Before Yellow Version's release week, we have the time to make a bonus feature about one of the recurring traits that the ongoing Taiko HD arcade family shares... permanent song removals.
While deleting songs from subsequent arcade games isn't exactly a brand-new trait, the firmware-based model of modern Taiko games makes it so that when a song gets removed in the latest iteration, all the previously-released firmware boards still active will also lose it, effectively marking the removal of several arcade-exclusive tracks from the series.
Only two of the soon-to-be-lost songs of the latest removal batch are left for us to feature...
Mozaik Role (モザイクロール) DECO*27 feat. GUMI| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x3 (141) | x5 (216) | x5 (322) | x8 (492) |
Taiko 0.5 to 0 R
145
Variety -> Vocaloid
???We start out this feature in quite the embarrassing light, as we have to admit that we got this song's official English title translation wrong since its Taiko debut... While we're busy fixing this spelling mistake, let me distract you with some fact about the song itself!
Mosaik Role is a GUMI-powered love song that was originally uploaded on July 15th, 2010 in both NicoVideo and Youtube, as well as being the 18th single of its producer: the nicknamed DECO*27. The positive welcoming of the song from the Internet audience has been high since the very beginning, as it only took roughly 32 hours from its upload to reach the Hall of Fame status (=100k-or-more views) and a month for the million-views Hall of Legend fame! Later on, Mozaik Role made its way to the 6th DECO*27 solo album Aimai Elegy (愛迷エレジー) and the VOCALOID BEST from Nico Nico Douga (Red) (VOCALOID BEST from ニコニコ動画(あか)) compilation soundtrack, as well as being available on iTunes and receiving a large number of fan covers. The song has also inspired the creation of an official manga story that digs deeper into the full song's backgrounds, featured in the Comic@loid manga magazine and drawn by the nicknamed akka (who also curated the visuals of the song's video!)
About Mozaik Role's producer, we know that he's born in Fukuoka on December 16th, 1986, with his earliest works being dated as back as 2008. With musical preferences ranging from rock to pop, his works are signed with an alias that can tell the world that he has a big forehead (the literal translation for the JP word 'Deco') and what his favorite numbers are (always in their Japanese pronunciation, 'nii-na'). He's been in record for collaborating with other Vocaloid producers (particularly with kous and sasaure.UK) while also trying to make non-Vocaloid songs in recent years as well.
As for many other synth voice-based popular teacks, Mozaik Role's presence was felt first in the more Vocaloid-friendly spectrum of the rhythm gaming field, with the song appearing in the Project DIVA series and in the PSP-exclusive title Megpoid the Music#. Flashforward to a few years and the song has found its place in the "usual suspects" music game families, from Taiko to Groove Coaster and maimai.
Alas, what we're about to lose is one of the 8* Oni challenges in the modern meta with one of the lowest note counts for the ongoing arcade series, with Kuboken (くぼけん)'s charts mostly made with small cluster sections that tend to repeat themselves multiple times.
Ichido Dake Koi Nara (一度だけの恋なら) Macross Δ| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x3 (114) | x5 (198) | x5 (287) | x7 (407) |
Taiko 0 W to 0 R 172 none ???It's time for removals once again in the Macross media's share of Taiko gaming... quite an odd move, considering that the soon-to-be-closed Red Version launched with a Macross event, of all things! This is also one of those overly-striked licensed songs, so we'll have to bear with audio distortion trickery (also a recurring must for some of the Taiko HD debut licenses!). Ichido Dake Koi Nara (一度だけの恋なら, lit. "If I Love Only Once") is the opening theme for Macross Δ, the fourth Anime series of the franchise, which got aired between April and September 2016.
Set 8 years after the events of the preceding Macross Frontier series, the series follows the evolving grounds of the the Brisingr Globular Cluster (ブリージンガル球状星団), a remote sector of the Milky Way Galaxy in which is spreading a mysterious kind of epidemic which makes people go completely berserk for no apparent reason. The Windemere Kingdom is trying to exploit the so-dubbed Var Syndrome (ヴァールシンドローム) to take control of the Brisingr Globular Cluster, and it's up to the Macross spaceship's Delta Flight team of Valkyrie pilots to drive away the offensive of the opposing kingdom's Aerial Knights, with the support of the idol unit Walküre whose music has the power to calm down those who got infected by the Var Syndrome. Complementing the 26-episode Anime series are four different manga publications, with the first one just following the events of the Anime and the other 3 (Macross E, The Diva Who Guides the Galaxy and The Black-Winged White Knight) dealing with side stories instead.
The Anime's music is mostly performed by the aforementioned Walküre idol unit, whose members were also featured as Petit Chara for Taiko arcades as part of a Red Version collaboration campaign at launch! Ichiko Dake Koi Nara is also performed by Walküre with the voice actress of the five girls: Minori Suzuki (鈴木みのり) as Freyja Wion, the nick-named JUNNA as Mikumo Guynemer, Yasuno Kiyono (安野希世乃) as Kaname Buccaneer, Nishida Nozomi (西田望見) as Makina Nakajima and Toyama Nao (東山奈央) of Kimi to Hibiku Harmony fame as Reina Prowler.
Shika@ni~San (しか＠に～さん) handled the Macross Δ opening theme's charting process for all modes, with the 7* Oni being a blend of the usual difficulty degree of an Anime song with some irregular handswitch-based segments for the Go-Go Time portion.
Ichido Dake Koi Nara (一度だけの恋なら) Macross Δ| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x9 (543) |
Taiko W to Taiko R 172 none ???Much like for the case of Anime song Lion (also a Macross song, may I remind you), here's another Ura Oni that won't be playable anywhere else after its Taiko HD arcade removal! The extra difficulty layer, however, isn't enough to bypass copyrights claims, so have another distorted-voice video with a different pitch.
Shika@ni~San is also the charter of this 9-star Oni variant, which basically inherits the basic concepts of the regular Oni's difficulty traits with the addition of lots of 1/24 clusters, proving that high note density can lbe found in songs of all kinds of BPM values!
