Music video games

A music video game, also commonly known as a music game, is a video game where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs. Music video games may take a variety of forms and are often grouped with puzzle games due to their common use of "rhythmically generated puzzles".

Strong support for the convergence of live music and video games is evident with the success of the Video Games Live concert series. Emergent games for live concert performance, "game-scores", augment traditional western music notation with the dramatic elements of animation, interactivity, graphic elements and aleatoric principles (Anigraphical Music). The concept of incorporating game theory and music is not new and can be traced back to Musikalisches Würfelspiel.

Music video games are distinct from purely audio games (e.g. the 1997 Sega Saturn release Real Sound: Kaze no Regret) in that they feature a visual feedback, to lead the player through the game's soundtrack, although eidetic music games can fall under both categories.

As the genre has gained popularity and expanded, music video games have demonstrated the ability to support a range of different styles of gameplay. While the oldest form of gameplay is eidetic in nature, the most common form of music game today is rhythmic in nature and has been termed the "rhythm game". Other common modes of gameplay in music video games include the sandbox style that encourages a free-form gameplay approach and the recent hybrid style that combines musical elements with more traditional genres such as the shooter or puzzle game. Music video games are also commonly included as minigames in party games.

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