DJ Hero

The peripheral was the pitch. A plastic deck with a free-spinning platter, three coloured stream buttons on the disc itself, a crossfader and an effects dial — nothing else on the market looked like it, and Activision priced it accordingly. Every song in the game is a mashup, commissioned rather than licensed off the shelf, which meant FreeStyleGames had to build a soundtrack that did not exist before the game did.

That decision is what separates this from the rest of the plastic-instrument boom. You are not playing along to a recording of someone else's track. You are performing a blend of two of them, and the chart tells you which half you are foregrounding at any moment: crossfade left for the Gorillaz side, right for the Blondie side, tap the centre and let both sit together. Scratching is handled by pushing the platter forward and back against marked sections of the note stream, and the rewind mechanic lets you claw back a broken streak. It is closer to a simplified performance simulation than air-guitar theatre, and it teaches you a genuine, if narrow, piece of vocabulary.

The PS2 release is the compromised one and it is worth being clear about that. The visuals are cut back hard from the HD versions — crowds thinner, clubs flatter, the lighting doing most of the work — and the presentation leans on abstract colour and silhouette rather than detail. What survives intact is the chart design and the audio, which are the parts that matter. On a late-generation console still selling in enormous numbers worldwide, that trade was the right one.

Difficulty scaling is the quiet strength. Beginner charts strip out scratching almost entirely, while Expert asks you to hold a crossfade, ride the effects dial and scratch in time without dropping the stream, and the gap between those two states is where the game actually lives. A few tracks outstay their welcome, and the career structure is a straightforward ladder of set lists rather than anything clever.

The turntable itself is now the obstacle. No controller, no game, and the units were never cheap or common. But the idea inside it was sound, and unlike most of the peripheral rush it was not a guitar with the serial numbers filed off. Somebody sat down and worked out what a deck does, then built a game that respects the answer.