Rhythm games have been becoming more and more popular of late. We’re not just talking about the numerous iterations of the ubiquitous Guitar Hero, or even the first Rock Band, which was released only ten months ago, and which was the first rhythm game to feature a whole band of players singing together on multiple instruments. There are also countless arcade games in places like Japan and China, where players use simple buttons rather than the sophisticated sim-instruments of GH and RB, but the basic gameplay mechanic remains, and where some kids have become astonishingly good at, playing at virtuoso speeds. One has to wonder if they couldn’t have spent that same time learning to play real instruments and be very good at them.

Although popular mainstream rhythm games, use songs from monsters of rock to gain appeal, and who in turn generate massive sales increase for the artists they feature (case in point: Guitar Hero – Aerosmith has made more money for the band than any of their released albums ever did), this concept of games – matching a series of moves to on screen input, based on colors and rhythm – started out more than two decades ago with games like Simon, and later on in the nineties the idea to put the same movements to music belonged to simple, innocent games like PaRappa the Rapper.

Nowadays, it’s a multimillion dollar industry, with big players in the business trying to outdo each other by putting in more features, adding more tracks, offering more and better instruments, and generally hamming up the whole show.

The latest example of this is the almost simultaneous release of Harmonix Music Systems’ Rock Band 2, and Neversoft’s Guitar Hero – World Tour.

While Guitar Hero has been around for longer, this is the first iteration of the game which features a whole array of instruments (guitar, base, drums and mike) which have been added to the lineup of peripherals by the first version of Rock Band ten months ago. Both games now feature the ability to create highly customized characters and the option of importing songs from previous releases, and while Guitar Hero – World Tour has a nifty Advanced Studio mode which allows you to create custom songs, Rock Band has advanced online ladders and periodic challenges to allow players to compete against themselves and others all over the world. Each side is trying to bring in their own edge to the table as a separate industry in and of its own is formed where music and gaming collide.

The good thing is that not only a few more kids may get interested in actually playing music this way, but it is broadening their musical culture, exposing them to artists and bands that they may have never heard of before. If developers are smart, they’ll continue to develop and improve a whole genre that is not only fun, but also educational (Rock Band 2’s drum trainer comes to mind here, as you could use it to get better at real drumming as well), and could make a pretty penny too, for both game producers and artists.