6 Best 3DS Rhythm Games

Rhythm Thief comes from Sega, and its story takes a number of cues from Professor Layton. Raphael is an art student by day. By night he becomes Phantom R, a thief who breaks into museums and steals their art, all while he hunts for clues to his missing father. Then Napoleon rises from the dead with a secret army, and an orphan named Marie turns out to own a violin and a piece of sheet music that her mother left her. Between the songs you explore Paris by touching the screen to find medals, people to talk to and hidden music scores.

Players love its music, and they like to describe it as a Professor Layton game with rhythm games where the puzzles would be. In June 2012 its director, Shun Nakamura, said he was interested in making a sequel. It never happened, and we are still a little sore about it.

The first Theatrhythm hands you four Final Fantasy characters and lets you pick a game from the first Final Fantasy to XIII. The stages come in a few kinds. Field Music Sequences scroll from right to left while you tap notes, slide the stylus and hold it down along a waving line. Battle Music Sequences are mock battles where every note you hit correctly does damage to the enemies on screen. Event Music Sequences play cutscenes from the Final Fantasy game you picked behind the notes.

Players love it for the songs, which is fair when the series has music this good. One player called it "the first demo ever that made me buy the game". It only works with the touch screen, something Curtain Call fixed two years later. If you can only have one, take the sequel, then come back here once you are hooked.

HarmoKnight was made by Game Freak, the Pokémon studio, after the company changed its internal structure so staff could start new projects of their own. Its creator, James Turner, wanted to make a simple action platformer, and the idea grew into a rhythm platformer. You play Tempo, a boy training with his rabbit friend Tappy on a musical planet called Melodia. Every action you take lines up with the rhythm of the music, and each stage ends with a grade based on how many notes you gathered.

It came out on the eShop in Japan in September 2012 and everywhere else on March 28, 2013, and critics liked its unique gameplay and presentation. There are bonus stages with music from the Pokémon series, too. Players say it is a lot of fun, and it is the easiest game here to hand to a kid.

Project Mirai is a 3DS spin-off of Sega's Project DIVA series, made with Crypton Future Media, and DX is the enhanced version of the second game. It came out in North America on September 8, 2015. Everyone is drawn as a super deformed figure with a head three times the normal size. The songs use what the game calls the "Chance Circle System": buttons sit around the border of a circle, and you press each one as a pointer sweeps past it.

Swap the singer and, in some songs, the voice changes with them, and a few songs even change their lyrics. There is an augmented reality mode that puts the characters on AR cards seen through the 3DS camera. Players love it and call it a lot of fun. If you have never heard of a Vocaloid, this is a very cheerful way to find out.

Megamix is mostly a greatest hits album. It collects over 100 rhythm minigames from the three earlier games and adds 30 new ones, with longtime series composer Tsunku writing the music again. During development Tsunku had his vocal cords removed after laryngeal cancer, so he worked with other songwriters and singers. The story follows a little dog with an afro named Tibby, who has been cast out of heaven and must find his way back.

The old games got better on the trip over. The Game Boy Advance ones look much sharper, and the DS ones swap their touch controls for plain button presses. Players call it charming and easy to get into, and it sold at least 1 million copies. The one complaint is the story mode, which talks a lot, and you cannot skip or fast forward through it.

Curtain Call is the sequel to the first Theatrhythm, and it keeps the core idea: you hit notes in time with music from the Final Fantasy series. In battle stages four chibi characters fight while notes flow from left to right along four lanes. You also build up your party, because the boss has to fall before the song ends. This time you can play with the buttons as well as the touch screen, and you pick whichever you like.

Critics applauded its big improvements over the first game, and reviews praised the way it fuses rhythm and role-playing. Players call it a great rhythm game and a great time. A Dragon Quest version followed in 2015. Players recommend it more than any other 3DS rhythm game.