Rez | Code Like It's 198x

On paper Rez is an old kind of game. The player moves on rails through a 3D world, locks on to waves of enemies and fights a boss at the end of each stage, as in Sega’s Space Harrier or Panzer Dragoon. What made it different is that the player also makes the music. Every lock-on and every destroyed enemy triggers a sound in time with the soundtrack, the music builds layer by layer as the stage goes on, and the wireframe world slowly turns solid. Edge summed up the mismatch in its review: describing Rez as an old-school 3D shoot-’em-up “is a bit like describing Romeo and Juliet as boy meets girl”.

Fast facts

Developer: United Game Artists, part of Sega.
Producer: Tetsuya Mizuguchi.
Released: Japan, late 2001, on the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2; Europe in early 2002, where Sony published the PlayStation 2 version.
Structure: five main areas, plus unlockable extra areas and modes.
Music: tracks by artists including Ken Ishii, Joujouka, Mist and Adam Freeland, and sounds by Keiichi Sugiyama.
Trance Vibrator: an optional vibrating unit made by ASCII, sold with the game in Japan.
Later versions: Rez HD (Xbox 360, 2008); Rez Infinite (PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR, 2016; PC, 2017).

A shooter made of sound

Mizuguchi told Edge, previewing the game in August 2001, that he wanted “a very enjoyable game, which would make people feel good”, and the magazine traced its abstract sounds and flickering symbols to his love of clubbing. The player’s avatar travels through a computer network corrupted by a virus, and has to break through its firewalls to save the central intelligence, Eden. The controls are simple: a targeting system locks on to several enemies at once and destroys them in a string of sound and colour. “Players target and destroy viruses inside the game, but each one contains a sound or a colour that will be triggered,” Mizuguchi explained. “As you collect items during the game, and as you transform into a different state, the sounds you create change accordingly. The whole game evolves.” He called it a “Dramatic-Trance-Music Shooter”.

There are no lives in the usual sense. Edge described seven stages of evolution for the player’s avatar, from a vague wireframe figure to pure energy. Collecting power-ups moves it up a stage, and each hit knocks it back down. An Overdrive, usable a limited number of times, destroys everything on screen. Each area ends with a boss that changes shape as it is damaged. Edge singled out the Mars boss, a cross between a lotus leaf and a combination lock, and the Uranus boss, which transforms into a giant running figure.

The music came from club artists rather than a single composer. Edge named the Japanese group Joujouka and the techno producer Ken Ishii, and said that Adam Freeland’s track “Fear” provided “a harmoniously epic milieu for the final stage”. PSM2 also listed Keiichi Sugiyama and Mist.

Kandinsky and synaesthesia

Rez was dedicated to the painter Wassily Kandinsky. When Edge gave the game its Graphical Achievement of the Year award in 2002, Mizuguchi explained that its look was “inspired by the surrealism of Russian artist Kandinsky. We tried to ask, ‘What would Kandinsky have achieved with the level of technology available today?’” The wireframe worlds, he added, were “inspired by four ancient civilisations”.

The word most often attached to Rez is synaesthesia, the condition in which one sense triggers another, such as hearing colours. That framing came from Mizuguchi and the magazines that interviewed him, not from any claim that the game produces the condition. Edge’s preview called it his “synaesthesia-driven new videogame”, and its review praised “Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s unique synaesthetic vision”. Hyper explained in 2005 that Mizuguchi, “a great admirer of Kandinsky’s”, thought the painter’s idea that the senses could overlap “could be translated into a game”. Not every reviewer bought it. PSM2, reviewing the European PlayStation 2 release, thought the rail shooting underneath “simply seems naive today” and dismissed the idea in three words: “Synaesthesia? Yeah, right.”

The Trance Vibrator

In Japan Rez was sold on its own for ¥6,800 or bundled with the Trance Vibrator for ¥8,800. Edge reported that the unit, made by ASCII, gave “three to four times the vibrational power” of the standard PlayStation 2 controller, and that Mizuguchi saw it as making up for the lack of loud bass in most homes. Edge was unsure at the time whether European players would be able to buy one. It was sold alongside the Japanese release, and in 2002 Edge found that it also worked with other games.

Reception

Edge gave Rez nine out of ten in its Christmas 2001 issue. It judged the game “immaculate” even as a 3D shooter, and called it “a thrillingly revelatory experience; at once both intellectually edifying and viscerally entertaining”. It found the Dreamcast version “slightly sluggish” beside the PlayStation 2 version but called the differences “cosmetic”. The review ended by asking whether Rez proved that videogames are art, and answered: “Perhaps. A staggeringly enjoyable experience? Certainly.” In the magazine’s awards for 2001 Rez won Graphical Achievement of the Year, where Edge wrote that its “inspired wireframe aesthetic is almost inextricably fused with the game’s heady mix of instinctive action, bombastic soundtrack and evolution-themed narrative”.

