Song of the Week! 30 June 2012

After a month without covering a Namco Original, let's go back once to Taiko no Tatsujin's largest genre. Here is one unforgettable console Taiko theme song!

1UP.com interviews Go Shiina

Go Shiina of the Namco Sound Team talks about his beginnings at the company, his inspirations for making music and the challenges he faced. And Taiwanese shaved ice. Go read it here!

http://www.1up.com/features/interview-conversation-go-shiina

Namco Taiko Blog (21-22 June 2012)- We missed stuff

Sorry to everyone!

This was unexpected. After the Taiko no Tatsujin arcade announcement last week we have just found out that we missed two posts after that, one pertaining to Taiko 3DS and the other being the results of the second online tournament for Taiko 0. We'll post them here now.

Taiko no Tatsujin 3DS demo now on eShop

The demo is up for whoever wants to try it on a Japanese 3DS for free before buying the actual game. The demo focuses on the battles of Story Mode and has you playing O Sole Mio and Kimi ni, Romantic against the enemies. The demo ends after both songs are over and the enemies are defeated. Raruko's fire ability is also in the demo. Super effective!

The above video of the demo in action was provided by Yamilla, who has been kind enough to share her capture recordings with us before, and it seems she's trying out capture recording for the 3DS! For those of you more experienced with the console, you probably already know how difficult capture recording is on Nintendo's new console with the current tools available to the general public due to how different it is. Thanks Yamilla!

Namco Taiko Blog (28 June 2012)- Don Challenge

Third blog post of the week, this time once again about the changes to the networking aspect of the new Taiko no Tatsujin arcade update. Don Challenge!

Namco Taiko Blog (27 June 2012)- Taiko no Tatsujin x Megpoid GUMI

Vocaloid fever strikes once more! Three songs by a different Vocaloid, Megpoid GUMI, is making it into Taiko no Tatsujin Codename Katsu-Don, as part of GUMI celebrating her third anniversary yesterday.

Katamari on the Swing lyrics

Composer, Lyrics: Shigeru Matsuzaki (松崎しげる)
Vocals: Masayuki Tanaka (田中雅之)

Namco Taiko Blog (25 June 2012) - Taiko 0 Version 4.03 Update

While everyone's attention is on Taiko 3DS and Codename Katsu-Don right now, Namco decides to give the old firmware a little more spin with another update.

Nothing new gameplay or performance-wise (all of those are saved for Katsu-Don methinks), but there are two songs to be added to Taiko 0, and this is Version 4.03.

Classic
Hakuchou no Mizuumi ～still a duckling～ (白鳥の湖　～ｓｔｉｌｌ ａ ｄｕｃｋｌｉｎｇ～)

Namco Original
Hayatemaru (迅風丸)

Yup, just two. Smallest update ever? You bet. Hakuchou no Mizuumi comes in, most likely with the Ura Oni chart from Taiko Wii 4, while the other is a completely new Namco Original song, with a pronunciation no one is sure of yet. Hayatemaru is the closest we can get, so we'll put that while awaiting more concrete information.

The Taiko Team also reports that the third Taiko 0 tournament will begin the same day for all the Banapassport users, but the song chosen for the contest is still a secret. Anyone want to place bets on the song being Hakuchou no Mizuumi Ura? Or maybe Hayatemaru is a crazy difficult song we will all look forward to playing.


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Song of the Week! 23 June 2012

You are going to love this week's feature, I guarantee. It has been put off and requested ever since our site launched, and here it is now, two years later.

Taiko 3DS list confirmed legit + 3rd round of screenshots

Yup, just last night we posted that big list of rumored Taiko 3DS songs? It's all legitimate stuff, this bunch of songs has been circulating around the major gaming websites too!

http://www.inside-games.jp/article/2012/06/21/57619.html

This is just one, there are quite a few more sources but this one has new screenshots we have not seen before. But before that, all the new Taiko 3DS songs from yesterday, to confirm one more time.

Game Music
Wasabi Body Blow - from Tekken 3D Prime Edition
Fighter's Honor (Flying Remix) - from Ace Combat 3D Cross Rumble
ソウルキャリバーV: The Invincible Blade (Soul Calibur V)
テイルズ オブ ジ アビス The arrow was shot (Tales of the Abyss)
AWAKE～マッスル目覚めのテーマ～ (AWAKE ~Muscle Mezame no Theme~) - from Muscle March
バーニングフォースメドレー (Burning Force Medley)
アサルトBGM1 (Assault BGM1)

Classic
オーソレ・ミオ (O Sole Mio)

Namco Original
キミと響くハーモニー (Kimi to Hibiku Harmony)
エンジェル ドリーム (Angel Dream)
スーハー2000 (Suuhaa 2000)

And then the revealing of new areas and Raruko forms, which I'll let the screenshots do for now (their names are pretty difficult to romanize)





Some story and enemy screenshots, with clearer confirmation of O Sole Mio, and a lake area



Raruko's rock power. Not sure what it does yet, but there's Soul Calibur V.



