Everyone loves the Dreamcast. Okay, when the console needed people to buy it, it seemed like nobody loved the Dreamcast, but everyone loves the Dreamcast now. It was Sega at their best. The Genesis had some identity issues, and the Saturn compounded on them, but the Dreamcast presented a confident and focused Sega as they plunged toward the spot on the ground where they were about to leave a crater.
Like many people, I skipped out on the Dreamcast during its initial run, but I’ve been making up for it ever since. However, I never got around to Space Channel 5, one of the more unique experiments that came out for the system in 1999.
So, why now? I’ve been watching GameCenter CX again, and there’s an episode where Arino makes an attempt at it, and he’s just so bad. Completely awful. I wanted to see if I’d be similarly as bad, and of course, I’m not.
Whaaaao!
1999 was still very early in the evolution of the rhythm genre, and Space Channel 5 shows its age. You play as a reporter for the titular future TV station, Ulala. She travels from one crisis to another perpetrated by the Morolians, an alien race of adorable Gumby people. They’ve been going around forcing people to dance, so it’s up to Ulala to go and save the day.
Which is a strange thing for a reporter to do. The whole news program thing doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but it ties into the twist at the end, so whatever.
Gameplay involves being in various situations where dance moves play out in front of Ulala, and she must repeat them. It’s a lot like the old Simon games where you have to repeat a sequence of colored lights. It’s also a bit like Parappa the Rapper, but without the visual cues, and that kind of drives me crazy.
Space Cats
You repeat dance moves by pressing a direction on the stick or either the A or B button. You use the A button to zap aliens and the B button to save people. The scenes change between shootouts, dance-offs, and hostage situations, which is an absolutely bizarre mix. The dance-offs give you a healthbar that gets whittled down whenever you make an error in a section, but for everywhere else, you just need to keep your ratings up. You need to push ratings up past a certain threshold by the end of each level or you fail and have to repeat it.
It can be a bit harsh. You only need to make one mistake during a section of dance-off for you to lose a heart. Likewise, you might not know until the final tally if your rating will meet the threshold to pass a mission. Whenever you fail at one of these criteria, you’re pushed back to the start of the level. They aren’t very long, but I could only stand to hear Ulala say “Fab-u-lous” so many times before I needed to take a break.
Likewise, there are only four levels. While you’re unlikely to beat all of them on your first try, getting through Space Channel 5 doesn’t really take long. Unless you’re a Japanese comedian with no rhythm. After that, there isn’t a whole lot of replay value. You get a harder mode, but I found this absolutely maddening.
Blood on the dance floor
Don’t get me wrong, I found Space Channel 5 to be a pretty enjoyable game. It’s interesting in its absurd flamboyancy. It’s like a late ‘90s Brittany Spears music video on some mind-opening hallucinogens.
The strangest part is when you rescue “Space Michael,” which is a cameo appearance by Michael Jackson. By the late ‘90s, you were either holding onto the notion that Michael Jackson was still cool, or you found him deeply creepy. It’s really unclear which side Space Channel 5 is on because, for one thing, it’s a celebrity cameo, but I don’t know how anyone could see his appearance as cool. To put it charitably, a skin-tight chrome bodysuit doesn’t suit him.
On the other hand, I really had trouble with the lack of visual cues present on screen for a lot of the segments. There are some places where you can see how many button presses you need for each direction. But a lot of the time, it falls on you to memorize. I can do that. Mostly. However, I can’t predict when the game is going to throw it back to me. Sometimes, it will be going through a steady pace of a few prompts before sending it back to you. Then it’ll suddenly switch to throwing out one or two prompts before switching rapidly, and it’s impossible to prepare for.
From Parappa the Rapper to Rock Band, most rhythm games have a visual way of telling you when you need to press buttons. That mechanic hadn’t been proven necessary by 1999, and it hurts the fun of Space Channel 5.
The show’s been cancelled
It also has a weirdly immemorable soundtrack for a rhythm game. It’s not bad, but it really gets lost behind the “Left, shoot, right, shoot, up, shoot, shoot.” I’m not saying it’s a huge issue, it just puzzles me that a rhythm game wouldn’t have more focus on providing a killer soundtrack.
It might sound like I didn’t enjoy Space Channel 5, and that’s not true. I have reservations, but I think it’s an interesting landmark in the gaming landscape. I mostly respect it because it’s such an extravagant presentation of something bizarre. Parappa the Rapper feels like an easygoing experiment, whereas Space Channel 5 busts through the door and starts pelvic thrusting while chanting its own name.
So few games have been so confident of their weirdness and so secure in their flamboyancy. Space Channel 5 is the unemployed couch surfer you defend by saying they have a “great personality.” I’m honestly curious about the VR-only Space Channel 5 VR: Kinda Funky News Flash simply because I honestly don’t believe that the sheer naked style of the first two Space Channel 5 games can convincingly be replicated today.
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