds, each of them having its own set of songs. With this, the main charm of the game comes into play. Each of the world is represented by some of the most popular old-school games. And thus you will play a song with a Metal Gear Solid parody gameplay in the background, platforming from Mega-Man, picking up a sword in a Zelda style and fight chickens in an homage to JRPGs. However, to truly experience the charms of the game, you have to play it yourself.
Sound and Visuals
For a rhythm game, music is the most important aspect. And let me tell you, the 8-bit style of music is absolutely phenomenal in OSM. Each of the songs felt very special and tied amazingly to the events unfolding in the background video. You have everything from slow songs to really powerful and epic songs to accompany the finale of the story. The note hit sounds can also be adjusted, which fit well into the rhythms of the songs as well as give you a clear indicator of whether you actually hit the note or not.
The visual side of the game could be summarized with one game. Amazing. The pixel art-style always makes me smile as I appreciate when developers manage to create detailed settings using only pixels. Therefore, it will be always pleasant to look at the screen, sometimes even forgetting to hit the notes as you try to focus on everything going on in the background. Did I always pleasant? I meant almost always. Once you get to The Chicken Republic mode, there are some combinations of modifiers, which can really strain your eyes. Even further than that, if you are photosensitive, they can cause a seizure. That in my opinion is the biggest down-side of the game, as it a) does not allow you to play for longer periods of time and b) can actually cause you harm.
Conclusion
OSM is a cute little adventure into our gaming history accompanied with detailed visuals and absolute of a banger of a soundtrack. Therefore, if you enjoy rhythm games and want something special, this is a game you must absolutely try, even if it is at a full price.
Specs
There is no need to even mention those, you could probably get to run this on a bunch of potatoes.
Steam User 10
Really good rhythm game, lots of references to old classics, and lots of fantastic music.
Humour can be a bit flat (haha it's Link and he hates chickens haha) and story (who cares) is sort of boring, but otherwise it's a very charming game, with a lot of funny visual gags and gorgeous artwork.
Rhythm game veterans will find little challenge in 90% of songs, people new to the genre will find themselves with a solid difficulty curve with some definite fails later on until they've practiced enough.
Regardless of if you've ever played a rhythm game or not, buy it. A lot of love went into this, and it definitely shows from start to finish.
Steam User 4
8/10,Co-op is bad