It's quite a dire week for Taiko-related crossover action, as yesterday we caught notice of the fact that the Tenkaichi Otogesai cross-over music game tournament series will be no more.
Have fun with another couple of the crossed-over tracks that Taiko fans could enjoy from some of its most memorable outings!
VERTeX Hiro / maimai| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x5 (224) | x7 (337) | x8 (511) | x10 (806) |
Taiko 0 K
237
none
???From the very first Tenkaichi Otogesai's original crossover newcomers round comes a water-themed track as the representative of Sega's maimai series. We've already talked about its progression in a nutshell some years ago when we talked about Garakuta Doll Play (link) but talking about it again here bears a more timely frame for us to do so now, seeing as the original maimai arcade line is about to be effectively replaced with the enhanced maimai Deluxe (maimai でらっくす) models in the coming weeks!
The creator of VERTeX rings by the name of Hiroshi Yamaguchi (川口博史), a composer from Chiba and veteran Sega musician in activity for the company since 1984. Born April 12th, 1965, Yamaguchi led his hand to the score to some of the earliest Sega gaming franchises, from racing games (OutRun; Hang On) to shooter games such as Afterburner and Fantasy Zone... the latter of which also got roped into a certain other music game collaboration project... Since its inception, the maimai series has seen Hiro as its sole sound director, while also still lending a hand on the music-making process for Sega games in general, from time to time.
The first Tenkaichi Otogesai's second phase was about a mutual sharing of newly-made songs, each of them having to bear the spirit of one of the four natural elements, with fire on the Taiko side (Ignis Danse), wind for Groove Coaster (FUJIN Rumble) and earth for jubeat (Scars of FAUNA). The thought process to whose participating music game would go the water element was the quickest one of the bunch, as -by rememberance of Hiro himself on his comment section for this song (archived link)- all four parties mutually agreed on carrying on the ongoing meme train of maimai cabinets looking like washing machines (...can you really fault them for that?). The Latin noun 'vertex' was chosen due to its water-related meaning ('vortex', as in a whirpool), with the lower-case 'e' being left it as such because it looked '2 sick and cool!' to Hiro himself.
Laying on a 1/16 notechart pattern that makes of hi-note-density spikes its pride and joy, VERTeX sprays all sorts of scrolling speed alterations to keep up the tension high, whether it's for speedy drumrolls or big Don markers, acting as potential combo breakers!
GERBERA Bemani Sound Team "TAG" / SOUND VOLTEX| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x4 (173) | x7 (315) | x8 (513) | x10 (973) |
Taiko 0 B 205.02 none ???From the very first Tenkaichi Otogesai edition down to one of the songs from the very last one! ... on external music game fields, at least. For both the 2017 and 2018 editions of the tournament, one of the original songs from each participating series was shared with the other series during the first phase, with Konami sharing the flower-related track GERBERA from the 4th Tenkaichi Otogesai.
Konami's relation towards the Otogesai charades was an evolving one along the years, joining the fun in the very first edition with the jubeat music game series only to drop it from the very next iteration, sticking ever since to a more freshly-released series: SOUND VOLTEX. Premiered in public arcades on January 18th, 2012, this is a music game series whose selling point since the beginning was not the center appearance of in-house Bemani artists for the heart of its original creations, but rather giving the spotlight to independent artists, from doujin circle personalities (including EXIT TUNES and Touhou Project arrange composers) and contest winners in the SOUND VOLTEX FLOOR online competitions for JP-resident artists. The game is played on a vertical screen, with inputs coming towards the player that have to be met by pressing and/or holding four buttons in accordance to the standalone/merged-lane markers. Not only that, two analog dials placed at the sides of the arcade's gaming board have to be used in order to follow along longer magenta and pink markers by rotating said dials accordingly. Unlike other bemani series, correct inputs will result into different sound effects that alter the main song, rather than making said song to be keysounded by the player from (almost) scratch.
The artist for GERBERA is Yasuhiro 'TAG' Taguchi (田口康裕), enrolled in Konami since 2006. Among his first tasks was the creation of stepcharts for DanceDanceRevolution titles (starting from DDR SuperNOVA), a job who was the foundation of his music-making duties for nearly all of bemani's music series in the following years. TAG has also stepped in as the sound director for several installments, with its main ones being DDR again, pop'n music and SOUND VOLTEX, keeping the last role on an ongoing, uninterrupted streak since the third installment of the series, GRAVITY WARS. In the song-making mention, TAG has also become infamous in general bemani lore for being one of the first in-house artists to have its song credit mentions being covered for GERBERA under a generic "Bemani Sound Team" label, something that back in the day was somewhat of a concerning matter when considering Bemani's former artist-credit policies (up to the point of us trying to see it more in one of our features, no less!). Some months after such episode's whereabouts, the artist credit mentions were now altered to the Bemani Sound Team label being followed by the artist alias on quotation mark for this and all the other later, in-house bemani artist songs, with the change being also bounced on the external music game series who got GERBERA years later as part of the final Tenkaichi Otogesai tourney's crossed-over roster.
Named after the eponymous genus of Asteraceae flowers (of the daisy family), GERBERA is one of the many instrumental songs by TAG to go along with a flower theme to its name, together with the following tracks:
- Alstroemeria (アルストロメリア) from jubeat (also ported to beatmania IIDX, BeatStream, MÚSECA, pop'n music, REFLEC BEAT, FutureTomTom, Nostalgia and pop'n rhythmin);
- Dendrobium (デンドロビウム) from beatmania IIDX;
- ZEPHYRANTHES from beatmania IIDX, jubeat and SOUND VOLTEX (later ported to DanceDanceRevolution, MÚSECA, pop'n music and REFLEC BEAT).
All four songs, in addition with TAG's POSSESSION, were remixed together by Cosmo@BouSouP in order to make the Finals song for the 2017 Tenkaichi Otogesai's Finals round, aptly titled GERBERA -For Finalists-, later being made public after the event's ending.
While, yeah, we can focus on our usual spiele concerning the song's Oni difficulty degree and its relations to the high BPM/cluster frequency combo, we'd prefer to talk more extensively about GERBERA's inner notechart callbacks, as whoever was in charge of the song's Taiko modes has clearly had the time of his/her life with cranking in as many obscure references as possible! From Max Combo values alone, while not directly diplaying some of the 'usual suspects', we can see how both Kantan and Oni draw close to the 573=Konami goroawase with its 800-notes gap, and that the MC values in Futsuu and Muzukashii are one the mirrored reading of the other one. If you happen to have a good notechart memory of all the Konami-spawn Tenkaichi Otogesai tracks, you'll also find out how every other song's Oni chart is partly referenced in GERBERA's own Oni chart!
By following the stanza-by-stanza breakthrough, here are the common links between GERBERA and the Konami-spawn songs in Taiko before it:
- Stanzas 1-4 -> FLOWER stanzas 21-22
- Stanzas 5-6 -> FLOWER stanza 29
- Stanza 7 -> FLOWER stanza 35
- Stanza triplets 22-24 / 26-28 / 30-32 -> Masakari Blade stanzas 2-4
- Stanzas 37-44 -> Scars of FAUNA stanzas 29-36
- Stanzas 101-102 -> Kyokuken stanzas 44-45
Let's also not forget about that fast-scrolling hitballoon near the Oni mode's end, which -wouldn't you know it- flows under a x5.73 scrolling speed multiplier!
