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WaveGroup Sound is a music production company known for its creation of music for numerous video games. Since 2014, WaveGroup has been the official sound design team for Facebook.
WaveGroup Sound was originally co-founded by engineer James Allen and musician Will Littlejohn in Brisbane, California, doing audio post production for film, commercials, and corporate training videos. [1] WaveGroup relocated to the Silicon Valley in 1996, with Littlejohn later acquiring full ownership of the company.
WaveGroup's work shifted to video game music and sound design, and by the early 2000s the company was the leading producer of music for interactive music video games, producing music for popular series like Karaoke Revolution, Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and others. [2] [3]
WaveGroup's sound design work includes sounds for the Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset and JAMBOX Bluetooth speaker. The company also did Interactive Voice Response (IVR) work for major corporations such as American Express and Fidelity Investments and others. [4]
WaveGroup produced in-app notification sounds for Facebook's Messenger, Slingshot, and Instagram Bolt instant messaging platforms, and in 2014 the company became Facebook's official in-house sound design team. [5]
WaveGroup produced many or all of the songs or song covers for some of these video game titles.
Beatmania IIDX (IIDX) is a series of rhythm video games, that was first released by Konami in Japan on the 26th of February 1999. Beatmania IIDX has since spawned 31 arcade releases and 14 console releases on the Sony PlayStation 2. It is the sequel to the beatmania game series, and is part of the Bemani line of music games.
Bemani, stylized as BEMANI, is Konami's music video game division. Originally named the Games & Music Division (G.M.D.), it changed its name in honor of its first and most successful game, Beatmania, and expanded into other music-based games, most notably rhythm games such as Dance Dance Revolution, GuitarFreaks, and DrumMania.
A music video game, also commonly known as a music game, is a video game where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs. Music video games may take a variety of forms and are often grouped with puzzle games due to their common use of "rhythmically generated puzzles".
Harmonix Music Systems, Inc., doing business as Harmonix, is an American video game developer company based in Boston, Massachusetts. The company was established in May 1995 by Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy. Harmonix is perhaps best known as being the developer of music video games series Dance Central and Rock Band, as well as being the original developer and creator of the Guitar Hero series before development moved to Neversoft and Vicarious Visions.
Rhythm game or rhythm action is a genre of music-themed action video game that challenges a player's sense of rhythm. Games in the genre typically focus on dance or the simulated performance of musical instruments, and require players to press buttons in a sequence dictated on the screen. Many rhythm games include multiplayer modes in which players compete for the highest score or cooperate as a simulated musical ensemble. Rhythm games often feature novel game controllers shaped like musical instruments such as guitars and drums to match notes while playing songs. Certain dance-based games require the player to physically dance on a mat, with pressure-sensitive pads acting as the input device.
Kasson Crooker is an American electronic musician, a composer, and the artist behind Symbion Project, his solo moniker. His past bands are Freezepop, Splashdown, Larkspur, and Sirensong. DJ HMX, Komputer Kontroller, and Cosmonaut Zero were alias bands of Crooker used only for the videogames FreQuency and Amplitude.
Guitar Hero is a 2005 music rhythm video game developed by Harmonix and published by RedOctane for the PlayStation 2. It is the first main installment in the Guitar Hero series. Guitar Hero was released in November 2005 in North America, April 2006 in Europe and June 2006 in Australia. The game's development was a result of collaboration between RedOctane and Harmonix to bring a Guitar Freaks-like game to United States.
Rock Band is a music video game developed by Harmonix, published by MTV Games and distributed by Electronic Arts. It is the first title in the Rock Band series. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions were released in North America on November 20, 2007, while the PlayStation 2 version was released on December 18, 2007 and the Wii version on June 22, 2008. Harmonix previously developed the first two games in the Guitar Hero series, which popularized gameplay of rock music with guitar-shaped controllers. After development of the series was shifted to Neversoft, Harmonix conceived Rock Band as a new title that would offer multi-instrument gameplay.
