Playtune — The Story Behind
When I was a kid, I have this big and bulky PC that runs Windows XP. My brother introduced me to a game called Virtual Orchestra Studio (VOS) by Hanseulsoft. It’s a rhythm game that allows you to play games with MIDI audio files.
I remember the first song that I played on that game was Canon In D by Pachelbel. As a kid, it was joyful to play the game. I would try other songs that I never heard about, exploring what the game provides.
We have a musical keyboard at home, but I was never able to play it properly. I remember there’s a letter written on the keys; C, D, E, F, G, A, B. Seven letters.
Then I noticed the game has 7 keys to press as well. Each key must actually map to the musical keyboard. Then I started writing the key that appears on the game, and map it into letters. G EFG EFG. That’s the first 7 notes from the Canon chorus.
When I tried it on the musical keyboard, it sounded the same. Then I begin to write the whole Canon song into those letters on paper. I don’t know about musical scores yet, the internet hasn’t reached my town at that time. If I knew about it then, I wouldn’t waste my time transcribing the song. Since then, I was able to play the musical keyboard and keep improving my skills.
Fast forward 10 years later, I wanted to try the game again. However, it’s a very old game with no updates, and playing it on Windows 10 was a bad experience. The game would get laggy and janky, the graphic would render incorrectly. It’s hard to try and have fun with it.
Then I tried other games such as OSU Mania and Voez, but they don’t feel as fun as VOS. The choice of songs was limited. I have forgotten about playing rhythm games by then.
Only a few weeks ago, did the nostalgic feeling of playing VOS hit me. I decided to just create a game similar to VOS but with a vast number of songs. I thought to myself, what if I were to create a rhythm game on top of YouTube? They have millions of songs readily available, I just need to create the game interface.
Then, Playtune was born. A rhythm game with a VOS-like interface that can be played with any YouTube videos available.
Go ahead and play it now at https://playtune.app
