February 29 is a rare day, a perfect date to celebrate with a session of the Final Fantasy-themed musical game Theatrhythm Final Bar Line. However, I’ve got sad news for anyone attempting to celebrate today with a little Theathrythm as the rhythm game just won’t load on this day, specifically.
The situation is a bummer, yes, but worry not as a solution already exists, and the cause for the whole thing is rather hilarious.
It seems like what’s preventing players from joining the servers is that we’re currently existing in the most cursed day of a glitched period in time, the one our calendar lords call “leap year”. Look, I admit that don’t know the complex math behind this cosmic event, but I believe Destructoid’s own Zoey Handley perfectly described it as “a little Y2K that comes ’round every four years”.
This Y2K ordeal becomes twice as hilarious once you remember that Theatrhythm is a mostly offline game. It doesn’t need the Internet, hell, it doesn’t even need to know what time it is. In fact, the good people at Vooks report having tried it on their consoles, and the fix they found was to just change the console’s date to any other date of the year. Thank you, Mr Kojima, you’ve taught us well.
Here’s hoping Square Enix solves this problem soon, or the Theatrhythm fans who are too wise to mess with the authorities of time will have to abruptly find new plans for February 29, 2028.
This is such an interesting failure — or maybe, just maybe, Square Enix is bottlenecking Theatrhythm on purpose to prevent it from completely overshadowing the release of Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, the real competition here all along. There’s just no way of knowing.
Theatrhythm Final Bar Line is usually available on the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch, just not today.
Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth comes out today on the PlayStation 5 and will likely stay available until the great global collapse.
