Song of the Week! 12 April 2014

A new collaboration is about to begin next week, while another is coming to an end. Today's feature are two songs from this ending collab!

 Balloon Fight (Balloon Trip) (バルーンファイト (バルーントリップ))

Version
All	x3 (92)	x5 (182)	x5 (263)	x8 (517)

 Taiko Wii U 1
 105.2
 none
 fcrbal


It wasn't promoted with much fanfare on the Taiko blog (like the rest of Taiko Wii U's DLC packs), but March 2014's four Wii U-exclusive Game Music tracks were part of an actual collaboration between the latest home console Taiko game and Nintendo/indiezero's eShop retro-game compilation known as Famicom Remix (NES Remix outside of Japan), with the sequel Famicom Remix 2 coming out in Japan one week after the four songs are discontinued on April 18th, 2014.

Among them is the 1985 NES title Balloon Fight (バルーンファイト), based on the 1984 Nintendo Vs System arcade cabinet game. In the same fashion as William Electronics' arcade game Joust, players have to eliminate enemies on the screen by hopping on their heads, but rather than having unnamed people on ostriches like in Joust, the game's main characters are people who are able to fly with two balloons (the 'Balloon Fighters'). Aside from the main mode from the arcade, the NES version of Balloon Fight has an additional mode called the 'Balloon Trip', where the player's Balloon Fighter has to fly as far as he can by, popping balloons and avoiding hazards along the way.

After the NES game and its USA/Europe portable sequel Balloon Kid, the Balloon Fight franchise lives to this date in many different forms, either playable or as a homage to Nintendo's past. Besides the various Virtual Console releases, Balloon Fighter was ported to many other formats (such as the Japan-exclusive NEC PC-8801 and the Sharp X1) and Nintendo portable consoles, from an e-Reader card version on the Game Boy Advance, to the Zelda-inspired remake for Club Nintendo members called Tingle's Balloon Fight, just to name a few!

As the title of the song on Taiko suggests, this track was used in the NES version's Balloon Trip mode, which was composed by Hirokazu Tanaka (田中宏和), the current president of game company Creatures Inc. of Mother and Pokémon series fame. Tanaka is also responsible for all other music and SFX of the game.

Since Balloon Hunter is a game about flying on balloons, it's only appropriate that the Taiko chart be filled to the brim with them! It's not a very hard chart on its own, but the balloon notes are quite difficult to break, with a very short time allocated for each of the 20 (twenty!) balloons, making it easy to miss notes directly before or after them.

 Dr. Mario (Fever) (ドクターマリオ(Ｆｅｖｅｒ))

Version
All	x4 (129)	x5 (205)	x6 (326)	x8 (459)

 Taiko Wii U 1
 150.25
 none
 fcrdrm


Another title featured in NES Remix is Dr. Mario (ドクターマリオ), the 1990 puzzle game for NES, designed by Gunpei Yokoi (横井軍平). In this game, Nintendo's iconic mascot becomes a doctor and eliminates viruses with his colored pills, which the players control as they fall into the bottle where the viruses lie. The game is seen by many as Nintendo's alternative take on Tetris as the pills can be moved and rotated like in the popular Russian puzzle game; however, the only way to eliminate the viruses and complete the stages is to line 4 of any color in a row (seen by some as rather obtuse since most puzzle games only needed matches of 3), rather than simply making complete rows. Once again, Hirokazu Tanaka (田中宏和) is the composer of the game's tracks and SFXs.

Like Balloon Fight (and many other NES titles), Dr. Mario's legacy lies in its many subsequent releases. After the direct ports for arcades (Nintendo Vs System) and portable consoles, many home console sequels tried to add different elements and modes to the basic formula, like Dr. Mario 64's Story Mode (N64), Dr. Mario & Germ Buster's online multiplayer (Wiiware) and even a custom mode with L-shaped capsules in Dr. Luigi (Wii U eShop).

This is not the first time both the Balloon Trip theme song and Dr. Mario's 'Fever' came together in one rhythm game. Before Taiko, the two songs were also featured in the Japan-exclusive Donkey Konga 3: All You Can Eat! Spring 50 Music Works Mix (ドンキーコンガ3 食べ放題！春もぎたて５０曲♪)- as part of the game's wide Game Music selection of Nintendo tracks.

Despite the low notecount, most of the notes are clustered with each other making for a pretty average 8*, but the main thing that threatens to break combos for first-time players are the four speed up zones, going up to x8 speed during the silent part of Fever's music. This speed up occurs in all difficulties of this song, not just Oni, so be prepared!