YMMV / Rhythm Heaven

• Alternate Self Shipping:
  • There are fans who tend to ship the original pop singer from Heaven and her redesign from Megamix together. It helps that even though they're intended to be the same character, they look and sound different enough that they can seen as two different characters (which they're often interpreted as in Fanon).
  • While not common, there are some who tend to ship the normal incarnations of the characters with their incarnations in the remixes. One particular example is MC Adore with her black-haired counterpart in Remix 9.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Chief director Kazuyoshi Osawa was initially nervous and unsure if Tengoku would do well and assumed that it would only attract a niche audience prior to release. To his relief and delight, the game turned out to be a hit.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The final remix (Remix 8) in Tengoku. It goes at a moderate, easy rhythm, and the cues are pretty predictable. The remix also primarily consists of Rhythm Tweezers, in contrast to the remix featuring all the games (which is oddly a Disc-One Final Boss, Remix 6, instead of the final remix). It can be one of the most challenging games in the series if you struggle with Rhythm Tweezers' inputs, though, considering you have to clear it with less than three mistakes for a Superb.
• Best Boss Ever: Both 9th Remixes from Heaven and Fever for having great music and providing a good amount of challenge before their respective 10th Remixes. Bonus points for the Fever version with it's unique visual style.
• Breather Level:
  • Quiz Show in Tengoku. Despite being one of the few mini-games to have insta-fail conditions, you don't actually need any rhythm to pass. Just do as many button inputs as the host. It becomes slightly tougher in Megamix, where you have to follow the host's pattern to get its skill star and higher scores, but it is also the only level in the game where a Perfect can be cheated, thanks to a good bad bug.
  • Night Walk in Tengoku, the level right after Quiz Show, is also simple. It is just pressing A over and over for the entire mini-game. No variation whatsoever. Thankfully, Night Walk 2 actually mixes it up with obstacles.
  • Tap Trial in Tengoku. It's the last non-sequel rhythm game, and it comes right after Fireworks and the other tricky games of the fifth set. However, it only uses one button, the cues are clear and can be seen in the visuals easily, and it's just a fun level in general. Its sequel, while more difficult, is also tamer than the other songs in its set, and it comes right before the climactic Remix 6.
  • Blue Birds is this for the second block of Heaven. After dealing with the strict timing from Rhythm Rally and Shoot-'Em-Up, Blue Birds is a short game with two simple, easy-to-learn patterns. It's usually the easiest to perfect out of the four games.
  • Karate Man in Heaven and Fever is the last main game before you hit the credits, and it usually focuses more on being memorable than being challenging, utilizing no camera trickery, basic controls and timing, and more cues than you probably need.
  • The Dazzles 2 of Heaven offers the least amount of variation from its predecessor, and thus is the most straightforward of the sequel levels in the game. While a few of the cues are slightly different, a side-by-side comparison shows that the inputs ultimately follow the exact same timing.
  • Remix 7 in Heaven, the first Remix after the credits and preceding the much harder eighth block, has a relaxed pace with a Fluffy Cloud Heaven theme and is composed primarily of the relatively easy vocal mini-games in the block (which are only slightly altered from their original versions). Even the surprise games are easy to deal with (albeit well-used). Notably, the only particularly challenging game in the block, a harder version of Built to Scale, is excluded from this remix.
  • Lockstep 2 in Heaven. Even though it's in the eighth block with difficult games like Rhythm Rally 2 and Fillbots 2, its tempo is significantly slower than the original Lockstep, allowing you more time to prepare for switching to the off beats and back. The main gimmick is that it's in swing rhythm, which might throw off your muscle memory, but otherwise doesn't have much effect on its difficulty. This is likely intentional, as the game after it is the notoriously difficult Remix 8.
  • Ringside in Fever. It's already a very simple game with three basic inputs and steady rhythm, but it's made even easier due to Memetic Mutation. Since most of the parody videos are based on a perfect run, anyone familiar with the meme has the rhythm of the song memorized.
  • Exhibition Match in both Fever and Megamix. All the player has to do is keep a mental count of five in their head, and the game only has twelve inputs. The most the game does is perform Interface Screw, but, again, keeping a mental count is enough to easily win. Tellingly, it is grouped in Donut Land alongside the easy-mode games in Megamix, though even then, it is not as difficult as the likes of Bunny Hop and Airboarders.
  • Hole in One 2 in both Fever and Megamix is grouped with much more difficult games (the ninth set with Love Rap 2 and Screwbot Factory 2 in Fever, the Right-Hand Tower with Jumpin' Jazz and Super Samurai Slice 2 in Megamix), and ends up being a relaxing change of pace due to its laidback rhythm and simple cues. It's not much more difficult than its predecessor, which is effectively a tutorial level in Fever.
