Today, I'll be featuring two niche game songs found only on one version of Taiko. Can you guess what they are?
Koi wa Mizuiro (恋はみずいろ)| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taiko DS 2 | x4 (77) | x5 (121) | x5 (232) | x8 (350) |
| Taiko 3DS 2, Taiko Wii U 3 | x3 (77) | x4 (121) | x5 (232) | x7 (350) |
Taiko DS 2, Taiko 3DS 2, Taiko Wii U 3
154
none
mbloodDo a Google search for 'Koi wa Mizuiro' or the Japanese letters and you'll most likely get a jumble of different results which can easily confuse you into mistaking this for the wrong song. This song is not the 1967 French song 'L'amour est bleu' by Vicky Leandros (or the Ryouko Moriyama (森山良子) version), or the ending theme of the anime Amagami SS, but the ending theme song for a little-known and adorable Nintendo DS game known as Mizuiro Blood. Misumi Yuri (みすみゆり) is responsible for the song (as well as Jigoku no Taiko Jiten, Lovely-X, Saturday Taiko Fever, among others) and is sung by Kani Prince (蟹プリンス) of the Muscle March songs.
Given all the popularity of Taiko outside of Japan, especially the DS Taiko games, Mizuiro Blood still remains a complete enigma and there aren't many explanations in English about how the game plays. You might visit the official site, which is bombarded with round robot characters with the same style of cuteness as Taiko no Tatsujin (the graphic designer for both games are the same) and still not know a thing, and to be honest, it's perfectly natural if you don't, because this is one nutty random game. The story revolves around Mizuiro-chan, the blue robot. You take her through one year of school life, playing minigames on each of the game's 40 chapters until you're finally tasked with saving the world (in a minigame, no less). She has friends and a love interest, and her teacher is a cow. All these things take place almost at once.
The trailers show you the easier-to-understand games like shooting targets according to rhythm or running after something, but those only make up about 20% of the game. The rest of the time you'll be playing fiendishly tough Japanese word games (kanji translation, shiritori, memorize words, fill in the blanks) and all within a strict time limit. Fail even once and it's game over and Mizuiro-chan dies. Yes, she dies. Harsh for such a cute game. The sheer obscurity of Mizuiro Blood and the difficult word games are probably the reason why this never took off with the import community, though if you're looking to strengthen your vocabulary, this and Mojipittan are a good place to start. And what genre is this mixed bag placed in then? '即死系ハチャメチャラブコメディ', or Sudden Death Style Super Extreme Love Comedy. Okay...
There's probably more than one reason why this song will stay on DS and only DS. The two series have more than just a simple relationship by graphical style, it's more than that. Mizuiro appears in Taiko DS1 and 2 on letters to you promoting her game, while Don-chan and Kat-chan appear in Mizuiro Blood in a Taiko minigame, promoting Taiko as well. All three of them are developed by the same merger company (Taiko by the Namco division, Mizuiro by the Bandai division), and released at just within a few months from each other. It's pretty safe to say we won't be seeing Koi wa Mizuiro outside of DS2, and it's currently the only way to play this relaxing love song.
As for the notechart, the nature of the song makes it an odd one on the 8* Oni tier, because the first half of the song is a slow start that doesn't feel like Oni at all, being made up of simple note combinations. It's only on the Go-Go Time that the song decides to pick up the pace and spams lots of clusters everywhere, which could arguably be suitable in a 9* song. Koi wa Mizuiro is one of the biggest difficulty shifts in a single song in Taiko. It ends slow as well, leading to a finish.
Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime (スライムもりもりドラゴンクエスト2 大戦車としっぽ団)| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x3 (124) | x3 (185) | x6 (460) | x7 (543) |
Taiko 8 77~130 none ???While Koi wa Mizuiro was a console exclusive song, this one is an arcade exclusive. Of all the Dragon Quest songs you'll encounter throughout the Taiko games, you'd be forgiven for skipping this one entirely- although the game itself isn't half as obscure (who doesn't know of Dragon Quest?), the song surely is. Being on just one arcade version is worse than being on one console since it's even more difficult to gain access to a specific arcade.
Unlike the previous songs which put the main RPG series in the spotlight, this song is from a popular handheld Dragon Quest spinoff series known as Slime Morimori. This one is from the DS version and the second in the series, released a year before the Taiko 8 arcade, Suraimu Morimori Dragon Quest Daisensha to Shippo Dan (Slime of Gusto Dragon Quest: Tails Brigade and the Giant Tank). English speakers know this game as Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime and also as the first game in the series to debut in English. The real first game, Slime MoriMori Dragon Quest: Shōgeki no Shippo Dan, was never seen outside of Japan, and features the same gameplay as the first. Unlike the discontinued Taiko notechart, the Slime Morimori spinoff series is alive and well, and a third game is being made for Nintendo 3DS as we speak.
Unlike the mainline RPG games, there are no warriors or mages or humans of any sort. Slime Morimori's fictional world - Slimeburg (as it is called in English) - is inhabited only by Slimes, the cutesy mascot characters and the common enemies of Dragon Quest. The world is shared by other token enemies of the Dragon Quest world- the only thing missing from it are actual humans. In Rocket Slime, all the citizens of Boingworld are kidnapped by a mysterious organization, known as "the Plob". Only Rocket the Slime managed to escape, since the evil organization confused the blue protagonist with a worm. The only weapon he has against the Plob is the Schleiman Tank, an immensely giant tank activated with a flute, found by his friends before the Plob invasion. The majority of your time spent in the game is to explore worlds and beat bosses, much like in Legend of Zelda, and collecting parts and weapons to soup up your tank for battles, which is the other integral part of the game.
The Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime song featured in Taiko 8 is the tune heard during these tank battles, which is composed by Koichi Sugiyama (すぎやま こういち ), lead composer of the Dragon Quest series. All the other Dragon Quest songs in Taiko so far are also composed by him. Like the other DQ songs on Taiko, custom dancers appear during the play: Rocket and his Slime friends (Hooly, Bo, a member of the Plob, and Ducktor Cid) cover the bottom half of the screen, together with a pair of clashing tanks (the slime-shaped one on the left is the player's Schleiman Tank).
This song has a middling BPM and is covered all over by clusters and streams which repeat almost perfectly as the song loops. By no way does this mean the notechart is a cakewalk- although on Taiko 8 it is marked as a 7*, it could have been a good deal higher. The victory song uses simple 1/12 notes to end the song.
