Elite Beat Agents is a Nintendo DS rhythm game about secret agents who solve everyday crises through stylus-driven song-and-dance routines.
Elite Beat Agents is a rhythm game developed by iNiS and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS. Released in North America in 2006 and Europe in 2007, it adapts the core idea of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan into a new Western setting, with suited agents answering calls for help through elaborate dance performances.
Each mission plays as a comic vignette on the top screen while the player taps, traces, and spins prompts on the Touch Screen in time with cover versions of pop and rock songs. Accurate timing keeps the Elite-O-Meter from falling and pushes the scene toward a better outcome; missed beats cause the story to stumble before the player can recover.
The campaign is built around short, replayable stages and rising difficulty levels. Later songs demand faster reading, tighter timing, and longer combo strings, while multiplayer modes let up to four players compete or cooperate on selected performances.
The game uses bright comic-book panels, exaggerated character designs, and slapstick story premises to make each song feel like a small rescue mission. Its tone swings from absurd comedy to sentimental melodrama, but the presentation stays energetic and readable on the DS dual-screen layout.
Elite Beat Agents earned notice as one of the DS library's distinctive rhythm games. It received nominations from the British Academy Games Awards for Use of Audio and from the D.I.C.E. Awards for Handheld Game of the Year, and later appeared on Slant Magazine's 2020 list of the 100 best video games.