We’ve seen rhythm games that let you simulate playing musical notes by mashing buttons, moving a joystick, and performing gestures, essentially dumbing down music making to arcade gameplay. While the Endless Beat Machine looks like one of those, it isn’t. Instead, this arcade music rig goes beyond your standard rhythm game, allowing you to make actual music rather than simply testing your ability to press buttons at the right time.
Billed as “the world’s first beatmaking arcade machine,” the device lets you make actual music using the cabinet’s controls, so you can compose your next hit song while punching large arcade-sized buttons and wielding a joystick. In fact, the outfit claims you can easily hook it up to the rest of your musical setup, allowing you to add a full-fledged arcade machine to your home studio.
The Endless Beat Machine consists of a full-sized arcade cabinet with a large 24-inch display, a high-def speaker system, and a large control panel that has more buttons than any arcade rig you’ve probably seen. The 24-inch full-color display supports touchscreen controls, so you can interact directly with onscreen elements on top of the standard tactile controls. The control panel, on the other hand, comes with a whopping 28 buttons, a joystick, and a smaller 5-inch touchscreen, whose contents change depending on whatever is on the main screen.
It comes with three play modes. First is Arcade, which presents the user with beat-making missions structured as arcade gameplay, making for a unique game that can entertain people at your party while also potentially helping develop their musical chops. According to the outfit, this one is continually growing with various musicians working with them to add new missions based on their own workflows. There’s also an Open Mic mode that allows multiple people to play. While only one person can man the main rig, others can join in via the companion app, allowing you to stage live beatmaking battles, jam sessions, and open mic nights.
The Endless Beat Machine also has a Studio Mode that, pretty much, opens it up for freestyling, allowing you to compose music on something more interesting than your old boring laptop. Aside from making music directly on the cabinet, it can also plug in musical instruments, hook up MIDI controllers, and host VST3 plugins, among other things, allowing you to integrate it into any exiting studio setup via two XLR inputs, two XLR outputs, and three MIDI-compatible USB ports.
According to the outfit, it comes with a large library of built-in sounds, while being compatible with any software, hardware, or acoustic instrument you normally use in the studio. Can you use it to play games when you get a little burned out with making fresh sounds? At the moment, no, but we have a feeling people are going to make games run on there anyway, especially with all those buttons at your disposal. Hey, this can be fun.
The Endless Beat Machine is available now in a limited bespoke run of 25 units. No pricing is listed, but we imagine they aren’t giving this away for cheap.