Cyberpunk died with Johnny Mnemonic, the Krokers said in 1995, Robert Longo killed it – and with that came the slow dissipation of wireframes and vast electronic non-spaces of either consensual hallucination or psychedelia. Tetsuya Mizuguchi had it on PS2 and he brought it back for the 360 XBLA, leaving splinters of rumours about a Rez sequel and leaving us waiting empty-handed. If you still own your PS2, dust it off and google up a store where they still sell Frequency and Amplitude – developed by Harmonix in 2001 and 2003, respectively.
It’s all about evoking the mindless speed limit breaking into an octogonal tunnel with sides connected to tracks, each of them containing notes you have to hit in order to keep the music flowing. It’s basically a game-induced remix tool, containing songs by The Crystal Method, Curve, Orbit, Roni Size, Juno Reactor, Meat Beat Manifesto and a lot more in Frequency and the same diverse repertoire comes up in the sequel with Garbage, Herbie Hancock, Styles of Beyond or even Pink. My only heartbreak is that it’s only for the Playstation – and PC’s never really gotten far with similar music/rhythm games apart from Audiosurf.