Third Taiko no Tatsujin arcade machine, released on March 2002. First Taiko no Tatsujin game to have the balloon note, and also introduces a new 'Battle Mode'. It's hard to find footage of the Battle Mode since it was scrapped soon after it was made, but it's basically a Taiko brawl between the two players of the arcade machine.
Instead of two Tamashii bars, both players share one bar, which will lengthen or shorten depending on how well each player does, like tug-of-war. To add to the mix that giant bomb at the end will smash the losing player, lowering his Tamashii gauge. The player with the longer Tamashii gauge at the end of the song wins. Because of the Battle Mode, the method of unlocking Donderful difficulty was changed, to ten hits on the left rim when Kantan is highlighted. To access Battle Mode, two players had to hit the right rim once while on Muzukashii.
Taiko 3 introduces some classics to the Namco genre, such as Taiko-zamurai and Fuun! Bachi o Sensei, as extremely hard songs, but the increasing difficulty standard has long since downgraded these once-legendary songs.
Total number of songs is 44. Songs are arranged based on their old genres, so their new genres will be in brackets after the song name, if it's different)
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