  • The first part of post-credits content in Megamix is three rhythm game sets leading up to the final encounter with the Gatekeeper Trio. Unlike the previous seven sets, there aren't any Remixes; it's just twelve basic games (three of them new to Megamix) accompanied by humorous exchanges between Tibby and his friends. With the exception of the infamous Ninja Bodyguard and Lockstep, none of them are too tricky, and the sequence is just a warm-up for the Fourth Gate (Clap Trap, which is both expensive to purchase chances for, and tricky in its own right) and the final three sets (which include both challenging sequels and the biggest Remixes in the game).
  • Working Dough 2 is this in Megamix. While it's suitably difficult in the eighth set of Fever, in Megamix it's in the final tower, sandwiched between the dreaded Cosmic Rhythm Rally and the incredibly fast Karate Man Senior. It's slower and less tricky than those two high-speed games.
• Broken Base:
  • Is the "Go for a Perfect!" system a good way to curb unhealthily obsessive attempts at getting Perfects on stages, or is it a Scrappy Mechanic that adds much-unneeded pressure?
  • Megamix using the original version of Night Walk from Tengoku over the updated Fever version. While many don't have an issue and are happy to see the original version be playable outside of Japan, there are some who are disappointed with the decision, finding the remake in Fever to be superior to the original, particularly with regards to its music.
  • Lockstep. Many view it as That One Level due to its strict and difficult timing (as you have to stay on the beat constantly and quickly switch between on and off-beats with little leeway), as well as its near lack of visual cues, being entirely reliant on audio cues. Others, however, love it precisely for those aforementioned reasons, viewing it as a perfect encapsulation of what the series is about and a true test of the player's sense of rhythm. The simple but charming visuals and great music accompanying the rhythm game also help it.
• Common Knowledge:
  • It's commonly known that some games allow for "barely" inputs^note When you almost hit an input correctly, but are either too early or too late to pass the game. It's less known that this only applies to Perfect runs in Heaven, since during a normal run, "barely" inputs still register as a miss (arguably making some games like Lockstep harder to get a Superb on than a Perfect). Some people also believe that this applies to some games in Fever, like Flipper-Flop, which doesn't have the system to begin with.
  • Some fans believe that the animation of the ball entering the hole in Hole in One is correlated to how on the beat you are. It's not; it's completely random. The confusion likely stems from one animation (the ball landing outside the hole, then sliding in) implying you were early or late, but it can play even if you're perfectly on the beat, as Megamix demonstrates.
  • It's not hard to find players mistaking two different characters as being one and the same, even on this very wiki. This is often because of their nebulous nature and/or having similar designs.
    • The titular Munchy Monk and the player character from Packing Pests. They look the same and both are talented at swift hand movements, but the Curtain Call shows us they have different names (The latter is named Employee #333-4-591032) and the unlockable reading material gives them different lore.
    • "Girl" from Tap Trial is designed quite similarly to the unnamed girl on the title screen of Fever. The latter even serves the same role that the former did in Heaven: holding the controller and demonstrating to the player what to do to begin the game. Despite this, there's no evidence to suggest they're the same person or related in any way. This hasn't stopped fans from assuming as much.
    • Night Walk from Tengoku makes a return in Fever, but with completely reimagined music and visuals. The player character is also changed from Play-yan to Marshall. However, the design of both characters is essentially the same: completely white simplistic bodies with no clothes. This change has led many to mistakenly think they're meant to be the same person.
    • Despite only appearing in half of all the mainline games, the three Chorus Kids are often viewed as the most iconic characters of the series, if not outright the mascots of Rhythm Heaven. Because of this, many who play Fever for the first time will mistakenly think Marshall is one of the trio, since he introduces himself as the host/guide. He's not related to them. This is, yet again, likely due to their similar designs.
• Cult Classic: The series manages to have a very dedicated audience, despite only having four games and being easily overshadowed by its sister series, WarioWare.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • See-Saw in Fever, while not difficult on its own, is a bump in difficulty considering it is in the first set, with two different patterns that can get confusing to follow along to, and mild camera screw during the high jumps. For comparison, the only other somewhat challenging level in Set 1 is Screwbot Factory, with Hole in One and Double Date being significantly easier. Megamix, meanwhile, placed the level in Comet Land with the likes of the fast-paced Munchy Monk and the similarly two-patterned Blue Bear.
  • Monkey Watch tends to be a major roadblock for new players of Fever, due to it being the first "keep the beat" game where you aren't given any audio cues, as well as being the first game to heavily use off-beats (with the purple monkeys). It's placed in the second set alongside games that have much simpler rhythms with obvious cues (Fork Lifter, Board Meeting, and Tambourine), which makes its difficulty stick out. As a result, a lot of people either turn to the internet for help or just skip it entirely. In Megamix, it's relegated to being a bonus game, so you're likely to have experience with more complicated games before playing it for the first time.
  • Airboarders in Heaven is the credits minigame, making it not a spike in difficulty compared to the sixth and seventh sets. Come Megamix, however, and the game is sandwiched in the easy-mode stages in Donut Land despite its prior placement, and comes off as significantly more tricky as a result. While Bunny Hop and Tongue Lashing also have some tricky timing, neither are quite as troublesome as Airboarders, and Exhibition Match is a Breather Level even by the standards of the set.
