What Space Channel 5 lacks in gameplay, it makes up for in frustration.
And with quite a bit of interest, I downl-... bought it as quick as I could find it. It... well, "sucks" that it was nowhere near as good as I was hoping.
The way Space Channel 5 works is simple. Perhaps too simple, even. You play as Ulala, a reporter for a channel (in space, no less) who found the scoop of a lifetime. In order to save the humans from destruction and more bad dance moves, you have to outdance and outshoot the alien bastards.
You listen/watch to what the opponent is doing and try to mimmick it with the same rhythm, out of pressing a direction on the control pad and shooting with A and B. As simple as it sounds, actually playing it is a whole other story. Due to the abysmal controls, the timing becomes so much harder. Even if you think you did well, you'll hear the discouraging "boing" of failure more often than you may think is fair. Since the game relies on doing each segment perfectly, and one mess up loses you one of your pieces of health, your ratings are going to plummet faster than Ulala is with her gun trigger.
Alas, the controls are not where the pain ends. Even if you can beat the first few levels, you'll be greeted with the credits. The game is horribly short, with hardly any replay value if you encountered frustration with the controls.
The good parts of the game are easy to see, with a quite swinging music selection, neato voice acting as well as colorful character models and locations.
Space Channel 5 could have been more than an overly simple and horribly controlled 2 hour long game. It COULD have. But it wasn't. If I was rating games on potential, I'd say Space Channel 5 would rank pretty high. Unfortunately, I'm not and Space Channel 5 is not all that good of a game.