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Saturday, May 11, 2013

Song of the Week! 11 May 2013


It's time to close another trilogy of Taiko songs this week. Remember the three SEGA game songs which were released on Taiko PSP DX? Two of them have been featured, leaving just one more.

 MachineGun Kiss Yakuza: Dead Souls
Version
Allx4 (115)x4 (174)x3 (276)x6 (383)
 Taiko PSP DX
 178
 none
 mgkiss


Two years ago on June 9, Sega and Namco publicly announced the release of some marvelous exclusive songs for a portable Taiko game which came out the month after; these three songs come from well-known Sega videogames. One of those games was released together with the announcement.

Said game was the latest PS3 spinoff of the popular action/adventure series Yakuza (known in Japan as 'Ryu-ga Gotoku', 龍が如く, lit. Like A Dragon), called Ryu-ga Gotoku OF THE END (龍が如く OF THE END), which would later be known by the rest of the world as Yakuza: Dead Souls in 2012. The release date of this spin-off was originally set to March 2011, but suffered a 3-month delay due to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake/tsunami disaster.

The story arc of Dead Souls diverges from the main Yakuza games, as the Japan portrayed here is a nation in ruin. During April 2011, all the residents of Kamurocho -Yakuza series's main locale- are quickly turning into dreadful zombies and the outbreak is uncontainable, even for the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force itself. The only surviving hope of the town lies in the hands of four legendary Yakuza clan leaders, whose names have already become legendary in the first four Yakuza main games: Kazuma Kiryu (桐生 一馬) and Goro Majima (真島吾朗) from the first game, Ryuji Goda (郷田龍司) from the 2nd one and Shun Akiyama (秋山駿) from Yakuza 4.

MachineGun Kiss is another of those Game Music songs whose origin is referenced in the latest game of the related franchise, rather than its actual debut game. The song come from a karaoke minigame in Yakuza 4, where Kazuma Kiryu -and thus his seiyū, Takaya Kuroda (黒田崇矢)- is the singer. And much like many other Game Music songs in Taiko PSP DX, this one features a whole set of exclusive graphics as well, from the dancers to the customized Full Combo message. While playing the song, the lower part of the screen shows the entrance gate to Kamurocho together with the 4 main playable characters of Yakuza: Dead Souls (from the left to the right: Akiyama, Majima, Kiryu and Goda) as well as Kazuma Kiryu's true love, Haruka Sawamura (澤村遥).

The song's chart is nothing worth mentioning even within the 6* Oni tier; significance of the song aside, MachineGun Kiss is your typical easy Taiko chart, with almost no 1/16 clusters that are already commonplace in even lower Oni difficulty ratings.