  • Super Samurai Slice in Megamix, despite being placed with the easy-mode games, can be tricky to follow along to, particularly with the large demons, which require especially precise timing with the button holding to defeat. The previous three games in Songbird Land are not nearly so challenging, but its spike is somewhat mitigated due to being followed by the Third Gate and the Lush Tower.
• Disappointing Last Level: The last third of the Medal rewards and post-game content in Heaven are based off of Rockers & its sequel, which involves a Scrappy Mechanic. After you unlock Rhythmove Dungeon, there's no real motivation to collect Medals other than that and unlocking chances for Perfect runs.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Despite only having his minigame playable in one game, DJ Yellow is one of the most popular characters in the series due to his happy personality and the fun, simple nature of his game.
  • MC Adore is one of the most popular female characters for her laid-back personality, cool voice in both English and Japan, and curvy design.
  • The Tall Tappers are also pretty popular characters despite their minigame only appearing in Fever, for similar reasons as DJ Yellow (having a happy, fun-loving personality). Their similarity to the also popular Space Dancers/Paddlers also help.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Rhythm Tengoku is often called "Rhythm Heaven Silver", due to the popular Fan Translation of the game being titled that. As a consequence of this translation, most of the games have fan nicknames for the English fandom, though Megamix provide official titles for several games (the translation was released in between Fever and Megamix). It remains to be seen whether the translation will be updated to include the official names, especially since lead translator W hat dislikes much of the new names.
  • DJ Yellow's student in Heaven is often referred to as DJ Blue; the cast roll just calls him Student.
  • The girl who appears in Tap Trial has been nicknamed "Rhythm Girl" by the fandom due to her frequently being depicted as The Face in most of the games, particularly by the Super Smash Bros. fandom. Officially, she's just a nameless girl, though obscure dialogue from the Japanese version of Nintendo Badge Arcade gives her the name "Yuka."
  • The idol who performs in Fan Club from Heaven is unnamed and is only referred to as "Pop Singer" in-game.^note She is named in the French and Italian localizations, however. She is named "Anita Dinamita" (Anita Dynamite) in Spanish, and "Corin Pop" in Italian. That said, these names are likely non-canon since she is unnamed in most other versions of the game, including the original Japanese version (where she is just referred to as "Idol"). Many fans, however, have decided to give her the name "Erina" after Erina Hashiguchi, who voiced her in the Japanese version of Heaven. Likewise, the redesigned Pop Singer from Megamix is named "Arisa" by the fandom after Arisa Hario, her voice actress in the Japanese version of Megamix.
• Fanon:
  • The music in Heaven's Love Lab and Megamix's Pajama Party are extremely similar, especially the singing in the two. Thus, it's a popular fan theory that Mako (the girl in Pajama Party) is the child of the couple from Love Lab.
  • The Pop Singer in Megamix's incarnation of Fan Club is intended to be a redesign of the Pop Singer from Heaven's version of Fan Club. However, fans opt to interpret them as two separate characters instead due to their different designs and voices in Japanese (the Pop Singer was voiced by Erina Hashiguchi in Heaven and Arisa Hario in Megamix).^note The English localization simply reuses the English vocals from the DS version.
  • Many fans interpret the boy from Kung Fu Ball as being Young Cricket, due to their highly similar designs. This would later become Ascended Fanon come Young Cricket's character trailer for WarioWare Gold. His partner from said game is occasionally portrayed as a friend or love interest, often being named "Young Dragonfly"- though Move It would officially name her as Cicada.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • "Donk Donk" has one of the most bizarre concepts for a minigame, as it deals with an octopus commanding rhythm-electrodes to make a rocket fly. This weirdness extends to the rhythm itself: it focuses primarily on triplets (Dit-dit-DAH dit-dit-DAH), which are rarely used through the rest of the game.
  • One minigame in Fever is called "Cheer Readers" and revolves around a group of girls who encourage other people to read more books. In a stereotypical Engrish speech, the word "Cheerleader" would be pronounced as "Cheer reader".
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • The Rhythm Heaven and WarioWare fandoms tend to be incredibly close and interconnected with each other due to their visual and gameplay similarities (despite their different genres) owing to both sharing many of the same developers. It helps that both franchises are implied to share the same setting, with characters from both franchises frequently crossing over into each other.
  • There is a very good relationship between fans of Rhythm Heaven and fans of Parappa The Rapper, due to both being quirky Japanese rhythm games with a cast of memorable characters, many of whom are anthropomorphic animals.
  • Rhythm Heaven fans also tend to get along well with fans of Friday Night Funkin'. It helps that Girlfriend from the latter is directly inspired by the Tap Trial girl from the former.
• Good Bad Bugs: At least in Megamix, Quiz Show is the only game where you can flunk out through the tutorial. As a result, you can score a Perfect on the game by failing the tutorial, since you haven't technically "started" yet!
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The pose that the Fever Board Meeting pigs strike before they begin spinning in their chairs strongly resembles dabbing.
