VJ: Visual & Music Slap

How come there hasn´t been a thread about this yet?



It´s basically a Rhythm Game by Jaleco that uses 4 monitors. One for the game itself, and three linked ones that are mainly for showing a Music Video. One feature of note is that there are 2 Video choices, called Visuals, for each stage in the game. Before a stage, you select between one Visual or the Other, and the Visuals have their own name.

VJ: Visual & Music Slap uses 6 buttons and a ´´Mixing Lever.´´ 3 of the buttons are Beatmania-style Audio buttons which are on the left, and 3 square buttons on the right for Visuals, intended for showing the Music Video. There is also a big knob above the Visual buttons. This knob can be rotated and moved in 8 directions, and you need to move it into specific directions or spin it for a specific amount of time during gameplay. There is also a Free Hold note where you can either spin the knob or move the knob around a bit for the duration of the note.

It´s quite an interesting game, and it looked quite impressive for 1999. Unfortunately, it´s now quite obscure, I couldn´t find news of a second game, and I could only find one very low quality gameplay video.

Well, you just answered your own question.

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This looks terrible.

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there's no cabs around anywhere because konami refused to sell upgrade kits to any arcade that had this machine, so all of them got dumped

This game was made by JALECO, not Komani.

So? You could turn a DDR machine into an ITG one and ITG was made by a different company?

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You can´t say the same for Beatmania and VJ. What other game uses a knob that can be both moved and rotated?

So a turntable that's ALSO a joystick? I...I don't like the sound of that.

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i know

i'm saying that konami would refuse to sell their kits (i believe for GFDM?) to any arcade who had a VJ machine

I enjoyed playing this game last week het local event Rhythmfest. The game is more fun than you might thing, the music and visual sure make it a very special arcade. Also the machine was in a very good condition.

There's something wonderfully cack about Jaleco's cab designs for its music games. Like the designers looked at what Konami was doing and thought that 4x the screens would mean 4x the sales. They did this shit on Stepping Selection too.

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I mean Jaleco were always just making knock-offs of other people's games that just weren't as good with stupid design choices.

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I certainly love the idea of having effect keys dedicated to it's videos.

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Oh God the videos. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is sponsored by ClipArt, and My Sharona is a fever dream and a half.

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One has to wonder how drunk or full of crack the Jaleco employees at the time were when they decided to ripoff beatmania (Visual & Music Slap) and DDR (Stepping Stage/Stepping Selection).

I bet Jaleco is to rhythm games what Data Design Interactive is to Wii shovelware and D3Publisher is to low-budget PS2 titles (mostly of the Simple 2000 Series line) but we've known that for eternity.

As someone who likes arcade games of all sorts and has researched a lot about them, they did this a lot. They ripped off Rastan, Final Fight, Chase H.Q., several Sega racing games... the list goes on. They never really made BAD games, just ones that were never as good as the thing they were trying to compete with. They do have some good games, though. Saint Dragon is a great experimental shmup while E.D.F. is a more conventional one.

Searching into their history, I also found this weird Jaleco game called Rock'n Tread where you seem to play both guitar and drums at the same time. And it has HOT LIMIT before DDR had it.

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Rock 'n Trend uses just standard buttons (a la Pop'n) for controls. There isn't an actual Guitar or Drum set. I think you guys would be surprised to see how complicated the VJ and Stepping PCBs are.

Just to make the unholy trilogy complete, here's footage of Stepping Stage's arcade machine. And yes, the cheesy videos gets its own screen.





Kiss Me All Night Rong Long's dancer looks familiar; I think it's the guy from the Galaxy Express 999 theme song video from Stepping Selection.

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Oh hey, you can actually listen to VJ's soundtrack here. XD

https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/vj-visual-and-music-slap

The music is... okay. A good chunk of it sounds very samey.

Compare this to Beatmania 1st-3rd, which was probably around the same time this game came out; you can distinctly tell apart each song, even though a quarter of them were made by DJ Nagureo or Hiroshi Watanabe.

VJ's songs kinda blend into each other.

The album contains more songs than the arcade can play.
In the settings window of the machine, there are 20 slots for Music and 20 for Visuals.

Songs i have seen:
Y.M.C.A
Can't give you anything
Fantasy
Let's groove
Monkey brain
Lay your napkin
Phychometry
Back to the...
Silent harlem
Fascinating Lady
Clap your hands
Loopers
Dear my darlin'
Luxurious ghost
Confused
Intersection
Visuals:
Spot
Shade
Urban
Emotion
City
Mellow
Lovers
Metalic
Maha Raja
Drive
Dancing
Universe
Boarders
Club
Physic... something
Artistic
Escape
Rocket
Ninja