Description
Harmonix · 2003 (PlayStation 2)
The successor to Frequency (2001). A song is laid out as six colour-coded tracks running away from the player, each track carrying one instrument part — drums, bass, synth, vocals. The player steers a small craft across the lanes and fires at note gems in time with the beat. Clear a phrase cleanly and that track is captured: it keeps playing on its own for a few bars while the player moves to another lane. The song is only heard whole when enough lanes are held at the same time, so play consists of leaving one part unattended in order to win another.
Power-ups sit on specially marked notes — capture a track outright, double the score, slow the scroll, or open a Freestyle passage where the player improvises instead of matching a written pattern. Up to four people play at once, on the same field of lanes: a lane captured by one player is a lane the others cannot take while it plays itself.
source — Amplitude (2003), gameplay and modes
video: Amplitude (2003) on PS2, captured through the PCSX2 emulator — xTimelessGaming, YouTube
image: Amplitude (2016), Freq Mode — Harmonix, amplitude-game.com. This is the Kickstarter-funded remake, not the 2003 game: its Freq Mode revives the tunnel view of Frequency (2001), where the 2003 original laid its six tracks out side by side. The video above is the 2003 game.