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Saturday, October 22, 2011

Song of the Week! 22 October 2011


Care to guess this week's featured song? It's one of the extra songs put into Taiko 14 and its composer made one of the most famous Namco Original series of songs. C'mon, it's easy!

Doom Noiz Galaga Legions
Version
Taiko 14 +, Taiko Wii 3x5 (147)x7 (240) x8 (620)x10 (961)
Taiko 0, Taiko PSP DX, Taiko Wii 5, Taiko +x5 (147)x6 (240) x8 (620)x10 (961)
Taiko 14 +, Taiko 0, Taiko PSP DX, Taiko Wii 3, 5, Taiko +
160
none
 doomn


This was a genuine surprise when it debuted in Taiko Wii 3's roster as an unlockable song, a noisy, chaotic Game Music song made by none other than Linda Ai-CUE (aka Akihiko Ishikawa, 石川哲彦). And since this is a song from a shooter game, it's tailored to the hardcore and anyone hardcore enough to listen to this crazy mix on their MP3 player.

Doom Noiz comes from the 2008 videogame Galaga Legions, released exclusively on XBox Live as a downloadable game, is an enhanced version of 1981's original arcade game Galaga, and one of many many other Galaga remakes and re-releases. The original Galaga's objective is to score as many points as possible by destroying insect-like enemies. The player controls a starfighter that can move left and right along the bottom of the play field. Enemies swarm in groups in a formation near the top of the screen, and then begin flying down toward the player, firing bombs, attempting to collide with the fighter or to capture him, which set the standard for all shmups after 1981. An exploitable bug makes the game crash once level 255 (also called Level 0) is reached.

Unlike its forefather, Galaga Legions's starfighter can be moved in any cardinal direction (all 360 degrees with the XBox 360's analog stick), and have many new minion ships and two new satellite weapons, and the number of enemies that can be on-screen at any time is insane; up to 40.000 enemies will try to destroy the player at the same time. After XBox Live, Galaga Legions was also included in the Namco Museum Virtual Arcade (also for X360) and the recently released Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions (Nintendo 3DS) collection, and is now also available for download on the PSN store for PlayStation 3. An additional, enhanced version of the game, simply called Galaga Legions DX, was released for the Microsoft home console in 2011, right for Galaga's 30th anniversary.

Doom Noiz was the stage music for Area 9 in the game. Was there any way Linda's insane masterpiece, full of random noises and a rhythm that's almost uncatchable, work on Taiko and still have a competent yet challenging notechart? Etou took up the challenge, and this thrilling notechart was the result, an exhausting succession of fast note clusters of every different pattern imaginable including 1/16 and 1/24 combined, interwoven with slow portions filled with confusing streams and short balloon notes. Sounds like a mouthful, and plays out completely mad too, like Taiko just suddenly threw all semblance of rhythm right out of the window, which is how the song got its 10* Oni. It is currently one of the hardest Game Music songs ever.

Added for the 14th arcade through a software update, Doom Noiz was featured in the 2011 Taiko Arcade tournament both on the preliminary round and during the tourney's first round finals. Doom Noiz is the only song which was picked by both players during the sixth match!