Rez
Developer - United Game Artists (a subsidiary of SEGA)
Publisher - SEGA
Director - Jun Kobayashi
Producer - Tetsuya Mizuguchi
Designer - Hiroyuki Abe, Katsuhiko Yamada
Programmer - Mitsuru Takahashi
Artist - Katsumi Yokota
Composer - Keiichi Sugiyama
Genre - Music, Rail Shooter
Dreamcast Release Dates - November 22, 2001 (Japan); February, 2002 (Europe); Unreleased (North America)
Additional Releases - Playstation 2; Xbox 360 Arcade (as Rez HD); Playstation 4, Oculus Quest VR, Android, Windows (an expanded port with VR functionality as Rez Infinite)
Current Average Price - $80 (Japanese version); $250 (European version)
It’s no hot take that Rez is an incredible game, and one of the Dreamcast’s best. These days, the game is rightly considered a masterpiece, and its creator, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, is universally regarded as a visionary game creator. But when Rez released in 2002 for the SEGA Dreamcast and Playstation 2, it was a pretty unsuccessful game. People didn’t get it, people didn’t buy it, and though the reviews for it were fairly positive, most people seemed to regard the game as a quirky, Japanese oddity (oh, the many Rez reviews back then that lead with the fact that Rez came with a “vibrator...”).
But I loved Rez on the day that it released, and I love it even more today. In the 20-odd years between its launch day and now when my fingers are typing these letters, video games have become homogenous and repetitive - sequels and remakes and the same old thing with a new skin.
Don’t get me wrong, there are obviously amazing videogames coming out all the time. But none of them are as bold, daring, or as cerebral as the 20-odd-year-old Dreamcast classic, Rez. This game is truly a vibe (pun grudgingly ignored).
What is Rez
Rez is a musical rail shooter developed by United Game Artists (a subsidiary of SEGA) fresh off their completion of Space Channel 5. The game features little obvious narrative, fleshed out mostly in the game’s manual, and what plot exists in-game is relayed in a dreamy and surreal way through music and ephemeral visuals that are simply beautiful.
The player plays as a hacker who has traveled inside a sort of virtual meta-verse to find and save a malfunctioning AI known as Eden. Eden has become oversaturated with data and noise, frightened by the overwhelming crush of information, and has retreated from humanity and the world to sleep deep within cyberspace. The player controls the hacker avatar through five rail shooting levels, shooting down enemy viruses and hostile security programs, defeating bosses, leveling up their avatar, and eventually waking and freeing Eden.
Mizuguchi has stated that the game’s plot is a metaphor. Ostensibly it is about a hacker’s journey into cyberspace to reach and free a dormant AI. But it can also be interpreted that the hacker is in fact a sperm, and that Rez is the story of conception.
There are multiple endings available, some in which Eden is freed and some in which she is not. Which ending the player sees is determined by the player’s performance.
The key aesthetic and gameplay component of Rez is the way that the action and sound effects sync with the music. When the player locks onto enemies, when shots are fired, and when enemies explode, these actions create musical tones which fit the style and tempo of the background music, resulting in a transcendent audial effect. In addition, attacks and explosions are relayed through the controller via vibration mechanics, and visual anomalies are mated to the game’s sound as well. The overarching result is a sort of “synesthesia” effect, which was a core concept of Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s original idea for the game, which he conceived in 1994.
Of course, Rez is a game better seen and heard than read about. Here, then, is a complete playthrough video (with one of the good endings).
Development
The original idea for Rez occurred to Mizuguchi in 1994. He and his team were in Europe researching locations during the production of SEGA Rally Championship 2, the exceptional arcade racing game. While there, they attended music festivals and Mizuguchi was inspired by the people all moving in time with the music. He decided he wanted to make a game that would capture or reproduce this sensation, but the technology of the time was limiting.
In 1998, when SEGA began creating teams to make new and innovative games for their new Dreamcast hardware, Mizuguchi was given the opportunity to put together a team. His team became United Game Artists, with many staff pulled from Team Andromeda (makers of Panzer Dragoon), and they began work on Space Channel 5, another music/rhythm game with an unusual tone.