Raruko's wind power which turns the marker into a blue flame. Again, not sure what it does.



Clearer shots of our Hayabusa boss, some sort of money-crazed two-headed crow.



What song is this....WHAT SONG IS THIS?! Namco quit being such a tease, we know this is a boss character!

Collating all that we know from Taiko 3DS, there are currently 45 known songs out of more than 50, of which we know 3 are unlockable. How many songs are there really?

Taiko 3DS and Taiko 0 rumored new songs

The Taiko 0 rumored songs are from a week ago so I'll post that first. It's supposed to be part of the new songlist for Codename Katsudon but there is no real source for it yet. All we have is this pixelated black and white picture with a few songs named out..

The songs are: Flying Get (AKB48), PON PON PON, Memeshikute, Wonder Land, Bye My Melody, Matryoshka, the Dragon Ball Heroes theme song, and another song the commenter forgot. All except two are either on or highly likely to be for 3DS. Matryoshka can be seen in the black and white picture, shown below. Squint and check out the top left circle next to the screen!

As for the 3DS songs, there's another big list of them with 4gamer as the source. Again, nothing is confirmed until they're officially shown!

As mentioned in the previous 3DS rumor list, O Sole Mio in the Classic genre and Soul Calibur V are here, along with a boatload of new Game Music songs, Wasabi Body Blow from Tekken 3D, Fighter's Honor from Ace Combat 3D (wow all the 3DS game BGMs are coming into play after Venomous), Tales of the Abyss which has been confirmed multiple times, Burning Force Medley and something called Assault BGM1.

In the Namco Originals, there's a 'Kini to Hibiku Harmony', Angel Dream as usual, and something called 'Suuhaa 2000'? Woah there...I'm a bit too shocked by all this to get excited at the moment. That's a lot to take in! Is this stuff for real?

Red Rose Evangel full version

All is described in the title. The album 'Cry Out' is released, now all you have to do is give this a listen! The first Rose song to get its own full version.

Namco Taiko Blog (21 June 2012)- Taiko no Tatsujin Katsu-Don details

Namco have said nothing about Codename Katsu-Don being a new cabinet at all, they keep mentioning a 'large-scale upgrade', so this is most likely software based (which throws the camera idea right out the window). Let's see what they have in store for July when the update goes live.

Taiko no Tatsujin Kaze

It looks similar to Taikojiro but this modded simulator has something Taikojiro doesn't; the ability to change the orientation of the notes. It sounds boring, but....just watch the video. I swear you will not be able to keep a straight face after that! 3D mode is annoying though.

You can stop after 3.00 or so, the uploaded records something totally different after that, which showcases the same simulator being able to run videos, again, something Taikojiro doesn't do.

Scroll Mika lyrics

Vocals: Mika Sato (佐藤美香) 

Twitter Snippets (16 June 2012) - An artist's good-bye

 
After 18 years working for Namco Bandai, lead artist of the Taiko no Tatsujin series Yukiko Yooko (横尾有希子) retires yesterday on 15th of June, 2012. The announcement is taken from the artist's Twitter page, followed by the picture above which sums up the most remarkable characters she created for the Japanese software house, also featuring the ones from Taiko no Tatsujin and Mizuiro Blood.

In other words, the creator of Don-chan the character and all his friends has now stopped, not because she didn't like Namco, but because she has finished with work. God bless her.

Link to tweet

Song of the Week! 16 June 2012

Another major Taiko no Tatsujin J-Pop song! What's the most common J-Pop song besides Natsu Matsuri TRAIN TRAIN and Rinda Rinda?

Taiko PSP DX's IDs, take 11

For the second consecutive month another Ura is found in the .edat files of PSP DX's downlaodable songs! This time it's Yozakura Shanikusai (IDs: btu5ar / exbtu5, 1st picture), which was already given out before on PSP2 sans the Ura. But the real hidden surprise is the second id, cna4, a never-before-seen ID. 'cna' is 'shiina', so this means it's a 4th Go Shiina song coming to PSP!

And there is another fact about today's pack: as previewed in Taiko PSP DX's website, extended version songs will not be labeled as Ura modes anymore, as Fuun Bachi o Sensei Ura is now shown in the song selection screen with 'Long Version' tacked to the back, though its ID is still the same. Will future console/arcade games adopt the same naming for all other extended songs?

Hayabusa confirmed for Taiko 3DS

 As we are counting down to the release date for Taiko 3DS, slowly one by one the secret boss songs are being revealed. Seen here in the July issue of CoroCoro is Hayabusa, one of the Don Point unlock songs from Taiko 0. It's a bit blurry due to how crammed the kanji is, but it definitely doesn't fit anything else. 36 songs down!

