Sunday, April 1, 2018

Sonority Scouts - Prankfully Yours, 2018 Edition



The time to awaken the joker inside us has come back once more! Let's see how the music game network has welcomed the returning April Fools silliness outside of Taiko grounds...




With arcade Taiko gaming getting a new version on March, NAMCO SOUNDS composer Taku Inoue woke up with a fresh idea to turn Synchronica's relevance upside-down: a firmware makeover that is all about himself! Thus, here's the so-dubbed Inotakunica (イノタクニカ), already fully operative for every arcade goer to enjoy!

This special version of Synchronica also comes with a Taku Inoue-powered remix of Minna no Uta (みんなのうた), one of the first Synchronica firmware update's flagship original songs. Hi-difficulty everywhere, up to a surreal Lv.41 rating for its Pandora mode; what could possibly go wrong?


The Konami-rooted Bemani, on the other hand, is busier plugging the launch of 100% accurate products that are sure to hit the market really soon. One of these is jubeat POCKET, an LCD version of the eponymous music game series to bring the joys of the main games wherever you go... and stylin' like a Game and Watch, no less!





It's time for another schooling from one of the main SOUND VOLTEX navigators, and this time around the teacher is high-inched Maxima!

For today only the Lv.1 Heavenly CLASS ANALIZER course with the song Maxima's Full Bloom!! Heavenly Lecture❤  (マキシマ先生の満開!! ヘヴンリー講座❤ ) is here to teach some mnemonics to its challengers. With plenty of fade-to-black action and playing field panning-out, only your mind is a safe haven from getting mistakes.



The last Bemani jokers in line are from the latest music game series made by the Konami division: the piano-based Nostalgia (ノスタルジア), which is inviting its Twitter followers to check out one day-exclusive addition to the CLASSIC AND JAZZ song genre...

If you happen to crank up the day-exclusive Koinu no Waltz (子犬のワルツ, lit. 'Puppy's Waltz'), be prepared to be served with a cover of one of Chopin's waltz pieces (which was also used for a Taiko-exclusive rock arrangement) where the player's inputs have been replaced by lil' pups barking. Even cats are invited to the ensemble!


Away from Bemani stuff, Taito's Groove Coaster series plays it safe for this year, with the rehash of the April Fool song's voiceover alterations for Seine and Miria, the latest couple of voiced navigators in the series.

If you're a mobile Groove Coaster player, however, here's your chance to play the high-difficulty joke song 2112410403927243233368 as many times as you can for the reminder of the day! It comes with special avatar/title unlocks, no less.


As for the previous years, independent composer Cran-urk, I mean Crunky- has drawn his best impression of Seine, the newcoming Groove Coaster 4's flagship navigator. It's also fun to see how the official Groove Coaster Twitter account chimed in with a colorized version of this stunning portrait! Enjoy it in this mockup design for a very-limited NESICA card...




Third time is the charm for the CHUNITHM crew, as the return of the April Fools shenanigans have brought up yet another rendition of a popular Touhou Project arrangement by the hands of Sega's fictional idol unit Irorimidori (イロドリミドリ).

And so, the returning performers combined with the crazy composing magic of their special course-charting remote, the song Usotei (ウソテイ) came to be, a remix to COOL&CREATE's popular Usatei (ウサテイ). As usual, this limited WORLD'S END mode is not for the faint of heart!

The other two Touhou April Fools tracks from the past 2 years are also coming back, for a total of 4 days.







For the maimai devs, on the other hand, April 1st means business, as you can see from the 100%-original prototype for their next re-interpretation of the long-running music game series. With the echoing motto of 'CLEAN UP ALL STEREOTYPES', maimai III is sure to bring the fun for up to 3 players at the same time, with a floppy drive to save the players' progress, a foot pedal and a dance mat to allow 3-people simultaneous multiplayer action by the same screen!

The glorious announcement was celebrated with a couple of the maimai III songs coming to the currently-active maimai version (maimai MiLK), with COOL&CREATE's Sissou Ensemble (疾走あんさんぶる) being available as an Otoge-only challenge, showcasing the aforementioned 3-people gameplay! For some more "traditional" gameplay action, here's also Mami Tanaka's Miracle Shopping (ミラクル・ショッピング), straight from the Yakuza series. Donkey's shop theme song also comes with a real-life CM video, no less!


2018 has been a particularly bountiful year for mobile gaming pranks! The first one in sight is for Noxy's smartphone game Lanota, enlightening its players of the coming of 'Hand Mode'.

Are the game's most difficult challenges making you scream in agony? Just let a couple of cats do the playing for you!



If you are an Arcaea player, make sure to check out its latest features, such as the Grievous Random option in the song-selecting screen and quite the weird pickle to deal with if you play with said new feature a little too much...

Taking a page from SOUND VOLTEX's past April Fools' efforts, the free-to-play Arcaea song Ignotus gets a corrupted playable version in Ignotus Afterburn, with the chart becoming quite unstable to play with, visuals-speaking. Plus, just give a look at the song's credited artists and charting crew to have a good laugh at the expenses of the meme-ascending "Bemani Sound Team" label!



Rayark's VOEZ has seen the return of one kind of spicy joke: slightly altering a pre-existing song's title and album art and replacing its usual charts into unlikely gauntlets! It has already happened years ago with the song GameGame, and now it's time for Ras's Praystation of BMS fame.

Worry do not, the Easy mode is not the only one to get severe alterations! Feel free to check out the Hard mode's note ninja movements, as well as Special mode's unreasonable multiple-input sessions and black-out sliders!

Another slight gag for VOEZ players to enjoy was the Youtube teaser trailer for Guluful Voice, the (non-existing) alternate version to Colorful Voice, the game's main theme.



Another video prank from the Rayark music gaming shore comes for the players of Cytus II, sequel to the eponymous original game for mobile devices. Apparently there's a new composer in town, who is not willing to stop at anything in order to let people everywhere grow fonder towards... giraffes?


Always for Rayark fans is also this Twitter operation to tamper with the people's expectations, as the prominent Deemo virtual-reality videogame re-interpretation is about to come true!

Despite being made for joke-y purposes, this teaser for Deemo AR ('Alternative Realm') has quite the share of concept art to show off.


Sometimes, the most simple of shenanigans are the most daring ones for a quick laugh, which was the road chosen by the MUSYNC developers! Imagine if your mobile game of choice shuts down all of a sudden outside of the April 1st stunts, though...



To end things swiftly, here we are with a collection of gameplay videos from the hardest songs in cygames's Granblue Fantasy-themed Taiko clone Oira (オイラ), of which we also talked about yesterday (link). Up here is the hard-trial contender Kurobyin no Tsubasa (黒ビィんの翼), starring the joke character from former April Fools events in the Granblue Fantasy lore.

The Ultimate (ジ・アルティメット)
Kuroshirogane no Tsubasa (黒銀の翼)
Kimi to Boku no Mirai (キミとボクのミライ) (yes, it's also in official Taiko games!)
Three Uyghurs (三羽烏漢唄)
Never Ending Fantasy
Sora no Michishirube (ソラのミチシルベ) (yet another one available in real Taikos)
Yozora no Shizuku (ヨゾラのシズク)
The Dragon Knights
Pale-Red Chinese Dance (蒼紅華之舞)
Mahou no Note (マホウのノート)
This one's title is just too long, man...
Posted by Nintendo 5-Star at 6:21 AM
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