If you're coming from the future and you are reading these very lines, chances are you are unaware of a big mistake from our part.
My original plans for closing the Taiko 3DS 2 theme month was having a feature said game's theme song, Choujikuu Adventure. While we made the original SotW entry as usual, we forgot that we already featured said song on September 2014, effectively leaving a feature duplicate for more than 3 months. Again, we are sorry that we messed up in duplicating SotW features, effectively owing you guys one feature.
Let us fix that with a redux against that... oh I don't know... wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff?
Time to dine| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x5 (194) | x6 (276) | x7 (445) | x9 (743) |
Taiko 3DS2
145
none
3d2b1xOh come on, that reference will have to surface somewhere, when the main antagonist of the second 3DS Taiko no Tatsujin game is a man with the power to control time, and one who has a high-end academic title to boot.
But yes, Time to dine is the theme music for Professor Nazim Timedine, mastermind behind the Timedine Gang trio, driven to unruly deeds (kidnapping/stealing Tikkun) by the death of the ill-struck mother Sarah. The tune is a futuristic one with significant hints of suspense, satisfying many tropes of a scifi-inspired last boss at the man's secret futuristic moon base. Curiously though, there is little apparent reason for it to use the culinary-based word "dine" in the title, other than to correlate with the professor's name.
The song is composed by Torine (トリ音), who we have already discussed in our features of her previous works Theremin Rhapsody and both times of Choujikuu Adventure. That makes both themes of either faction of the story composed by the same person, just like Takafumi Sato in 3DS1. Her involvement also marks a milestone in console Taiko story modes, where Time to dine is the first story mode last boss theme composed by a female composer, and is still the only one so far as of this writing.
Again mirroring 3DS1, Timedine as a final antagonist makes appearances very early on in the plot of the Space-time Adventure mode, as early as just after the Prologue boss fight (with Pietro) and at least once every chapter after. And every time he appears in front of Don-chan and co., a slight arranged loop version plays. It would be hard to not feel familiar of the ambience by the eventual face-off.
The official notechart at 9★ may not be the hardest thing ever, but the volume is a good challenge nonetheless. A majority of the chart consists of long and kat-centric mixed clusters and streams, with 9+ hits being fairly common and some as much as over 3/4 a stanza. The 24th game is also strong with several 13-hit single-color groups of the stuff.
And while we're on this song, let's also check out...
Time to dine II Taiko 3DS2 157~200 none 3d2b2xFollowing the traditions of 3DS1 in which the ultimate final story boss has a story-exclusive remix of the theme music, we have this arrangement of Time to dine when battling Professor Timedine, now a towering being of time and space thanks to the powers of two Time Crystals. For more on the full plot, check out the master summary we previously published.
In structure, Time to dine II is slightly more messed up than Princess Soprano VS Maou, where Professor Timedine uses the powers of the crystals to speed up the music, and even rewind to an earlier point, giving some health back to himself only and not your team. Visually the professor also tears up the scroll bar and creates a teleporting rift, messing with your chart-reading in a way completely unlike the usual simple obstruction. This battle embodies the top of niche processing power so far in Taiko console history. That is, until Zetsubou e no Toccata and ≠MM goes on to prove that notes do not have to follow a straight line or a consistent speed in V Version...
