In 2003, before the shiny plastic craze of Guitar Hero and Rock Band came upon us, Harmonix released a creative spin on music games in the form of Amplitude, which was a sequel to Frequency. At first glance it will look fairly similar to the Guitar Hero games, which features a series of notes scrolling towards the screen that have to be played to keep the song going, but rather than focus on a single instrument, you could rapidly switch between multiple tracks, like vocals, drums, bass, synth, guitar, and so on, and you were expected to be able to hop between them rapidly to keep the song playing. If you messed up or were too slow, individual pieces of the song would start turning off, creating a sense of musical feedback on how well you were doing, and making for some cool remixes in the process.
Harmonix gave it another go with a Kickstarter campaign that proved successful in May 2014, offering a ground-up remake/sequel to the original Amplitude, with new graphics, songs and features, to be released on the PS3 and PS4. Though the project was previously hit with delays, they have now announced the official release date of January 5th, 2016 for the PS4 version. On release, it will feature over 30 playable tracks made by Harmonix staff and upper-tier Kickstarter backers, as well as some guest musicians. Early access will be available to backers starting on December 23rd. For those who didn’t get around to backing the game in time, it will retail for the price of $19.99.