Don't know the song? This is the one.

Namco Taiko Blog (14 June 2012): Taiko no Tatsujin Codename: Katsu-Don

A major arcade update after just 7 months in market? Namco you mad. It's happening this summer whether you like it or not!

Taikojiro map feature

And again, today I feature your user-made creations on the blog! One of each from jylee, kaiya and Yusri Khairi.



This is kaiya1022 (Packer Woo)'s take on the song remixed by Jia Yi, PikaPi Nation, which we saw last week. With the high BPM, even the simple clusters featured in this map become extremely difficult to tackle!



Yusri's new map for Ultraviolence, performed by Cliff Lin, which is the BGM used in the recent trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Now that's something you don't see very often! Should it be in Variety or Game Music though?



This map comes from Jia Yi, titled 二十四孝. An extremely slow and drawn out song with more than 1000 notes. He says its name is related to a fellow Taiko fan's name, as is the case for PikaPi Nation and Tsuki Carnival (I'll feature this in the near future).

Want their maps? Go to their Youtube channels from here or get onto Facebook and contact them! They'll be happy to help.

Random: Jiwa Taiko

There are a lot of Malay gangster movies made, but I just could not ignore the title of the latest production by Osman Ali.

Yep you heard right. Jiwa Taiko. I know the 'taiko' in the movie does not in any way refer to the traditional Japanese instrument which is the focus of this blog (it means, literally 'big brother', and is used as a name for gang leaders) but I just couldn't resist making my own crappy Photoshop edits. Thank goodness I still kept the Dokodon Fighters posters from April Fools Day!

(yes don-chan and kat-chan look weird shut up)

Meena no Oyashiki lyrics

Composer/lyricist: Takafumi Sato (佐藤たかふみ)
Vocals: Mitsu

Song of the Week! 9 June 2012

Another request made by anongos. Once again, we go into the realm of retro gaming for this one!

Wrath of Requiem confirmed for Taiko 3DS

Remember that rumor article of the Taiko 3DS songs we posted last week? At least one of them is confirmed to be legit. Wrath of Requiem, an old classic song last seen on Taiko Wii 1, is in the game.

From my own copy of Famitsu DS+Wii July 2012:

There's the title right there in the lower corner. Although not much, it does provide a little more credibility to our rumor list; they might be completely accurate!

Namco Taiko Blog (7 June 2012)- PSP DX June download pack + Taiko 0 costume contest results

Two posts today, one in the morning and one in the afternoon! The first one we covered in detail yesterday, about the Taiko no Tatsujin Portable DX download pack, so we're not going to do it again as all the songs are old ones. Remember, June 14th is the release date!

The second one, well, Namco made that promise that they would talk about the Taiko 0 Don-chan dressup contest this week.

Here are the winners. Remember, this is all for casual fun, no prize is given out!

Taiko no Tatsujin Portable DX June 2012 DLC pack

Seen on the official site and will most likely be announced tomorrow in the blog, these six songs will be available for download for Taiko Portable DX on June 14, 2012. And it's also PSP DX's first long version song! Here's what's being offered.

J-Pop
Kimagure Romantic
Tsubomi

Anime
1 Dream
CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA

Game Music
Do-Dai

Namco Original
Fuun! Bachi o Sensei
Fuun! Bachi o Sensei (Ura)

It's not confirmed whether the Ura will be called 'long version' instead of just having the Ura logo on it, but we'll see next week when the pack is out. Other than that it's all old songs we've seen before, with 1 Dream being a 3* Oni anime song from Taiko 0.

PikaPi Nation

Quite a few of you keep on sending in your Taikojiro charts, so apologies in advance if I'm not able to feature them all! I'll pick some significant ones for the blog. This time it's this Pokemon remix by Jia Yi, a combination of Pikachu sounds together with Rotter Tarmination and Soroban 2000, similar to what the Japanese do with their MAD videos on Youtube. It's not as easy as it seems, sound sampling and placing is extremely difficult and time-consuming!

Then, two Taikojiro charts, one regular and one Ura, for the song. BPM250? It's not easy, that's for sure!

Random: Taiko no Tatsujin 0 in a TV show

Okay, arcade Taiko no Tatsujin being featured on Japanese TV is nothing new, but this is the first time the HD machine shows up, and this time it's the variety show Kanjani no Shiwake (関ジャニの仕分け∞) On May 26th this year Taiko no Tatsujin was carted into the show and used as a challenge for the participants.

This guy knows what he's doing too. FC on Rinda Rinda Muzukashii, toppling over everyone else's scores.

Song of the Week! 2 June 2012

This week's request comes from an unexpected source... my little brother! This is also the first Variety pick of the year, for the record.

When The Saints Go Marching In lyrics

Vocals, lyrics: K.D. Brosia
Composer: Jesahm (自営山)