Yoshitaka Nishimura (西村宜隆), better known as DJ Yoshitaka, is a composer for Konami's line of Bemani games. He has been making solo songs since the release of Beatmania IIDX 11: IIDX Red, though he has had previous Bemani involvement as a member of Osamu Migitera's Des-ROW group. He often composes for the Beatmania IIDX and the Pop'n music series, and then began composing for the Guitar Freaks & DrumMania and the Dance Dance Revolution series in 2005 and 2007, respectively. DJ Yoshitaka still often works with Des-ROW for some Pop'n music songs. In the Reflec Beat series, DJ Yoshitaka regularly appears alongside fellow composer Sota Fujimori as a double act, Venus.
beatmania IIDX substream is a 1999 music video game which had a different songlist and could be linked to a Dance Dance Revolution machine for simultaneous play. If either the Dance Dance Revolution player or IIDX player made mistakes, the other game became more difficult.
Winnie Waldron is an American music producer for video games, a producer for radio, a radio script editor / adapter, a manuscript editor and a radio host.
Beatmania IIDX is an arcade music video game developed by Bemani and published by Konami. It was released in Japan on February 26, 1999. The objective is to perform songs using a controller with seven keys and a turntable. After the surprise success of Beatmania, Benami conceived IIDX to simulate an actual disc jockey (DJ) live performance. Its arcade cabinet contains a widescreen monitor, speakers, and eight spotlights. Bemani later developed several updated versions of IIDX to increased success. The game retrospectively received a positive reception from video game publications for its gameplay and increased difficulty. A sequel, Beatmania III, was released in 2000.
Rock Band is a series of rhythm games developed by Harmonix, principally for home video game consoles. Based on their previous development work from the Guitar Hero series, the main Rock Band games has players use game controllers modeled after musical instruments and microphones to perform the lead guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, drums and vocal parts of numerous licensed songs across a wide range of genres though mostly focusing on rock music by matching scrolling musical notes patterns shown on screen. Certain games support the use of "Pro" instruments that require special controllers that more closely mimic the playing of real instruments, providing a higher challenge to players. Players score points for hitting notes successfully, but may fail a song if they miss too many notes. The series has featured numerous game modes, and supports both local and online multiplayer modes where up to four players in most modes can perform together.
DJ Hero is a music video game, developed by FreeStyleGames and published by Activision as a rhythm game spin-off of the Guitar Hero franchise. It was released on October 27, 2009, in North America and on October 29, 2009, in Europe. The game is based on turntablism, the act of creating a new musical work from one or more previously recorded songs using record players and sound effect generators, and features 94 remixes of two different songs from a selection of over 100 different songs across numerous genres.
Kosuke Saito, also known as kors k, is a Japanese DJ and music game composer. He is best known for his work in the Bemani series made by Konami. He has produced music under a number of different aliases, such as kors k, Eagle, StripE, and teranoid.
Tomosuke Funaki is a Japanese composer who has contributed to the Bemani series of music video games. He has produced songs for Beatmania, Beatmania IIDX, Pop'n Music, Dance Maniax, Guitar Freaks, DrumMania, Mambo a Gogo, and Dance Dance Revolution. He collaborated with the Shibuya-Kei vocalist "EeL" to provide original songs for BEMANI under her "EeL" pseudonym. "Orange Lounge" is the pseudonym used for his Shibuya-Kei compositions, with lyrics sung and written by Shizue Tokui. "Nick boys" is the pseudonym for his Hip hop-influenced collaboration with Des-ROW. "Zektbach" is the pseudonym used for his classical music influenced concept pieces by forms of fantasy worlds, usually with choirs and classical instrumentation.
Dance Dance Revolution A20 is a music video game, the 17th installment of the Dance Dance Revolution arcade series in Japan, and the sequel to Dance Dance Revolution A. The game was released on new, golden cabinets on March 20, 2019, in Japan. A software upgrade for older cabinets for Japan and Asia was released on July 24, 2019, with South Korea receiving a localized release on August 1, 2019, and North America on September 24, 2019. A location test in Europe began on October 7, 2019, and ended on March 16, 2020.
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