• Ho Yay:
  • Many fans like to ship DJ Yellow and his student, often interpreting the two as good Energetic and Soft-Spoken Duo material, and interpreting DJ Yellow as Camp Gay and his student as Straight Gay.
  • The male Lumbercats fixate on how big and strong the woodcutter bear is, even calling him "handsome" during the tutorial. The double meaning of the word "bear" only makes it easier to read it this way.
• I Am Not Shazam: Many people refer to the lizards from Love Lizards as... well, "Love Lizards", when they're actually called Güíro Lizards. What doesn't help is that one trophy description from Super Smash Bros. also called them "Love Lizards".
• I Knew It!: This promotional video for WarioWare Gold reveals that the boy in Kung-Fu Ball is indeed Young Cricket, which was a common fan theory among fans prior.
• Magnificent Bastard (Megamix): Paprika is the eldest of the Gatekeeper Trio who deals in challenges and difficult tests. Alongside his brothers, he interrupts Tibby's journey to return home to Heaven World on four occasions, running gates based on the Endless Games for the player to clear each time. Outside of the main campaign, he also manages the Challenge Train and Perfect Campaigns, with his titular group of the former consisting of some of the most difficult tasks in the game. Despite enjoying seeing the player struggle with his objectives, Paprika gladly accepts defeat should the player succeed, rewarding them with Flow Balls to purchase Rhythm Games at the Café.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Man, Suki's gonna die..."/"She must really hate Suki."^ExplanationBefore Fever was localized, fans of the Japanese Love Rap would choose to interpret the lyrics as a song about wanting to kill a girl named Suki, as the main song lyric is "Daisuki!" Once the English version was released, fans started joking that the singer got over her hatred of Suki.
  • Remix 8 of Heaven and Remix 10 of Fever have a lot of parodies on the net, with animators taking the levels' songs and concepts and swapping the in-game characters with characters from other media. One example being Fever's Remix 10 being used with a Kamen Rider theme, seen here.
  • Remix 9 of Fever isn't nearly as retooled as the previous two, but a rather popular one does exist based off of Pokémon.
  • It's become popular to make custom Remixes by using the sound effects from the games. Particularly popular picks are music tracks from other video games.
  • In the comments sections of Rhythm Heaven-related media (mostly Custom Remixes on YouTube), you're bound to see at least one comment based upon the rating screens of the minigames.
  • "Wubba dubba dubba, 'zat true?" / "Whoa, you go, big guy!"^note The insanely catchy lines from the reporter in Ringside. The original Japanese version goes like: "Piki-piki-piki desu ka?" / "Eeeh, sugoi desu ne!" Replacing the wrestler in Ringside with a random character, celebrity, or meme has also been popular since the game launched in Japan in 2011.
  • "BA BUM BUM BUM!"^ExplanationThis line comes from Forthington in "Air Rally", his No Indoor Voice during the song adds flavor to the mix.
  • "Monkey! MONKEY HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"^ExplanationIn May 2020, Timotainment streamed a playthrough of Fever. When he got to the first minigame, Hole in One, he is greeted with a monkey. Before he could introduce himself, Tim called him a monkey, and hysterically laughed after he did.
    • The monkeys later became a meme themselves in the Rhythm Heaven community after that.
  • Rhythm Hell^ExplanationA parody animation made by Louie Zong depicting a ludicrously difficult Rhythm Heaven-style minigame. Fans have taken to putting this into other rhythm games and/or proving that it is, in fact, possible to beat.
    • Rhythm Purgatory^ExplanationAnother parody animation from the same creator, which has gained an equal amount of notoriety for the opposite reason: this “game” consists of doing absolutely nothing for over a minute, with the only note being at the very end of the song.
• Moe: All of the Cheer Readers are completely adorable with their peppy personalities and their giant glasses, but of note is the Cheer Reader that the player plays as, who makes failing a move seem not so bad.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The clear sound and the music that plays when you receive the Superb or a Perfect rank in any game is incredibly satisfying to hear. Even more-so after completing a tough and grueling rhythm game prior.
• More Popular Replacement: The incarnation of Pop Singer from Megamix has become far more popular amongst fans than the original incarnation from Heaven, as many found Megamix's Pop Singer to be far cuter and to have more personality than the original incarnation.
• Narm Charm: Most of the appeal of the series, especially the vocal songs based around The Power of Love. The lyrics (and occasionally singing) can be hilariously bad, but oftentimes they can wrap back around and wind up being adorable. They are written by Hello! Project producer Tsunku after all, and the cheesiness of the lyrics are typical of Japanese idol songs.
• Nintendo Hard:
  • The series is known for being rhythmically strict. There's no "Marvelous", "Great", or "Good" for each beat, either you hit it or you didn't. It becomes even more suffocating when you have to go for a "Perfect". Megamix is a little different; the main timing window a little looser, making medals and Perfects a bit easier to obtain. However, a tighter "Ace" window exists, making it extremely difficult to get maximum points.
