Neon Genesis Evangelion



Nintendo 64 (Japanese)
1 Player

Now I know what you may be thinking, “This is not a music game! Neon Genesis Evangelion will never ever become a rhythm game.” Well then, my first retort would to be: Evangelion will never ever become a rhythm game? Have you ever heard of “Neon Genesis Evangelion Battle Orchestra” for PlayStation 2? Sounds like a music game to me! But then I would be caught in lie because Battle Orchestra has nothing to do with music except that there is some music playing in the background. The game is actually just your cliché 4 player fighter done to a “Smash Brothers” orientation view.

Now I would not put it past Gainex at some point to create a full Evangelion rhythm game. For over the past 10 years they have been constantly spewing games from the franchise ranging from Dating Sims to Educational Typing games to even more Dating Sims. But this Nintendo 64 game is the most accurate Evangelion game (in the sense of following the original series) to date. Within the series there is an Angel battle in which both pilots had to endure rigorous training of becoming perfectly in synch with each other to an orchestrated melody lastly slightly over one minute in length. It is a very memorable scene in the series and it was accurately represented in this game in mission 5. Adding to the fact of being a huge fan of both the series and of rhythm games and that it was moderately difficult made it all worth while.

The premise was simple: the entire time there is an accurate 3D cinematic representation of what occurred in the original 2D animation playing, while on the bottom of the screen spreading across the entire screen is a long sound wave bar (representing the song playing) with a distinctive small execution window in the center of the wave bar. From right to left you will see a warning input line with button commands above it that you will have to hit when they reach the center execution window. The trick is that you will not know what these 3 arrow commands will be until they are 1/3 across the screen close to the center command execution window. Within 2 seconds you are shown what button commands will need to be pressed & then have to input them while the warning input line is within the center command execution window. So at first it can be stressful, but once you realize that the commands never change from each attempt after death, it’s a simple issue of memorizing each set of 3 arrow commands until completion.

Yes, it sounds fairly easy and yes it can be beaten with a couple of attempts. The big draw to it is the little extra touches that are involved. In the anime they succeed in perfect synch through out the whole song except for the last command. So, it’s very funny to see all the different failed attempted scenes. It’s fun to die on purpose. Also, in the anime the Pilots actually fail on the last command, so in the game right when the final 3 arrows commands are about to appear, the screen fades to white (due to the scene having the final climatic explosion) and you do not get to see the final inputs or anything for that matter, causing you to fail as done in the anime, but still passing the mission. However you can still enter commands. Just repeatedly hit the C up button until you hear the correct command input sound. You will then have completed the entire music mission flawlessly with an alternate ending that was not in the original ending. Little things like that are what made me fall in love with particular mission in this game! Definitely worth checking out especially if you’re a Neon Genesis Evangelion fan!

EXTRA BONUS: Not a game but an attack rather, For the PS2 Super Robot Wars MX!