FNF B Sides

You hit the first note of Dadbattle B-Side and immediately know something is different. The original track was manageable with practice. The B-Side remix keeps the same structure but inserts triplet bursts between the main arrows — not because the pattern is harder to read, but because it assumes you’ve already memorized the original rhythm and will try to use it here. That assumption is what makes FNF B Sides work as a mod: it doesn’t replace the base experience, it tests your relationship with it.

What B-Side Means in the FNF Community

In FNF B Sides, every song from the original Friday Night Funkin — the songs Boyfriend faces across all base game weeks — has been remixed into a harder, more technically demanding version. The term “B-Side” comes from vinyl record culture, where the B-side of a record was the less commercially prominent track, often the more experimental one. In FNF modding terms, the B-Side concept is about taking familiar content and pushing it past where the original designer stopped.

The mod covers all base game weeks, meaning Daddy Dearest, Skid and Pump, Pico, Mama, the Parents, and Senpai all appear with new B-Side song arrangements. Boyfriend remains the playable character and Girlfriend remains in her seat, but the musical feel changes significantly. B-Side arrangements are generally slower in BPM than players expect from “harder” remixes — the difficulty increase comes from rhythm complexity rather than speed increase. A B-Side song at 90 BPM can be harder than the original at 120 BPM because the 90 BPM version inserts subdivided patterns into what should be the rests.

The visual presentation also changes in B-Sides — the UI shifts to a different color scheme compared to the default FNF palette, and the background visuals are remixed versions of the originals. This isn’t just cosmetic: it signals to players that they are in a distinct experience from base FNF, not a harder difficulty of the same content. Players who approach B-Sides expecting a speed increase and get a rhythm complexity increase instead sometimes find the initial difficulty disorienting before the pattern logic clicks.

Arrow Patterns and Why Triplets Break Muscle Memory

FNF B Sides is built around the same four-direction input system as base Friday Night Funkin: left, down, up, right arrows (or corresponding WASD keys) that must be pressed when the matching note reaches the judgment line. What the B-Side arrangements add is primarily triplet groupings inserted into sections that players have memorized as even eighth-note patterns in the original songs.

Muscle memory in rhythm games is a double-edged tool. Once a player has internalized a pattern at a specific tempo and subdivision, that pattern is retrievable almost automatically. The problem in FNF B Sides is that the retrieval of an original-song pattern actively interferes with executing the B-Side version of that same song. The brain offers the familiar pattern from memory; the B-Side requires a different one in the same rhythmic space. Players describe this collision of patterns as “old song brain” — the original version shows up uninvited and causes early misses that don’t happen when approaching songs that have no memorized original.

The most effective approach to B-Side learning is to start each song at Easy difficulty for a few runs before moving to Hard. Easy mode in B Sides uses a smaller subset of the B-Side patterns, which builds familiarity with the new rhythm logic without the full complexity. By the time a player runs Hard, the B-Side patterns have partially replaced the original-song memory and the conflict is reduced. Players who jump directly to Hard on songs they know very well from the original game consistently report more difficulty than players who step through Easy first, even when their overall FNF skill level would suggest Hard should be immediately accessible.

Song-by-Song Difficulty Differences

Not all B-Side remixes are equally challenging. The Dadbattle B-Side is widely considered the first genuine skill check in the mod — the original Dadbattle is manageable for most players past the beginner stage, but the B-Side version introduces burst patterns that require both fast recovery between note clusters and sustained focus across a longer song structure. The Pico B-Side is frequently cited as one of the harder entries because the original Pico songs already operate at a fast tempo and the B-Side arrangements layer additional complexity onto an already demanding base.

The Senpai B-Side is interesting for different reasons. The original Senpai songs are among the more melodically distinctive tracks in base FNF, and the B-Side versions preserve that melodic identity while inserting rhythmic interruptions that force pattern switching mid-phrase. Players who performed well on Senpai in the original sometimes find the B-Side more disorienting than the Pico B-Sides despite the Pico tracks being technically faster — the melodic disruption in Senpai B-Side conflicts with a specific kind of musical intuition that the Pico tracks don’t activate.

The community consensus among players who have completed all B-Side songs on Hard puts the Mommy Must Murder B-Side and the Thorns B-Side (Senpai week third song) at the high end of the difficulty range. Both involve sustained rapid patterns and limited natural rest points where players can recover from misses. First-time Hard completions of these two songs are treated as meaningful milestones in the B-Sides community.

Scoring, Miss Counts, and Health Bar Differences

FNF B Sides uses the same health bar and miss-count system as base Friday Night Funkin. Missing a note depletes the health bar; hitting notes refills it. A run ends when the health bar empties. The score is based on note accuracy — “Sick” ratings for perfectly timed hits, “Good” for slightly off-timing, “Bad” and “Shit” for significant timing errors. The community distinguishes between a “clear” (health bar survived the song) and a “FC” (full combo — no missed notes, regardless of timing accuracy). Getting an FC on a B-Side Hard difficulty song is considered substantially harder than a base FNF clear.

One complaint that surfaces regularly in the community about FNF B Sides is the health drain rate on some B-Side Hard difficulties. A few songs feature extended dense pattern sections where the miss health penalty is sufficient to end a run during a burst cluster even for players whose overall FNF skill would not suggest vulnerability to those patterns. This feels inconsistent to players — a Hard B-Side pattern that’s genuinely difficult should be hard to hit cleanly, but shouldn’t result in health bar failure in under ten misses on a track that’s over two minutes long. This is a legitimate balance concern that the community acknowledges as a rough edge in the mod’s difficulty design.

How FNF B Sides Fits Into the Wider Mod Ecosystem

FNF B Sides occupies a specific position in the Friday Night Funkin mod landscape. It is a quality-of-execution mod rather than a content expansion mod — it does not add new characters, new weeks, or new storylines. Its entire value is in the remixed music and what that music demands of players who already know the original songs. This makes it polarizing: players who want new FNF content find it less satisfying than mods with original characters and weeks, while players who value skill development find it precisely what they were looking for.

The mod’s lasting presence in the community stems from its role as a leveling benchmark. Players who can clear all B-Side Hard songs with FC ratings have demonstrated a level of rhythm game proficiency that transfers well to other challenging FNF mods. Mod creators sometimes cite B-Side Hard clears as a rough prerequisite skill level for their more demanding original content. In this sense, FNF B Sides functions as an unofficial difficulty calibration tool that the base game doesn’t provide on its own.

FNF B Sides rewards players who treat Friday Night Funkin as something worth knowing deeply rather than something worth finishing quickly. The Dadbattle B-Side doesn’t get easier because you’ve played it thirty times; it gets easier because by the thirtieth run your hands have built a specific response to each burst cluster that your original-game instincts had been interfering with. That’s the mod’s core achievement: it makes the familiar songs teach you something new about your own limits, and it uses Boyfriend and Girlfriend’s simple animation loops and the original game’s recognizable visual language to make that teaching feel like a homecoming rather than a departure.