See the end of the article for additional news and updates.

Original Article posted May 9th, 2014

Game development studio Harmonix has a kickstarter page open for an Amplitude reboot.  They are asking $775,000 to fund the creation and publication of the reboot for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.  Pledge tiers include “Thanks” mentions in the credits, digital and special edition copies of the game, “Rad” Amplitude Backer T-shirts, and even dinner with Harmonix Founders (and Double Fine’s Tim Schafer).  For those of you wanting to be more active with the game development, there are pledge tiers that give you a say in the game’s soundtrack, and if you have your own band/music and $7,500 to pledge, you can have your song in the new Amplitude.  For you more gamer types, a pledge of $3,000 will get you an invite to beta test the game at the Harmonix Studios (who shares office space with Double Fine Productions).

Prize Grid per pledge tier

Harmonix is a name that is synonymous with music and rhythm games, and while it was not the first game developer to enter this field, it is arguable that Harmonix’s FreQuency for the PS2 was the first of the modern style of music games using the “falling notes” style of gameplay.  Amplitude was the follow up to the critical success of FreQuency, and sold equally as well.  Harmonix would then go on to team up with RedOctane to create the smash hit Guitar Hero before breaking off their partnership to create their own competing franchise, Rock Band, and pushing the genre into the full band arena.  Not stopping there, they went on to create the Dance Central games and are currently developing a music game for Disney, titled Fantasia: Music Evolved, as well as an FPS-Music game hybrid, titled Chroma.

“We’ve been eager to return to our roots for a while, and to develop a next-gen controller based rhythm game.”

-Eran Egozy
Co-founder & CTO

Best described as a “Passion Project”, co-founders Alex Rigopulos (AKA DumpLord420) and Eran Egozy put the project on Kickstarter due to the nature that these kinds of projects tend to sit on back burner while development resources are devoted to fully funded games.  Their hopes are to use the funds pledged to create a full development team to devote towards the creation of the reboot.

Concept art of one of the newly redesigned BeatBlasters

As said in the video, they plan on throwing all their experience gained by making games for over 10 years at this new title, and will include new DLC, updated graphics, new customization items, and online modes and leaderboards while still keeping the same sadistically challenging levels and addictive gameplay.  The song tracks have yet to be discussed, but this quote from the Kickstarter page, “[…] we plan to focus our efforts on music that is custom-created for the game,” makes us assume that the tracks will be newly created music and will not feature popular artists like the original Amplitude.  This may not necessarily be a bad thing for the gameplay, but it could also hurt the popularity of the game as gamers have proven with the popularity of Guitar Hero and Rock Band that they prefer popular and familiar songs for their rhythm game experience.

Gameplay concept art for the new Amplitude. Shiny and new yet still classic.

At the time of writing this article, the Amplitude Kickstarter is over half way through its life cycle (14 days left), and is still well short of its $775,000 goal.  Currently it’s sitting at  $182,556 across 5421 backers despite the fact that it is number one in popularity in the Games category.  Is this indicative of a lack of interest that so many have looked and not pledged, a lack of money amongst fans based on the same statistic, or does this show that there is a bigger problem with the way Kickstarter projects rely on viral publicity?

You can find the Kickstarter page at the below link:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/harmonix/amplitude

So have you backed Amplitude yet?  Do you plan to do so?  Or are you burnt out on the meteoric rise and subsequent fall of Rhythm games in the 2000s?  Let us know in the comments below.

UPDATE – Amplitude reaches Goal and other news

Harmonix’s Amplitude Kickstarter reached its $750,000 goal with about 20 hours left.  The Kickstarter page is now working towards the first Stretch Goal tier of $1,125,000 to include online head-to-head mode.  With only 5 hours remaining and just under $300,000 to go, it’s going to require a lot of last minute backers to hit this first stretch.

There has also been a tentative update as to the goal for game release.  All Backer information (including the download codes for the game) are estimated for delivery in March 2015.  This coincided with a end of Q1, and could be pushed back if more development time is needed.  It’s as close to a target release date as we will get right now.

Of the current (and growing) 13,000+ backers, 5 have been at the $7500 tier, which is the “gets your song in the game” mentioned in the above article.  One of the confirmed backers is Insomniac Games, developers of games Spyro, Rachet & Clank, PS3 exclusive Resistance, and the new Xbox One exclusive, Sunset Overdrive, and will be supplying their 20 year anniversary song, “Crazy Ride.”

We’ve tracked down 2 other $7500 Backers which are Wolfgun – Lights and Skullgirls – Unfinished Business.

Back on May 15, Harmonix posted a link to a Spotify “Audio Lookbook” which they claim is a type of “wish list” that they would like to include into the game, and will at the very least show you what kinds of music they hope to include.

There’s still a few hours left to back the game and push it toward its first Stretch Goal.  Get out there and back this!  I’m already in 20 Bucks, so be sure to look for my name in the credits when the game releases!  How much did YOU back?  Let us know in the comments below.

UPDATE 2 – Amplitude Kickstarter has ended.

Harmonix’s Amplitude kickstarter timer has finally come to a close.  It’s final tally:  14,112 Backers pledging $844,127 for it’s $750,000 goal.  While this falls well short of the first stretch goal of $1,125,000 for online Head-to-Head mode, it is yet another success for well-deserving independent developer.

Note:  The above numbers changes while writing this update, so the numbers may have a slight variance from true ending value.  For up to date numbers check the Kickstarter page.

There is no word as of yet one whether Harmonix will set up a “Slacker Backer” setup as Double Fine had done for their Double Fine Adventure (Which would become Broken Age), but we will update here if there is.

Here’s how the Backers pledged:

$10    –    294 Backers
$15    –    1000 Backers (Limited to 1000)
$20    –    7594 Backers
$35    –    1000 Backers (Limited to 1000)
$40    –    1677 Backers
$70    –    527 Backers
$100    –    678 Backers
$125    –    547 Backers
$200    –    384 Backers
$250    –    93 Backers (2 Prize Tiers)
$500    –    49 Backers
$3,500    –    3 Backers (Limited to 3)
$3,501    –    1 Backer (Limited to 1)
$7,500    –    5 Backers (Limited to 10)
$8,000    –    1 Backer (Limited to 2)
$10,000    –    2 Backers (Limited to 5)

So where do you stack up?  There’s going to be at least 14,112 names in that list, and I’m happy to be one of them.  Will your name be in the credits?