Today's blog post is a long essay about the making of Shimedore 2000, the last hurrah for the most popular song series in Taiko ever made. Traditionally, each 2000 song would get 2 different entries, one for the song and one for discussing the notes, but in this case it's all been mashed into one giant post!
Many of the familiar Taiko names gave their input on how Shimedore came about.
From Masubuchi Yuuji:
It was last year in May when we felt that the 2000 series was heading for the danger zone. Traditionally there would always be one 2000 song with every new Taiko version (the latest being EkiBEN -> X-DAY -> Haya Saitama -> Hataraku) (interestingly Kidaruma was never mentioned) , but for Taiko 14 no one could come up with any incredible ideas. 14 was released without a 2000 song, which was the first time since Taiko 6. The chain had been broken.
To add to the tension, the series mastermind LindaAI-CUE was already committed to the soundtrack for Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme VS. (for arcade) and had absolutely no more time left to compose yet another successor for our favorite series.
Lack of 2000. 2000 deficiency. 2000 in danger. Even worse was that Takahashi, the man responsible for the notes of all 2000 songs is about to leave the Taiko Team. Was there nothing that could be done?
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From Etou:
He had been discussing with the rest of the team on what they should be doing since both composer and notecharter were gone. After much deliberation, someone came up with the bright idea of mixing them all into one and calling it 'Medley 2000' (メドレー２０００). Because it was going to be the final 2000 song, the 'メ' was changed to '〆' which looked alike and bore the meaning of 'coming to an end'.
Suggestions came in. The most memorable and toughest bits of each 2000 song was put into the medley, to bring players all the way down memory lane, playing 2000 song after 2000 song in quickfire fashion without ever stopping until the series was over. They had made a monster fusion song!
Then, the next problem to tackle is the notechart. With Takahashi gone, who was going to handle it? Common sense- the hardest parts of each 2000, just bring back the old notes too! With that came a legend to end all legends in the series....the 'Over The Limit' concept! This came about almost by accident, after putting all the notes in place and playtesting the song on Oni. (脳内カーニバル・・・ エエッおい、もう次かよ・・・ 黄色～・・・) represented the start, middle, and end of the song (Saitama, Soroban, Kidaruma). For some reason a total note count was not done before setting them in place, and thus no one knew the total number would exceed maximum limit until after playtesting was done.
1...414 combo? This was definitely too many notes over the usual limit of 999.
Then they made the number connection.
1414...Taiko no Tatsujin 14? It was a miraculous coincidence! The perfect way to end the series with a bang, not just with bits of the songs people loved, but with a hard chart and a very significant number to go with it! Following that, more observations started to come into play. Muzukashii difficulty had 1004 notes (barring the zeroes, would also be a play on 14). Shimedore was made up of 14 songs. Barring the Ura difficulties and long versions, this was the 14th secret song. (actually 13th one, but very close)
Etou was really satisfied with the results. Happy ending to the 2000 series after all! Oh, by the way, his favorite moment in the series was between Kita Saitama and Soroban. What's yours?
(Joubutsu, wait for your turn~ You'll get your time in the limelight)
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