Our 'Road to Green Version' feature series leads us to one of Blue Version's most endeering traits: the group of Namco Originals that were introduced all of a sudden as surprise Saturday updates.
Here's one of them, 2019's very first new Taiko-original track no less!
ARMAGEΔDON BlackY| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x5 (218) | x7 (260) | x8 (475) | x10 (999) |
Taiko 0 B
190
none
???Bearing a title that is eerily reminiscent of a certain last boss in Taiko no Tatsujin history, this year's very first Namco Original newcomer is brought to us by a peculiar artist, whose music gaming history between other music series and this one has had quite the curious tale to tell!
Born September 24, 1993, the nicknamed BlackY (also available on Twitter and SoundCloud) has made a name of his own over the past years as a recurring trance/hardcore composer in Bemani music gaming, ranking high in Bemani-endorsed song making contests as well as collaborating with other renowned otoge-affine artists in the later years, including HARDCORE TANO*C, Diverse System and EXIT TUNES Dance Production, of which is also one of its mainstay members. Among BlackY's biggest credited musical inspirations for his composing style figure out a couple of Bemani-rooted figures that general music game fans have also witnessed during the different Tenkaichi Otogesai editions: Takayuki 'dj TAKA' Ishikawa and Yoshitaka 'DJ YOSHITAKA' Nishimura.
Starting from the pop'n music series with the the Boku mo Watashi mo pop'n Artist! contest, he made it to see his songs published in Konami's music game branch series time and time again, starting from his submission to said contest -Southern Cross- getting ported into the series (link) as one of its two victors up to become one of the earliest mass contributors to the SOUND VOLTEX series, counting over 20 different tracks between solo pieces (like Max Burning!! and False Cross) and collaborations (such as XROSS INFECTION and XROSS THE SOUL) to this day! Outside of Konami music gaming for selected songs like maimai's AMAZING MIGHTYYYY!!!!, Arcaea's Alexandrite and Lanota's two-sided song Androgynos (the latter version being also available on Groove Coaster), BlackY also signs his works under the WAiKURO alias, an Engrish anagram version of his main art name ('Y Kuro', with Kuro meaning Black in English).
BlackY's success story under the SOUND VOLTEX series is one of the most referenced ones with the artist managing to net at least one song for every single edition of the Konami Arcade Championship tournament series since 2012, but his luck with the Taiko no Tatsujin franchise has been... less than stellar, by comparison. The artist has joined the first two CreoFUGA music-making contest for the Taiko series, bringing two songs for the very first edition -Sakurairo CRESCENT (桜色CRESCENT) and Monochrome Rainbow (モノクロ・レインボー)- and one more for the 2014 arcade tourney CF contest, under the title of Sakura Ranman Cleopatra (桜火爛漫クレオパトラ). None of the three songs made it to be chosen for the Taiko transplant treatment, but there's a silver lining for the third track as it still won one of the contest's Honorable Mentions slots (full list here), with Taiko Team leader Etou himself penning his bitter regret of cutting this one off from the winning roster due to the track being unfit to craft a tournament-level, high difficulty degree challenge in there. More than five years later and BlackY got its time of redemption in the series, by entering the series from the front door... and with a commissioned Namco Original work, no less!
True to the artist's recurring motif of Greek letters added into its song's titles (here with the Delta letter posing for a strong couple of 'D's), ARMAGEΔDON barges in as one of the latest triple-digit-limit Oni notecount contenders, while also sporting a max difficulty kit for all available modes. Compound note clusters and 1/16-1/24 hybrids await the chart's daring players, ready to slip in that random miss at the first sign of stamina/coordination mismanagement!
