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In 2002 Steakhouse Games produced a demo of a concept for the GBA dubbed Tempo the Frog. A rhythmic beat-matching game for the GBA, we hoped that North America would be ready to embrace rhythm games after the success of Parappa the Rapper and the boom of Dance Dance Revolution. Unfortunately we were wrong, and thanks to an overabundance of poorly selling GBA titles in pubishers catalogs, Tempo never sparked enough interest to warrant further work.
We were going for a primary-coloured, primary-shapes look. Reactions ranged from "I love the look!" to "Of course, it would look a lot better without the placeholder graphics". What you can't see in the screenshots is the 4 layers of parallax scrolling backgrounds. We never got to finish the water.
You play as cute little Tempo, eating as many flies as possible... TO THE BEAT. As each fly crosses the flashing "beat line", the player presses a button in an attempt to snatch the fly with Tempo's tongue. The A button strikes at the top row of flies, and the B button lashes out at the bottom row of flies. Each fly represents a note in the song being played, so rhythmic precise tongue-snaps will result in a complete music track, the player performing some of the drums and notes of the tune. Off-timed buttons presses result in wacky note combinations, musical mistakes.
Poor, Good, and Great are the three possible "scores" for each fly. A rating of "Poor" is for missed flies or gross mishits, "Good" is for slightly mistimed successful hits, and "Great" is of course for the perfect strikes.
Tempo also jumped! As the levels get harder, we were going to give the players control over Tempo's hops from lillypad to lillypad, each spring of his legs representing the boom of the bass drum. His name was Tempo, after all. These screens represent just the first level of the envisioned complete Tempo experience. Tempo would travel through many different locales on his journey.
2002 was far too early for the publishers to get behind a rhythm game. Tempo was inspired by the pioneering Beatmania, but still years ahead of the rhythm game boom of Guitar Hero, Donkey Konga and Elite Beat Agents. In fact, Tempo the Frog would've fit right into the 2009 world of Rhythm Heaven.
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