Hmm...what to feature for today....*thinks* I feel like doing a Namco Original today. Maybe something hard? Here goes then.
Calculator M-O-T-U| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x4 (111) | x7 (333) | x8 (555) | x10 (777) |
Taiko 0 S, Taiko 3DS 2, Wii U 2, iOS
150 - 300
none
calcOne of my personal favorites from the CreoFUGA song-composing contest is this hardcore techno track, one of three songs from the contest that was reserved for play at the grand finals of the Japanese Donder-Ichi Taiko Tournament 2013/2014, and composed by M-O-T-U. Appropriately enough, like its companion songs at the finals, it's a challenging, ominous 10* Oni. It was unlocked for public play months before the actual tournament took place (due to the unfortunate delay of the event caused by Typhoon Wipha), so pretty sure the contestants had ample time to prepare themselves!
There isn't much information to be gathered about the song contest winner himself, unfortunately. The song utilizes many heavy beats and electronic sound effects. Visualize the innards of a calculator working at breakneck speed and that's the tense, stressful, frightening vibe you'll probably get from this song. It goes faster and faster towards the end too, as if the unit was malfunctioning, upping the tension even further! The vocal segments before the speedup segment are provided by an Utauloid (Vocaloid derivative) named Kasane Teto (重音テト), while the original submission on CreoFUGA was input with the composer's older art name of 'matsuoka'.
As for the chart? The beginning is manageable, with complex clusters reminiscent of a slower Taiko Time Ura, with the odd troll scrolling cluster thrown in and some 1/24 segments that will break your combo. But at the end? You can imagine what a gradual increase to BPM 300 will do to you; it drives the figurative calculator nuts and it will do the same to you, featuring notes coming in at a crazy speed with crazy intensity, ending with one of the most impossible streams ever created for the time, a 17-note ddkkddkkddkkddk at that speed (which is like doing a 1/32 stream at BPM 150!).
This was the birth of hyperspeed, when Namco found out that players could actually pull it off, stuff like Yuugen no Ran and Xa, with their insane base BPM of above 260 but continuing to use 1/16 clusters like any other normal song, began to surface. You can thank (or send hate mail to) notecharter Kuboken for this contribution.
Note also that the total notecounts for each difficulty of Calculator are pretty neat; all in triple repeating digits and 222 notes worth of difference from each other.
