Harken back to the day you first walked into an arcade. Chuck-E-Cheese’s, Dave & Busters, maybe just your local family diner. All sorts of machines for you and your friends and family to play on. Daytona USA, Air Hockey, Snake, or Comically Large Tetris kept you entertained for hours and hours as you popped quarter after quarter into those bright, loud cabinets. 

One particular machine had certain strange, attractive properties. Everyone was either impressively good, or laughably bad at it. When they were good, they would draw massive crowds and the highest praise as they’d kick butt after butt in the loudest, brightest machine of them all, Dance Dance Revolution. 

This arrow rhythm game kept most arcade goers hooked on with catchy pop music and easy to learn, but hard to master gameplay. Many games over the years attempted to replicate the feel of those arcade games. But no game has hit so close to home as Friday Night Funkin’. 

This game encapsulated everything good about the Rhythm game genre in one, small, colorful package. The game feels something more stylistically attuned to “Parappa the Rappa”, A Rhythm game about a rapping dog trying to impress his girlfriend. 

Story wise, Friday Night Funkin’ is the same. You must rap-battle it out with enemies preventing you from dating your girlfriend peacefully, like her ex-rockstar dad, some kids who think it’s still halloween, and a man-eating lemon. 

The gameplay is more similar to Dance Dance Revolution than most others, using arrows on your keyboard to sing notes. Overall, the gameplay is simple, and quite easy to learn. Just like Dance Dance Revolution, however, it is very difficult to master. Even just playing on normal can prove to be a challenge for first time players.

Its art style reminds you of graffiti on city streets, and every song in the game is hit-after-hit catchy. Even though the current cast of characters and music is small, the game receives constant updates to improve it and add more music. 

While the days of going into an arcade and spending hours lost in the rows of games are behind us, Friday Night Funkin’ brings its players back to when times were simpler, evoking nostalgia with a fun and fresh twist.