''SimTunes'' is a children's software toy designed by

Toshio Iwai is a Japanese interactive media and Installation art, installation artist who has also created a number of commercial video games. In addition he has worked in television, music performance, museum design and digital musical instrument design. ...

and released by

Maxis Maxis is an American video game developer and a Division (business), division of Electronic Arts (EA). The studio was founded in 1987 by Will Wright (game designer), Will Wright and Jeff Braun, and acquired by Electronic Arts in 1997. Maxis is ...

in 1996. It involves

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

a picture using large

pixels In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the sma ...

, where each

color Color (or colour in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though co ...

represents a

musical note In music, notes are distinct and isolatable sounds that act as the most basic building blocks for nearly all of music. This musical analysis#Discretization, discretization facilitates performance, comprehension, and musical analysis, analysis. No ...

. The player places up to four different-colored Bugz, which represent

musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make Music, musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person ...

s or vocal syllables, on this picture, and can change their starting directions and relative speeds. The Bugz crawl over the picture, playing notes corresponding with the colors; and they turn, move

random In common usage, randomness is the apparent or actual lack of definite pattern or predictability in information. A random sequence of events, symbols or steps often has no order and does not follow an intelligible pattern or combination. ...

ly, or jump in response to function symbols that can be added to the dots. ''SimTunes'' was originally developed in the early 1990s by Iwai as a game titled '' Sound Fantasy'' for the Super NES/Super Famicom. Many of the ideas and elements in ''Sound Fantasy'' are present in ''SimTunes''.

References

External links

* 1996 video games Music video games Maxis Sim games Non-games Video games about insects Video games developed in Japan Video games scored by Jerry Martin Windows games Windows-only games Software for children Single-player video games {{Simulation-videogame-stub