Amplitude pulls off last-minute Kickstarter success

By Will Fulton May 23, 2014

amplitude gameplay trailer amplitudehd — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Harmonix, developer of the Rock Band and Dance Central series, managed to meet its crowdfunding goals for Amplitude, a remake of the 2003 rhythm action game for PlayStation 2. Just two days before the close of the Kickstarter, the funding effort was still more than $100,000 shy of its $775,000 goal, but some high-profile advocacy from geek luminaries like Minecraft developer Markus “Notch” Persson and actress Felicia Day helped rally the Internet for a last-minute push, bringing the project up to a comfortable $823,236 (at the time of this writing).

The game recasts the straight, musical roads of popular games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band as a winding path that you must navigate via spaceship, hitting notes in time to keep the track going.

At the time of the original and its predecessor Frequency, rhythm-based games were a novelty. The two early Harmonix efforts were critically acclaimed, but failed to gather broad appeal with their focus on more niche, electronic music, as compared to the rock and dance jams that would bring Harmonix (and the rhythm genre as a whole) success in the coming decade. Now that the genre is more established in gamers’ minds — and somewhat removed from the market saturation that led to Rock Band/Guitar Hero going on hiatus — perhaps they’ll be more receptive to exploring its spaced-out, psychedelic roots.

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Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…

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