  • The way the games grade your performance flies directly in the face of common rhythm game logic. Whereas almost every other rhythm game in existence scores you note-for-note, this series instead grades two or three specific areas and bases your score based on how well you did in each of those. A perfect example comes in Heaven's Built to Scale: You can play the entire rest of the level flawlessly, but if you mess up on the very last note, you'll still only get an OK rating because that last note is graded all by itself. Megamix at least attempts to steer away from this by giving you a numeric score at the end that tells you how close you are to the next rating, so you can at least gauge your progress instead of doing your best and praying the game liked it enough.
  • Tengoku has an arcade port where you play one block of six stages. The catch? Getting less than a Superb costs you one life, and you only get three lives.^note Okay, so technically, you use up one life when you enter a stage, and get it back on a Superb. Still the same end result. Yes, that means getting an OK instead of Try Again will still cost you one life! Worse, the cabinet buttons are somewhat poorly constructed, resulting in buttons getting stuck frequently—pray it doesn't go off on a platform edge in Night Walk!
  • Megamix has challenge courses that require you to play several games in a row under a "three strikes" system. Many of them increase the tempo of the games, and require nailing a lot of Aces, finishing the game with less than three misses, or getting scores well above the medal threshold.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: While Rhythm Heaven Megamix has been praised for its large collection of rhythm games spanning across the series history, as well as new additions like the challenge train, the story mode has been criticized by fans and critics due to its pacing and how much it tends to drag on.
• Rainbow Lens: The song "Beautiful One Day" from Fever, a song about recovering from hardships and finding yourself, has been read by some as a metaphor for being transgender. For reference, here's the lyrics.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Using the R button (or L, depending on your dominant hand) in Rockers 2. It's the only time you have to use any buttons in the game, and it's difficult to time how long to hold the button. If your console's shoulder buttons happen to be broken,^note  which was a common occurrence due to their poor durability then scoring any higher than "Try Again" is impossible, and you'll have to just skip it. This also means you're locked out of the rewards yielded by getting a Superb rank or Perfect clear.
  • The "Go for a Perfect!" award system. Getting a Perfect on a minigame not only requires a perfect run, but also that the minigame be marked for a Perfect challenge or it doesn't count. One minigame is marked at a time and you only get three chances, and quitting out of said minigame counts as using up one of those chances. Ultimately, the biggest concern isn't just playing perfectly, it's doing so under the pressure of limited opportunities. Adding to frustration is the fact that mechanic stays intact even if you already beat all the levels of the game normally, which means you'll have to replay the same levels over and over again just for another Perfect challenge to show up. This is alleviated somewhat once you get a superb rank on all stages, as it changes the Perfect challenges to always be available, but still only for one stage at a time, which the game picks at random.
  • While Perfects are tough to get, they make it obvious what the rhythm game registers as a mistake, and everything is weighed equally. The normal ranking system that determines Try Again/OK/Just OK/Superb can be annoyingly obtuse in comparison. Most games grade you on two or three categories related to how well you do at certain parts, but these can vary in how much they expect, and certain actions (usually the last part of the song) matter enough that messing up on them will get you a Just OK even if everything else was hit. For the toughest games, you have to play them more or less perfect to fulfill the Superb requirements, even if you only care about getting medals and not Perfects. Megamix mostly drops this by having games rank you by a standard score meter, which is less confusing and more forgiving.
  • Flicking in Heaven, due to being a motion-based input and therefore being rather inconsistent on detection. Even though there's an option for touch screen controls in Megamix, it completely removed flicking, and returning Heaven games that had flicking are reworked to use button inputs instead.
  • Buying the Extra Games in Megamix. You buy them using Flow Balls, which you gain by either clearing a Perfect chance, or clearing one of the challenges. You only get one Flow Ball when you clear a Perfect campaign, and it occurs only for each game once. Challenges can offer up to 3 Flow Balls depending on the difficulty, the catch being that Flow Balls are only awarded once, when you complete each Challenge for the first time. In addition, unless you play Multiplayer, each challenge costs coins every time you attempt one. Counting all the perfects and challenges means there's only 184 Flow Balls you can obtain, with the combined total cost of all the extra games being 144 Flow Balls (which leaves about 40 left over). What makes it more frustrating is the challenges in the later worlds include some of the extra games, at heightened difficulty no less. So it's ironically common that the challenge will be the player's first time playing the minigame at all, and they need to pass in order to buy the minigame for themself (though they do involve practice, though there's still the issue of increased tempo in the main game).
  • In Megamix, making a single mistake during a Perfect Campaign will instantly end the game, which would be convenient, except A: you might still want to play the rest of the game to refresh your memory on any tricks that might pop up later in the level, and B: you have to watch the game over screen (which takes longer than pausing and quitting the stage manually) and listen to Paprika's dialogue for starting a perfect campaign every time, which is bound to wear down your patience and make the next attempt slightly harder.
