This feature is about both highs and lows, as we're going to talk about some of the most noticeable tracks that are representative of the difficulty curve extremes in Taiko gaming!
Aiai (アイアイ)| Version |  |  |  |  /  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taiko 2, 3 | x1 (74) | x1 (74) | ||
| Taiko PS2 2 | x1 (74) | x1 (95) | x1 (74) | x1 (144) |
| Taiko PS2 2 (2P) | x1 (74/74) | x1 (95/95) | x1 (74/74) | x1 (144/144) |
Taiko 2, 3, Taiko PS2 2, CD Red
106
Children (Children/Folk)
aiaiTaiko 2/3 Donderful video
2P video
Starting from the lower end of the Taiko skills stairway, we stumble upon quite the corner stone for low-difficulty tracks in the early days of Taiko gaming, thanks to a 1962 nursery rhyme that managed to become Taiko no Tatsujin's very first full 1-star mode set.
Composed by the children animation-recurring artist Seiichiro Uno (宇野誠一郎), this is a song whose simplistic lyrics are about the species of the simian-rooted Aye-Aye, a Madagascar-native lemur species whose mammal lineage to primates makes it the world's largest nocturnal of its order. When coming to the decision of the song's name, its co-vocalist and lyricist -Yuumi Aida (相田裕美)- opted for the onomatopoeic Aiai due to its similarities to the Aye-Aye species' name, both for its cutesy pronunciation and its Japanese spelling.
With the song already being geared with several covers by the third millennium's beginning, the early-days Taiko series picked it up for one of the earliest beginner-friendly trials, with a comfortable pace all the time and some small clusters that follow the lead voices. Aiai's Kantan mode is also the one with the lowest notecount in its only console game foray to date!
UNDEAD HEART (Ikari no Warriors) (UNDEAD HEART (怒りのWarriors)) Eizo Sakamoto x Yusuke Takahama| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x5 (218) | x7 (407) | x8 (529) | x10 (1134/1080/1027) |
Taiko 0 Y 210 none ???All charts (recreation)
From the oldest track with the lowest difficulty ratings to one of the latest songs with max-difficulty judgement everywhere, we're traveling to current waters once again to talk about the much-heated Namco Original who rose up from the original Rewards Shop system revamp with its brutal top mode and Japanese heavy metal echoes!
With the Japanese-y portion of its title standing for 'Warriors of Anger', UNDEAD HEART is the end result of two renowned Japanese musicians' labor. The first of the duo, Eizo Sakamoto (坂本英三), is known the most for being the guitarist and lead singer of the 1980s heavy metal band Anthem, together with his contributions to a number of side projects (Animetal, JAP Project and, more recently, Eizo Japan) that have seen the artist at work for both original songs and covers of Japanese TV shows' themes, from Devilman to Riki-Oh and Lupin the Third. On Eizo Sakamoto's website, it's possible to find out more about the artist's career.
Much like Sakamoto, Yusuke Takahama (高濱祐輔) comes from the Japanese prefecture of Hyogo, with his musical portfolio being instead more linked to the videogaming sphere. This artist has made a name for himself as both a music composer and general sound designer, with its earliest contributions dated back to the NES days for Data East games. After working for several software houses during the mid-90ies, Takahama founded the song-commission company TARGET ENTERTAINMENT INC., with himself as its president still getting frequent credited roles from selected post-2000 Sega-related games. More details about Yusuke Takahama are supplied in the aforementioned company's website.
For one of those Oni challenges where its hi-difficulty degree is supplied by a constantly-aggressive barrage of clusters, UNDEAD HEART offers a branched-path approach for its daring players that try to triumph over its over-1000-notes Oni chart, with the highest path available often resorting to single-Kat notes inserted in its long clusters, more Kat couple-focused cluster formations for the Advanced Route and a Normal path with more spliced-out clusters in comparison to the Advanced offering.