When work on Space Channel 5 finished, Mizuguchi took his concept for Rez to the leaders at SEGA. He had difficulty explaining the game, but once they played the prototype the game was approved for production in 1999. Pre-production took one year, during which time Mizuguchi pulled together the musical talent that would give his new game its unique identity.
While Rez was in production, news that SEGA would be exiting the hardware business landed heavy amongst the team. They felt depressed, but management told them that they would still be able to release Rez on the Dreamcast. It would be one of the system’s last games (unreleased in the USA, sadly). In addition, SEGA asked that a version be made in unison for release on Sony’s Playstation 2. The team managed this difficult task, and Rez became one of the first SEGA games to release on non-Dreamcast hardware.
Art and Sound Design
More so than nearly any other game, Rez’s success as an experience is tied to its audio/visual design. The visual design was lead by art director Katsumi Yokota, who was well-known for his work on the legendary SEGA Saturn RPG Panzer Dragoon Saga. Early visual inspiration for Rez was drawn from the 19th century abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky. So instrumental in the visual identity of Rez was Kandisky’s work that the game’s original project codename was “Project K” and Mizuguchi dedicated the game to Kandinsky in the game’s credits. Early plans even included levels directly inspired by Kandinsky’s work, though Mizuguchi eventually decided against this. Kandinsky’s theories on synesththesia, however, would remain present in the final build.
A major aesthetic keystone of the game was to use wireframe graphics for the environments and the player character. Yokota loved the challenge of expressing as much as possible with only wireframes - this in contrast to the extreme realism and high-design of Panzer Dragoon. In the game’s stages one through four, the wireframe environments are displayed in the foreground while visual elements are placed in the background. This allowed the developers to sync the graphics with the sound effects and music. These first four stages also draw from real-life cultures; the first drew from ancient Egypt; the second from Indian culture; the third from Mesopotamian culture; and the fourth from Chinese culture. The final level is different, and has been described by team members as “Yokota’s personal trip-out level.”
Mizuguchi and Yokota spent a lot of time determining which type of music would fit the aesthetic, the gameplay, and would allow the sort of blending of audio and visuals that they were seeking, and determined that electronic music would be most suitable. This type of music would allow the designers to isolate individual notes and to adjust the timing precisely for the desired audio visual synchronization.
The entire score was coordinated by Masakazu Hiroishi and drew inspiration from the soundtracks of Xevious (1983) and Xenon 2 Megablast (1989). The sound design and some of the musical composition was handled by Keiichi Sugiyama of SEGA’s Wavemaster record label.
Hiroishi contacted multiple composers and electronic musicians to commission original work or license existing tracks. Composers featured in the game are Ken Ishii and Joujouka, and English musicians Conduct and Adam Freehand (who created my personal favorite song in the game - Fear).
The team also sought contributions from Underworld (who had licensed a song called “Rez” for the opening stage of the game’s prototype) but was turned down because Underworld did not want to be associated with (what they apparently thought would be) a violent video game. In place of this song, Sugiyama created the opening stage track himself.
The final game’s soundtrack is widely regarded as one of the most original and eclectic collections in gaming. Totaling ten tracks, many of which are original compositions made specifically for Rez, it was released as a standalone soundtrack CD in 2002 (titled - Rez / Gamer’s Guide to…) and again twenty years later as a multi-LP vinyl through Iam8bit.
Legacy
Rez did not sell very well and was considered something of a commercial failure. This has been attributed to the game’s release at the same time when the Dreamcast was being discontinued, and poor marketing of the Playstation 2 release by SEGA during a time when the company was experiencing significant upheaval. In the intervening years since its release, however, Rez has become well known as a masterpiece of a video game which stretched the medium and reached the rarified heights of “games as art.”
Following Mizuguchi’s departure from SEGA, he founded Q Entertainment. He also secured the rights for Rez from SEGA, and developed and released Rez HD for the XBOX Live Arcade in 2008. This release adjusted the aspect ratio and increased the frame rate from 30 frames per second to 60.
Rez Infinite was released in 2015 for the Playstation 4, Windows, Oculus, and Android devices. This game is the entire Rez experience, with a newly developed level called Area X. Rez Infinite is also playable using virtual reality headsets, such as the Playstation VR and Oculus Quest.