• Self-Fanservice: Characters like MC Adore and the Wrestler are already Fanservice material as is, but fans often like to take more modestly cute characters — such as Rhythm Girl, the Reporter, Ann Glerr, T.J. Snapper, and the Double Date couple — and make them more sexually pleasing than they are. Sometimes, even abstract characters like the Chorus Kids or the Huebirds will be anthropomorphized.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • Doing a "blind" run (e.g. with a blindfold, unplugging the video sub-cable of your AV cable, or simply looking away from the screen) and relying solely on sound cues. It works for most games, though some (such as Night Walk 2 in Tengoku) still force you to use a few visual cues.
  • Having the screen on but the music off is possible in most games. The rhythm is still there, but only visually and internally.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop:
  • It's generally agreed that Tengoku was much harder than its sequels, with just a few misses resulting in a "Try Again" in most games.
  • Megamix is more forgiving for newer players by having explicitly easier versions of some returning games, and by giving certain other games tune-ups in places (most noticeable in Karate Man, which does away with the "power" mechanic from its original version that caused you to fail boulder punches if you hadn't built up a long enough streak beforehand, and Rat Race, which has light signals where there were none in its original incarnation). That said, certain Challenge Train sets can still catch even seasoned veterans off guard, often being several orders of magnitude tougher than even Tengoku at its fiercest.
• Signature Song: "Remix 10" from Fever is often used in memes due to containing bits of every song in the game, leading to edits where the characters are replaced with characters from a different work.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: For veterans of the series, Megamix gets hit with this hard. Four out of the first six sets of games are "easy mode" variants of games whose normal versions (and, in a few cases, even their hard variants) most seasoned players can take on with their eyes closed. This wouldn't be quite so bad if there weren't also the lengthy, unskippable cutscenes in between each of these sets, making this portion of the game drag on for even longer. But wait, there's more! As if all that wasn't bad enough, you also have to clear three Endless Game challenges, one after each even-numbered set. Once all of this is finally completed, the Lush Tower and the towers that follow finally bring the game back to the familiar "four games, then remix" format and do away with the "easy mode" games for good. However, it's still an agonizing slog to get to that point, one that some franchise veterans might not have the patience for.
• So Bad, It's Good:
  • The English dub vocals in the songs in the DS installment, most flagrantly "Thrilling! Is This Love?". The song lyrics were translated accurately and match the rhythm cues, but not in a way that flows well with the music, and the flat tone of the singer doesn't help. "Struck By The Rain" fares better than the other songs since it was sung by Hello! Project singer Ayaka Kimura.
  • For a non-musical example, the English vocal cues for Space Dance are hilariously awful, even by Rhythm Heaven localization standards. Imagine a high-pitched voice (that occasionally becomes low-pitched) with what sounds like a mixture of hysterically bad British and French accents shouting "AND POSE!", "LET'S SIT DOWN!", and "Tap tap tap PUNCH!" at the top of its lungs, and you've got a pretty good idea. Even better, the voice doesn't fit the characters at all (for reference, they're the same guys from Rhythm/Cosmic Rally). Either you'll be making a mad dash for the option to switch the soundtrack to Japanese, or you'll be too busy rolling with laughter to care.
• Surprise Difficulty:
  • Hey, there's cute graphics and a song consisting only of do-re-mi-fa-so. All you have to do is flick to the song to get a bolt through two pieces of metal. This is going to be a piece of cake! Of course, you'll likely still be on Built to Scale after multiple tries, due to pulling a particularly nasty trick near the end. And even if you blaze past the first few stages, the first remix will hit you as hard as any Wake-Up Call Boss.
  • For an Endless game, Samurai Slice in Heaven only needs 17 Medals to unlock, but can get more complex than Battle Of The Bands.
  • Flipper-Flop is an adorable game about directing cute seals through a marching drill. It may become less cute when going for a Perfect, because like all lockstep-based games it involves consistent button-pressing to be maintained for a couple minutes, and the timing is especially tight.
  • Donk-Donk and Shrimp Shuffle are other games with deceptively tight input windows.
  • Various minigames, especially in earlier entries of the series, require you to have a flawless run to even get a medal. Make a single slip-up, especially at a crucial point in the stage? OK at best.
  • Karate Man Senior is surprisingly difficult even by series standards. Oh sure, you're already used to the Karate Man games in the previous iterations being easy (see Breather Level), but you'll come to find that you really shouldn't take it lightly very quickly.
  • The Clappy Trio (the Megamix version) is one of the easiest games, since all the cues are slow and spaced out. Then The Clappy Trio 2 (Tengoku's Clappy Trio 1) and The Snappy Trio speed up the cues considerably, and you realize that the only hint you're getting about the timing is the space between the first and second clap. Other games that use "Trio Timing" usually keep the timing for each set of cues consistent, but here it fluctuates between "so long you might forget the exact timing and miss" and "so fast there's no way a normal person could have reacted to that without memorizing the cues", making them into Trial-and-Error Gameplay.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The beat for Bunny Hop matches a bit too well with Mike's theme from WarioWare Touched. Demonstrated here by SiIvaGunner. It also sounds similar to Greased Lighting from Grease, demonstrated here.
