KickBeat on PS Vita: Strutting Its Stuff at E3

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KickBeat on PS Vita: Strutting Its Stuff at E3

Kickbeat on PS Vita

Hey there, Playstation fans. Lots of excitement in the air these days as this year’s E3 is shaping up to be one of the most exciting yet. Not only did we get our first real look at the PlayStation 4 – I’m pre-ordering it already, myself – but Vita got its share of E3 love, too. KickBeat, for one, is playable in the Sony booth!

If this is your first time hearing about KickBeat, introductions are in order. KickBeat is a rhythm action where you fight baddies in time with the music. It’s different from other rhythm games in that you play the action itself instead of playing an interface (bars, arrows, button icons, etc.) that’s slapped on top of the action. Enemies come at you from all directions, and you fight them off by pressing the buttons representing those directions at the right time. So let’s say an enemy is attacking you from the left. Hit the Square or left button (or tap the left side of the screen) when he gets close enough, which will match up with a beat from the song, and you’ll serve him some kung fu smackdown. Simple enough, right? There are some more advanced controls later on, but you get the general idea.

Kickbeat on PS Vita

Beyond the 18 songs that come with the game, which range from indie tracks from guys such as Celldweller and Blue Stahli, to songs from big-time artists like Pendulum, P.O.D., and Papa Roach (and a few bands whose names don’t start with the letter “P”), we’ve got a bunch of other stuff to keep you busy. There’s a whole story mode featuring some amazing hand-drawn art, an import tool that lets you put your own music in the game, features to enhance the leaderboard competition with your friends, a wide range of difficulty settings, and a Survival mode that will test the abilities of even the most hardened music game veteran.

Kickbeat on PS Vita

For those of who who’ve been following the game’s progress for a while, thanks for sticking with us! We’ve been spending the last few months polishing up the game, adding optional touchscreen controls and menus, going over all the songs with a fine-toothed comb, and making sure you can import songs from your music library into the game as quickly and easily as possible. Basically, we want it to be perfect the first time you play it! And that time is rapidly approaching…

If you’re lucky enough to be going to E3 this year, check out the game and come visit the official KickBeat forum to let us know what you think! If not, we’ll have lots more KickBeat info and media over the next few weeks.

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21 Comments

10 Author Replies

  • Long time no see.

    What happened?

    • See the second-to-last paragraph! When it was clear that we still had a few months to go, we eased up on the releases of videos and such until we were closer to launch. And now we’re pretty close!

  • I was really looking forward to playing this last Fall, when it was originally supposed to launch. Do we have any ETA on the new release time/date?

  • I would also like to know when the release date for this is!

  • I played this at GDC earlier this year and it’s a ton of fun!

    I normally despise rhythm games, so I was pleasantly surprised.

    Also digging the modern soundtrack – the round I played was Papa Roach – Last Resort…it really lent itself well to the rhythmic beat’em up.

    But importing our own songs? HELL YEAH!

    • Glad to hear you enjoyed it! I am looking forward to seeing how the song import stuff gets used. I can see it turning into a big community effort to catalog ideal settings for songs, compare scores, etc.

  • Holy cow! It looks like KickBeat got a slight graphics upgrade from the previous videos that I’ve seen. I’m really interested in this game now, since I just bought the Vita a little over a week ago.

    • Hey there shogun. Thanks for supporting our pinball stuff so strongly, and I hope you enjoy KickBeat! (I know you’ll love the Vita.)

  • PS4 still has time to implement retrocompatibility with PS3 games, PS2 games and PSX digital games and decline Plus being mandatory to play online maintaining online playing free for everyone. If they don’t, I will give the thumbs down to PS4, use my PS Plus account to “buy” free PS4 games and only buy it after it has dropped it’s price dramatically or they add compatibility with PS3 in any way they want to. I encourage everyone that bought over 190 digital PS3 games supporting this company to do the same. RESPECT TO MY PS3 GAMES COLLECTION!

  • Hahaha, the enemies in that first screenshot look kind of like the standard bandits from Borderlands. :D

    Anywho, been a long time without news of this game. I had begun to hope it hadn’t been cancelled like Warrior’s Lair seems to have been. So happy to see a new trailer for this. Really looking forward to getting to play this. And I appreciate that you made the face buttons usable, instead of forcing us to block the action on-screen by making it touch-only. Thanks so much for that. :)

    Price and release date soon, please!

    • Heyo!

      We actually started out with only buttons, and that is still the way I usually prefer to play. But the touch screen controls we added afterwards are fun in their own way – it’s kind of like playing fingerdrums or something. Fingerdrums is a word I just made up, but I am sure it’s a real thing too.

    • I think we announced that a while back. If not, this post is sure to earn me the wrath of our marketing guy. But he’s like 500 miles away from me right now, so….the price is $9.99. Of which like 137% goes to music licensing, so you’re getting a great deal! See, maybe I should be marketing guy!

  • so no multiplayer :/

    • We shelved it when it became clear that it would add even more months of delay. But we’re still hopeful that it’s not gone forever (no promises!).

  • @6 Respect your PS3 collection by keeping and playing them on your ps3 where they were made for, Buy a PS4 to play PS4 games.

    Anyways been waiting too long on this title, good to know its really close.

  • This is a interesting game indeed, glad to see the PS Vita get a lot of games coming!!!!!!!!

  • Aww man, this is my most hyped ps vita game since Gravity Rush and Soul Sacrifice. I really really wanna play this game badly! I was quite worried it got canceled or something, thankfully its not :D

  • Nice to see some more info regarding this, think the last update we had was sometime around August of last year? Glad to see it’s on track to be released (and relatively soon) so I’m looking forward to playing it once it does launch. Keep up the great work guys, never hurts to spend some extra time polishing a game :)

  • Man, I love all your games! Any chance that we’ll get some hints about CastleStorm soon? Now that it is out on the exclusive launch platform?

  • Thank you so much for the double reply, Neil. :D

    Hah! Fingerdrums… just because you invented that word, I’ll have to give it a try. And thank you for the awesome price. I was just kind of assuming it would be $15, so I’m pleasantly surprised it’s only $9.99. Will definitely be picking this up. :)

    Always a fan of your pinball tables, too. Looking forward to the next round of Star Wars tables, and whatever other stuff you’ve got in the pipeline. (I think Sorcerer’s Lair and Mars are my current favorite tables.)

  • Looks very cool.

  • AAA titles anytime soon?

  • Sweet! Been waiting AWHILE for some more Kickbeat news, glad to see it hasn’t been cancelled. Anyway, I’m definitely looking forward to it’s release!

  • I understand that in this game you rythmically kick people in the face.

  • PS4 still has time to implement retrocompatibility through software emulation with PS3 games, PS2 games and PSX digital games and decline Plus being mandatory to play online maintaining online playing free for everyone. If they don’t, I will give the thumbs down to PS4, use my PS Plus account to “buy” free PS4 games and only buy it after it has dropped it’s price dramatically or they add compatibility with PS3 in any way they want to. I encourage everyone that bought over 190 digital PS3 games supporting this company to do the same. RESPECT TO MY PS3 GAMES COLLECTION!

  • This looks like an awesome game! Can’t wait to play :D

    On a side note, Neil owned pablofsi08 in the last comment, ha ha!

  • this looks awesome and i can’t wait, but can you please answer some questions?

    1. will australia be getting this, and how much will it cost? will it be retail or download only?

    2. so are you saying that i can import any of my songs into the game, and i can make my own level with the song, fighting enemys to its beat? that would be AMAZING

    3. when should it be coming out?

    thanks
    crashedragon

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