Playing Rez the way Mizuguchi would've wanted
Howdy! Do you know Rez? The experimental musical rail shooter developed by United Game Artists (an internal studio at SEGA)?
Well, to quickly sum it up Rez is a trippy game where you're a hacker inside a malfunctioning AI system. The gameplay consists of targeting the enemies and vibing to the OST (OST who's syncing with your actions). The main focus was to create a sense of synesthesia while playing and get the player in the zone.
That's all fine and dandy, but the devs didn't stop there and, for the PS2 release, made an accessory: the Trance Vibrator!
The vibration feedback made use of the Dreamcast vibration pack, the DualShock 2 controller for PS2, and a custom controller created by Mizuguchi's team for the game dubbed the Trance Vibrator that could be used with the PS2 version. The Trance Vibrator was Mizuguchi's idea, starting as a joke to enhance the visual mechanics of the game. The concept was born alongside the original plan for Rez when Mizuguchi visited Europe. While the standard controllers gave good vibration feedback, it only fed into the hands. Mizuguchi's aim with the Trance Vibrator was to allow a player to place it somewhere else in contact with their skin and feel the vibrations from there. He admitted that this lent itself to situations where it could be used for sexual stimulation.1
I've always found the idea quite cool and wanted to recreate it for myself. Today I'm gonna show you how to do it at home:
Grab yourself a copy of Rez (in this post I'll be using Rez infinite and the PS2 version emulated with PCSX2), Intiface Central, the Intiface Game Haptic Router and something that vibrates.
Launch Intiface central and the Game Haptic Router. Make sure the websocket address port in the router is the same as in Intiface central.
Start Intiface central (with the big play button) then click on Connect in the router, they should say connected.
Make sure that the device manager you're going to use is enabled in the App Modes tab of Intiface central (I'm using a lovense toy with the USB dongle in this example).
Click on Start Scanning in the router, find your toy of choice, select it and make sure to bind it to Controller 1 at the bottom.
Launch Rez then go into the Process list router tab. Refresh the list until you're seeing Rez then attach the router to the process.
Rez infinite:
Rez on PCSX2:
In the game options, make sure to enable the vibrations.
Rez infinite (turn them all the way to the max):
Rez on PCSX2:
If wanted, adjust the router's settings (on the same tab you have a visualizer to check what's being sent to your toy).
All done! Hope you'll have a great time vibing away~