Login | Register
Ikinari Musician cover art

Game dossier

Ikinari Musician

Available now

A 1987 Famicom music game built around keyboard improvisation, backing styles, and synthesizer controls.

Genres

The briefing

About this game

Ikinari Musician is a music game for the Family Computer and Nintendo Famicom, developed by Musical Plan and published by Tokyo Shoseki.

Overview

The game combines a piano-like keyboard with a treble clef display that indicates note locations. Players can perform alongside five-channel backing tracks in styles including Rock, Techno, Jazz, Bossa, Rio, Japan, India, Arabia, and Scotland.

Most backing tracks loop around one or two chords to support open improvisation. After selecting a style, the keyboard is limited to notes from a suitable scale, such as a blues or pentatonic scale. Directional-pad controls move through the available notes, preventing leaps within the scale.

Features

  • Four selectable timbres
  • Controls for synthesizer parameters including attack, release, and LFO
  • Recording and playback functions
  • Five-channel backing tracks
  • 8-bit chiptune-style sound resulting from the system hardware