5/12 - Groove Coaster 3: Link Fever Hits Round 1 San Jose!

By Andy Castro

On Sunday, May 1st, 2016, Eastridge Round 1 rolled out three cabinets of Groove Coaster 3: Link Fever! Groove Coaster, made by Taito (and not Konami for once), has been a successful mobile music game, but the arcade version was nearly impossible to find in the US until the release of this third installment. Today, we’ll be looking at this new addition to the Eastridge Round 1 lineup, and talk to local players about their experience with what the game has to offer.

The game’s title explains a lot on its own. You choose an avatar that rides along a track designed uniquely for each song and chart you wish to play. While your avatar glides, slides, and tumbles around each coaster, various notes appear along the track, and your score is graded on how on-the-beat you hit each note, as well as how much “chain” (combo) you build. The controls to the game are also pretty simplistic, relying solely on actions made on the two “boosters” attached to the cabinet. The game can have you press the booster’s buttons, hold them down, or shake the boosters in a variety of different ways depending on the difficulty of the chart. You don’t have to worry too much about remembering every kind of note, either, as the game warns you what kinds of notes each chart will have before the song starts. Handy!

While the cabinet is very tall, the two boosters

can comfortably fit in the palms of your hands.

Groove Coaster 3 had been rumored to arrive at Eastridge Round 1 for a couple of months, and many music game regulars had been anxious to give the game a chance. On Sunday morning, a good number of Round 1 regulars anxiously waited as the machines were set up, with some who were live-tweeting the process while others prayed that the game’s required updates happened quickly and without issue. I talked to two of NorCal’s regular music gamers, Eric Andrus and Corey Prasek, who had not only shown interest in the game, but also had a lot of talk about due to each having previous experience with the game while in Japan.

“I actually didn’t really care for Groove Coaster when I tried an earlier version in Japan,” Eric admitted, “but Groove Coaster 3 is better. A lot better. When I had first tried it, the game felt too simple and all the menus were in Japanese, but this version adds a lot of interesting features as well as a total localization into English”. While casual gamers have expressed difficulty in understanding the menus and UI in other music games Round 1 provides (we’re looking at you, Konami), Groove Coaster 3 was localized in English for its “worldwide” releases in America and Australia. Even Linka, the game’s virtual navigator, was given an English voice actress, Jennifer Skidmore, just for the international releases. Compared to other music games, the amount of English will almost feel gratuitous at times!

The gameplay and presentation of Groove Coaster is also very eye-catching and colorful, with unique videos for every song to make each chart’s “coaster” feel incredibly immersive into the music. Eric cautioned that this could be a double-edged sword, though: “The game is super fun and easy to get into, but at the same time it feels as though the only way the game can get around the low skill ceiling is through abusing the UI for cheap visual gimmicks.” Some charts do have fast bpms that, combined with a zoomed-in camera angle, makes reading charts more difficult, and overall, the game has been criticized before by the competitive music game community for being extremely reliant on memorization and playing charts repeatedly. It does not help that the game itself hides notes throughout each song (called “ad-libs”) that can easily change the tide of victory in a competitive setting.

A “NO MISS” means everything visible was hit, but a “FULL CHAIN” only

occurs if you hit every ad-lib. A “PERFECT” can’t occur unless you hit every

ad-lib note with perfect timing, too. Random guesses will only help so much!

Corey didn’t have as big of an issue with the visual gimmicks or the ad-lib concept, but said that the only issue he had was with the customization features that are only available online (which has yet to be localized to English). “The NESICA service is a pain to sign up for on the website,” Corey groaned, despite being fluent in Japanese.

“Groove Coaster 3 is also a bit more diverse in the song selection,” explained Corey. “The addition of a lot of Japanese club producers is a welcomed addition, but the game itself has something for everyone.” Corey and Eric both agreed that Groove Coaster 3’s extensive songlist will do a lot to draw in a lot of players. The game has many originals, but also includes J-Pop songs, anime licenses, Touhou arrangements, and even songs from other popular games like Puzzles and Dragons, Danganronpa, and even Konami’s Sound Voltex and IIDX! While Corey was mostly excited about the increase in Japanese club track producers from the previous version of Groove Coaster, he firmly believed that the game could easily allow anyone to find a set’s worth of songs they would enjoy playing.

While the game is playable offline, you are able to save your scores with a NESICA card, available at Round 1’s card desk for $10. With a NESICA card, you are able to access global events, as well as customize unlockable avatars, titles, and messages to send friends during multiplayer matches! You’ll also need to save scores to unlock bonus charts for select songs, so a card is definitely a worthy purchase.

You know you want a card just so you can have a fancy avatar while you play!

They have characters from Puzzles and Dragons, Pitapat Beat, and more!

The game has great potential to be Round 1’s most popular music game, and the lines a proving it. Don’t just take our word for it, though - go and try out Groove Coaster today!