As you read this feature, Rhythm Heaven Fever for Wii is grooving its way onto consoles around North America. The Rhythm Heaven series has recently become familiar to North American shores, but Japanese players have been experiencing the musical legacy for years now.

The series is known as Rhythm Tengoku (or Rhythm Paradise) in Japan and was produced by Nintendo's internal studio Nintendo SP&D1, who also did work on the WarioWare and Metroid games. The person credited for the creation of this series is Kazuyoshi Osawa, who also worked on the WarioWare and Metroid games.

Rhythm Heaven plays very differently from other rhythm-based games, which would consist of having players press a series of buttons, prompts for which scroll along to the speed of the song. Games like PaRappa the Rapper from Sony and Dance Dance Revolution from Konami pioneered this method of rhythm gameplay. Rhythm Heaven, however, took a very different approach. Rather than just following patterns and pressing buttons in order to hit preset patterns, players would actually have to closely follow the beat of the song and make the appropriate button presses to the beat. In other words, you weren't just pressing buttons in a timely manner but actually playing alongside the song. This made for a test of reflexes and rhythm, as the songs would follow a pattern, and every once in a while would change tempo or add more challenges to overcome within the same piece of music.

The concept is quirky, but allowed everyone to get into the game without the need of expensive peripherals or mastery of the game. If you could tap “shave and a haircut, two bits!” with your fingers or bob your head in rhythm to a pop song, Rhythm Heaven was for you. To add even an even more surreal nature to the game, the songs would not take place in a rock stage, a concert, or even a karaoke session. These scenes would often range from the fantastic to the mundane, yet they all had huge character. It could be said that WarioWare, a game that made it a common practice to make spectacular games out of the most mundane of activities, heavily influenced this. Even something as seemingly plain as a guy taking a girl out on a date while kicking balls away from them could yield many a musical result.

Speaking of music, Nintendo worked with prolific Japanese music producers in order to both make the beat-heavy gameplay work and create catchy tunes. One of these producers happens to be Tsunku, a vocalist, producer, and songwriter who has had experience working solo and with other Japanese acts. While still relatively unknown in most parts of the world, Tsunku is a major musical act in Japan, and with him behind the project, Rhythm Heaven became something truly special. He proposed that the game's music would be linked directly to the gameplay, rather than just button presses that weren't related to the song at all.

The first game in the series was released for the Game Boy Advance in Japan on August 6, 2006. Game progression was similar to that of the WarioWare series: each stage consisted of a song and a task to complete to the beat of that song. The game would assign ratings to players on how well they did in their performance. Once players advanced far enough into the game they would be able to play remix stages. These stages would ante up the difficulty by combining all of the songs into one, meaning you would be playing a segment one minute, and in the next moment be in the middle of another stage. And just like the WarioWare series, there were other unlockables that extended the replay value of the game.

Despite worries about the game's unique approach to rhythm gameplay, Rhythm Heaven was a success. Not as big as other games, but it was popular enough that an arcade game was born out of it, courtesy of Sega. Both games would remain Japan-exclusive efforts. This, however, would end in 2008 when Nintendo released Rhythm Heaven Gold for the DS in Japan. Satoru Iwata saw great potential in the game, so it was decided to release the game overseas as simply Rhythm Heaven. The DS iteration used an interesting control scheme: players turned their DS on its side, book-style. Tapping would occur on the touch screen while the other screen presented the comical situation.

Even with the game not being instantly recognizable, Nintendo did their best to market the game to both gamers and casual game fans. Such was their belief in the game's success that Nintendo gave away free copies of the game at the Game Developers Conference in 2009 and hired R&B artist Beyoncé Knowles to star in a series of commercials for Rhythm Heaven. Critical acclaim was great for the game, praising both its inventive approach to music games and the quirky nature that gave it a lot of character.

Players hoping to get more rhythm-based goodness wouldn't have to wait long. In 2011, Nintendo released Rhythm Heaven Fever for the Wii in Japan. Even with the game still a year away from release in North America and Europe, it still managed to create a big impact on gamers. Stages were larger in scale and more ambitious in their musical design. Some of these scenes were so funny and creative that they went on to become Internet memes, like the Wrestler Interview.

It is easy to see why, with just a few games under its belt, the series has gained a strong cult following in the Nintendo community. Rather than just doing the tried and true formula of the music game genre or making us break our wallets with expensive peripherals, Rhythm Heaven took a very simple approach, but its simplicity leads us to become addicted to the rhythm. Add to this fantastic music and a heavy dose of Nintendo charm, and you have a series that may not be as big as some of Nintendo's others, but still packs a powerful musical punch.