  • "Lockstep 2" has a heavy resemblance to "The Sweet Escape" by Gwen Stefani.
  • The chorus of "Hole in One" is strikingly similar to the main chorus of "She Believes in Me" by Kenny Rogers.
• That One Attack: Many a level has an input (or segment) that can be tricky to nail down. The game knows it, too, and would set a Superb criteria or Skill Star there. Examples include:
  • "Ninja Bodyguard" demands you hit four arrows in quick succession in one cue. Its successor, "Ninja's Descendant," has one where you have to hit five arrows, and another where you have two arrows spaced so closely together they're almost instantaneous.
  • "The Snappy Trio" has a near-instantaneous triple-clap at the song's climax. Miss it and you miss the Superb (or Skill Star).
  • Two of the mini-songs in "Big Rock Finish" barely give you any time to work out the tempo before you have to strum the inputs.
  • "Fillbots 2" has two robots, one in the middle and one at the end, that fall on sixteenth-note offbeats. The music doesn't do much to help you there.
  • Remix 8 of Rhythm Heaven is already pretty fast, but the final segment of the remix gets steadily faster even though you're still doing a steady beat of flicks.
  • As you close off the chorus of "Tap Troupe," you go into the other rhythm that the minigame's drilled you on, but the final tap to resume the regular tapping rhythm has a slight delay that the Practice never warned you about, which catches many a player off-guard on the first round.
  • "Working Dough 2" has a few cues that are devoid of any accompanying music.
  • The Machine Remix of Megamix has some devious Rhythm Tweezer segments that mix rapid inputs which are much harder than other Rhythm Tweezer cues that the rest of the game offers.
• That One Boss:
  • Remix 5 in the first game. First off, Remix 5 has Fireworks and its really difficult timing. At least it mostly focuses on Tap Trial and gives countdown cues to Fireworks.
  • Remix 6 of Heaven can become a major stumbling block. Its transition from Space Soccer to Lockstep can cause the input to not register, creating misses through no fault of the player. It also tries to throw you off by switching Space Soccer to Lockstep before you can even kick the ball. What makes it worse is the fact that this level cannot be skipped if the player gets three Try Again ratings on it due to being the Disc-One Final Boss, meaning they need to score an OK to access the sequel minigames.
  • Remix 8 in Heaven is ridiculously high-tempo and includes the difficult Rhythm Rally (at breakneck speed), Fillbots (and its really difficult timing, especially at the speed said remix goes at), and Lockstep. It's towards the end, when the game gradually starts to speed up, that things turn sour real quick.
  • Remix 7 in Fever, due to including both Tap Troupe and Shrimp Shuffle, which are considered That One Level. It's just as hard to get a Perfect on this remix as those two minigames. Just like Remix 6 in Heaven, this level cannot be skipped due to being Fever's Disc-One Final Boss.
  • Remix 8 in Fever. It includes a lot of tricky games such as Exhibition Match (one of the few games where you have to keep time yourself), Air Rally (which uses slow cues, unlike when it was in Remix 3), and Built to Scale (a game that relies on visual cues), and is speedy overall.
  • The one remix that gains a lot of flak for its difficulty in Megamix is the Machine Remix. The Rhythm Tweezers sections near the end are very tricky, and require fast memory and reflexes.
• That One Level: Has its own page.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Feeding the goat to level 200 in Megamix. First off, it's done via a Pachinko game, which is jarringly out of place in a series that, to this point, has utilized nothing but rhythm. Then it's a long grind to level the thing up (to put it in perspective, by the time you've Perfected every rhythm game, completed all of the Challenges, and bought every item in the store, your goat will probably be at around level 60 if you've been extremely lucky). And as a final slap in the face, the last 10 levels veer straight into Nintendo Hard territory by requiring literally pixel perfect shots, especially the last level which requires the turnip to bounce off a lone peg in such a way that it bounces backwards into a very tiny hole. While the feeding minigame goes on infinitely, it's likely that, by the time you manage to reach level 200 for what will likely be your last medal, you'll never want to so much as look at it ever again.
  • Megamix introduces a Challenge Mode, in which you must complete a set of stages with additional conditions on top. Some of the most complained-about are:
    • "Copycats"^note Appropriately labeled "Super Hard!", even among the other Paprika challenges has you play Rhythm Tweezers, First Contact, and Working Dough, along with their sequels, without missing at all (you get 1 miss on Working Dough). You'll have tempo up to deal with too. All these games have a lot of inputs, particularly Working Dough, so this one can be a pain to complete.
    • "Round-Object Fan Club": One of the conditions is to clear Flipper-Flop 2 with 3 or fewer missed inputs. There are 230 inputs in Flipper-Flop 2, and it is one of the most demanding stages with timing. It's also sped up. It's not as grueling as "Lockstep Lockdown," but it is located much earlier in the challenge list.
