Time for a blast to the past, as we spotlight a couple of elusive Namco Original tunes from the 2nd Taiko gaming generation. Both tracks share the same composer, no less!
Obsession Latino (オブセッション・ラティーノ)| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x5 (69) | x4 (106) | x7 (332) | x8 (415) |
Taiko 12 Asia, Taiko Wii 2, CD Full Combo
140
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latinoObsession Latino and the following track are the last known musical Taiko contributions from a specific in-house artist: Hiromi Shibano (柴野浩美).
Enrolled at Bandai Namco since the early 90ies, Shibano has been involved in a number of Bandai Namco-related franchises for a solid decade of years, ranging from Japan-exclusive sport series (Famista and Libero Grande's PS1 game) to worldwide-spread titles in the Pac-Man, Mr. Driller and Klonoa series. The latter of these gaming sagas is especially worth mentioning for this artist in particular, as she lent some original Klonoa arranges for some of the albums released by the doujin circle Kaze no Fuku Kobako (風の吹く小箱) along the years, which can be heard in 2013's TO DREAM 3 and 2017's TO DREAM THE BEST.
In Taiko gaming, Hiromi Shibano was put in charge of two different Classic arrangements during the PS2-games era, one for Scott Joplin's Entertainer and one for Beethoven's Turkish March. After her Namco Original debut with the song Kissa Rain (of which we also talked about, in the past), the composer was also tasked the creation of another full-instrumental original piece for the Taiko 12 arcade's Asian version, making its franchise debut on foreign lands together with Naked Glow and the Ura Oni setting of Angel Dream. Said song was available in the arcade's song list with its title being reported in English, and together with the other picks of the "Greater Asia First" trio it was packed in the second Wii Taiko game, now with the title translated in Japanese. As time told us, it turned out that Obsession Latino got the short end of the stick among the three pieces, seeing as its Wii2 port was also its very last one in franchise history, up to this point...
The 'musical-notation' approach was the leading vibe for Obsession Latino's notecharting action, with multiple stanza repetitions and some slight 1/12 clusters to boot. Among the current star rating landscape, this song can also bolster the 5-star Kantan song with the least amount of notes as well as the 2nd-lowest note amount for a 4-star Futsuu song to date, with Kidaruma 2000's Futsuu beating it to the punch with 4 less notes.
Bubbly☆Queen (バブリィ☆クイーン)| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x5 (168) | x6 (190) | x6 (335) | x7 (505) |
Taiko DS 3, Taiko Switch, CD Full Combo 144 none sbnelcHiromi Shibano's final credited Taiko work has premiered on the final Nintendo DS game of the series, where it's one of the Story mode boss tracks that are featured in the game, against the Mermaid Queen (which, given the song title, is quite the fitting pairing if you ask me!). Unlike the other newcoming-as-boss-tracks of Dororon! Yokai Daikessen!, The SongID of this piece doesn't reference with its root the fact of being a boss track, while instead quoting the artist's surname (Shibano) as well as its tentative song genre categorization, with 'elc' as Electro/Electronic. Bubbly☆Queen has stayed as a single-game exclusive for the longest time, only to be added in the Nintendo Switch game's DLC catalog during this very month!
While it's a longer song than Obsession Latino, the 1/16-based charting trend is almost the same, with more mono-color clusters and no tempo changes within the very same.
