Music On: Playing Piano

Genre: Music-Rhythm

Players: 1

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Review:

Music On: Playing Piano is a Music-Rhythm Game that uses the Nintendo 3DS touchscreen to have players play the melody of 15 classical piano themes. This game was originally released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2010, and it was later grandfathered into the Nintendo 3DS eShop when the Nintendo 3DS released.

The presentation here is simple and not especially impressive, showing piano keys on the bottom screen and Guitar Hero-esque colored bars falling down on the top screen to indicate which notes to play, with sharps/flats in red, and all other notes in yellow. There’s no score readout or anything like that until after a song plays, giving you a simple percentage and awarding you bronze, silver, or gold if you reach some predetermined amount. The software plays synthesized versions of the songs as you fill in the designated notes.

The gameplay here is only slightly different from the Music On: Learning Piano titles, but the creator has wisely dropped the pretense of this being anything about learning, and the switch to the more Music-Rhythm style of gameplay definitely works better for this as a game. However, the lack of other standard features definitely hurts this game and makes it feel much more bare bones.

Still, for $2, it’s hard to complain too much about Music On: Playing Piano. It’s bare-bones for a Music-Rhythm game, but what’s here works well enough. Fans of the genre may want to give it a look, though keep expectations in check.

tl;dr – Music On: Playing Piano is a Music-Rhythm game that has players using a simulated piano to play 15 Classical themes. It’s a bare-bones title, but for $2, it’s enjoyable enough to be worth the low price.

Grade: C+

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