    • "Extreme Sports"^note Appropriately labeled "Super Hard!": Despite its location at roughly the middle of the game's set of challenges, this is one of the hardest challenges in the entire game. Playing Air Rally at double speed is insane enough, but there's Exhibition Match at the end. It's set under Monster conditions, meaning the stage slowly shrinks until it's small enough for the monster to eat (which is an automatic failure), but getting perfect timing on an input increases the size of the screen. Exhibition Match has the second fewest inputs of any stage in the game^note at twelve, after this game's version of The Clappy Trio, which has one fewer input, and so you have the fewest chances to prevent the monster from eating the stage. "Extreme Sports" is also seven stages long^note Spaceball, Rhythm Rally, Hole in One, Air Rally, Fruit Basket 2, Figure Fighter 2, and Exhibition Match, all of them at double speed, so it's a huge uphill climb just to get to Exhibition Match.
    • "Lockstep Lockdown"^note Appropriately labeled "Super Hard!", and known as "Lockstep Hell" in the Japanese version, fittingly enough: See the description for Lockstep above? Try playing it four times in a row, and you only get to miss a beat 3 times total before you're eliminated. Also, each iteration of Lockstep is sped up more than the previous one.
    • "Rhythm Safari": At seven stages long^note Bunny Hop, Rat Race, LumBEARjack 2, Blue Birds, Flock Step, Kitties!, and Fan Club 2, this is one of the longer challenges. But what elevates this one to That One Stage status is that it is entirely at double speed and contains stages that are already incredibly up-tempo and have short cues at normal speed, rendering some of them, like Bunny Hop and Rat Race, near-unplayable.
    • "Hello, Ladies...": At eight stages in a row^note Fan Club, The Dazzles, Cheer Readers, Pajama Party, Exhibition Match, Hole in One 2, Jungle Gymnast, and Ringside, all of them at double speed, it requires incredible consistency and accuracy to clear in spite of being the longest challenge in the entire game. They also have stricter requirements than normal for their types of goals, such as fewer allowed missed inputs or a higher minimum score in order to pass.
    • The Monster Challenges. First off, they tend to get paired with Increased Tempo. To complete this type of challenge you have to avoid letting the game screen fall all the way into a monsters mouth, where it will get eaten, which is done by getting Aces (hitting the cues perfectly). If you fail get enough Aces to survive, the monster unleashes a startling roar and eats the screen, automatically ending the game right then and there. Getting Flow Balls is hard enough without the threat of a Scare Chord.
  • The multiplayer endless game Clap Trap in Fever. All the player has to do is time the pressing of A after three beats. Problem is, there's no music, just dead silence, and the beat sequences come out of nowhere at various speeds. As such, it's more a reflex game than a rhythm game, and waiting about twenty seconds in dead silence only to be caught off-guard by a super fast beat sequence can feel like a Jump Scare. It's also unfavorable to play it with a second player as intended, since that means both players need to be on the ball for every cue. In Megamix, it's the final Gatekeeper Trial, so you have to beat it to progress in the game.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Many fans of Heaven do not like the redesigns for the Dazzles in Megamix, feeling that basing them off of real-life actors makes them come off as jarring compared to the more cartoony art-style of the rest of the game.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Despite Megamix being touted as a celebration of the series' history and being the first game to have a full-fledged story mode, none of the franchise's large cast of characters are present in Megamix's story mode (outside of the Barista, who is present at the cafe like usual and is implied to be the story mode's narrator), which instead focuses on an entirely new cast of characters completely disconnected from the rhythm games. While this is an understandable choice, given the sheer size of the cast, many fans are disappointed that the game passed on an opportunity to flesh out the pre-existing characters outside of the rhythm games. Especially given how interesting a lot of them are.
• Undesirable Prize: Some of the bonus games in Megamix can become this, due to how underwhelming they are. Quiz Show and Big Rock Finish are often cited examples, with BRF being more tolerated due to a Game-Breaking Bug that increases input window leniency, but there's also generally such a bias towards games from Fever that said games stand out more than if there was an even distribution of games. It doesn't help that the player can only use Flow Balls to purchase the games, meaning that they can potentially need to beat multiple Challenge Train levels just to get Catch of the Day for 100% Completion.
• Unfortunate Character Design: In the Japanese version of Megamix, Trey has big, pink lips as opposed to a simple line-smile and a pink nose. Considering that his skin/wood color is brown and that his hair/leaves are cut roughly into a shape of an afro, it's justified why Nintendo of America removed his lips.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • So, is the second rocker a girl or a guy? The Try Again message for Rockers has the first rocker call the second "man", but for rock stars, "man" could be a gender-neutral term. Maybe the second rocker shares the player's gender?
  • The kid whose pinwheel got stolen in the Fever version of Samurai Slice is called "Pinwheel Boy", but it's hard to tell. Megamix even goes and renames them to "Pinwheel Girl", furthering the confusion.
• Viewer Species Confusion: Despite one of the rhythm games in Megamix being named LumBEARjack, its player character looks more canine-like (fitting with the Lumbercats that assist him), leading to some "Timberwolf" jokes.
• Woolseyism: The localizations of Fever and Megamix were fairly well-received, especially in comparison to the DS version.

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