By the time Rez came out, Sega had stopped making the Dreamcast, and in 2003 it closed United Game Artists; the Tetsuya Mizuguchi entry follows what he did next.

Rez HD and Rez Infinite

Mizuguchi’s new studio, Q Entertainment, brought the game back as Rez HD, a high-definition version for Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade service. Edge previewed it in December 2007 for release early in 2008, and Retro Gamer reviewed it in 2008 at 800 Microsoft Points, writing that none of the other Xbox Live Arcade games of the month could “hold a candle to the stunning Rez”. Its reviewer described the Xbox 360 pad’s faint thrum growing with the music until “it threatens to knock the pad out of your hand”.

Rez Infinite, from Mizuguchi’s later company Enhance, rebuilt the game for virtual reality. It came out on the PlayStation 4 with PlayStation VR support on 13 October 2016, with the five original areas remastered and a new free-flying stage, Area X. It won Best VR Game at The Game Awards in December 2016. A PC version with support for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift headsets followed on 9 August 2017, and later versions reached the Oculus Quest in 2020 and the PlayStation 5 with PlayStation VR2 in 2023.

Influence

Mizuguchi’s own later games carried the idea on, above all Child of Eden (2011), which he described to Edge as “a music shooter, a synaesthesia shooter”. Other developers have pointed to Rez as a model. Wireframe reported in 2020 that the rhythm-action rail shooter Front Line Zero was “inspired by the futuristic psychedelia of Rez”, and its review of Sayonara Wild Hearts (2019) noted that the game paid “homage to Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s synaesthetic Rez” by turning into a lock-on rail shooter near its end.

Sources

Edge issue 100, August 2001: Rez preview and interview with Tetsuya Mizuguchi (PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast, Sega, United Game Artists; “synaesthesia-driven”; “each one contains a sound or a colour that will be triggered”; “The whole game evolves”; “Dramatic-Trance-Music Shooter”).
Edge issue 105, Christmas 2001, pp. 74–75: Rez review (SCEE/Sega, United Game Artists; ¥6,800, or ¥8,800 with the Trance Vibrator; Eden and the firewalls; five stages; seven phases of evolution; Overdrive; the Mars and Uranus bosses; Joujouka, Ken Ishii and Adam Freeland’s “Fear”; the Dreamcast version; the dedication to Kandinsky; ASCII’s Trance Vibrator; nine out of ten; UK release planned for 25 January 2002).
Edge issue 105, Christmas 2001, p. 16: Adam Freeland and “Fear”.
PSM2 issue 18, January 2002, p. 65: Rez review (PAL, UGA/Sega, £39.99; five areas, seven evolutionary states, unlockable modes; Keiichi Sugiyama, Mist and Ken Ishii; “Synaesthesia? Yeah, right”).
Edge issue 110, May 2002, p. 54: Edge Awards 2001, Graphical Achievement of the Year: Rez (Mizuguchi on Kandinsky and the “four ancient civilisations”).
Edge issue 113, August 2002, p. 80: the Trance Vibrator “released alongside Rez in Japan last year”, used with another game.
Edge issue 121, March 2003, p. 10: ASCII’s Trance Vibrator and Mizuguchi’s view of home audio.
Hyper (Australia) issue 135, January 2005, p. 89: feature on Rez (Kandinsky and synaesthesia).
Edge issue 182, December 2007, p. 40: Rez HD preview (Xbox 360, Microsoft, Q Entertainment, release Q1 2008).
Retro Gamer issue 47, 2008, p. 90: Xbox Live Arcade round-up, Rez HD (Q Entertainment, 800 points).
Edge issue 229, July 2011, p. 112: interview with Mizuguchi (Child of Eden, “a music shooter, a synaesthesia shooter”).
Wireframe issue 25, October 2019, p. 62: Sayonara Wild Hearts review. Issue 31, January 2020, pp. 44–47: game audio feature (Front Line Zero). Issue 50, April 2021, p. 31: Enhance developing Rez Infinite around 2015.
Enhance, “Rez Infinite Launches on Steam (PC, HTC VIVE, Oculus)”, 9 August 2017 (web; the publisher’s own announcement): the PC release, Area X and the five remastered areas. https://enhance-experience.com/191
Rez Infinite official site, News (accessed September 2026) (web; the publisher’s own site): PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR release on 13 October 2016; Best VR Game at The Game Awards 2016; Oculus Quest in October 2020; PlayStation 5 and PlayStation VR2 in February 2023. https://www.rezinfinite.com/news/