You've seen thie header picture before and you've checked the calendar: the time is now. 2020 is set to become a thing of the past, while another year is already donning its pants up; as per tradition, in today's feature we're taking a glance of what the ending year had in storm for the Taiko no Tatsujin series, divided in trimesters and topped with the general impressions of our
Let's see what led us to this very day, shall we?
1st Trimester
The early-year jazz has been more quiet than usual for the Taiko no Tatsujin franchise: no collaborations of sorts or other special events leading up to the next big release, only with the console front's DLC offerings kindling the drumming flame up to the next arcade debut... and WHAT a debut, it was!
Canning out any official subtitle for the third time in franchise history, the nick-named Nijiiro Version beats with a different (computing) heart than the one of the not-numbered arcade outings that preceeded it in the past 8-or-so years, while retaining a mixture of familiar looks, a greater gameplay customization window, returning features (across the year) and Nintendo Switch-inspired menu layouts. Not even that one big elephant in the room was enough to rain on Nijiiro's launch parade!
Lok-approved:
- Taiko no Tatsujin's 4th Generation Debut - The few taglines for Nijiiro Version you've just read above this paragraph are merely enough to point at the scope of arcade gaming improvement for the series brought with this release over 2020's course! Between the major hardware improvements and all the subsequent updates surrounding this one model, it was nice to see how enjoyable songs and features from different times have all their refined modern outlet to toy around with, while not suffering at the same time of the dreaded numbered-Taikos song removals of the former arcade generations.
- Ongoing Home Console Titles' Continued Support - It's been bothersome once more to close another year without brand new Taiko console games announcements, but at the very least the ones that still have yet to run out of their course have mantained the same pace as in 2019. The subscription-based Taiko + has gotten so many frequent updates to warrant its own Twitter page by 2020's end and the Nintendo Switch Version/Drum 'n' Fun has had yet another year-long bounty where song DLCs were not the only eye-candy additional contents, between monthly online unlocking rotations and new modes!
Lok-abominables:
- Seven-colored Layers of Bugs - Nijiiro Version sure brought quite the sizable amount of content, but with that also came a number of major issues that needed an ironing more often than with past online-update-enhanced arcades. We've had player misimputs due to the 'True 120 FPS' hardware engine transition, song/feature deletions due to other assorted bugs and even grind-based unlockable contents available to everyone with unintended shortcuts! At least fixes were not late to come...
- The End of Taiko PS4's Journey - After more than two years of continued online support between Donder Packs and Score Attack events, the difficulty juggernaut that is Session the Dodon ga Don has drew its last (content) breath as the next-gen arcade herald took off. With its features set, quick loading times and veteran-player-tailored tracklist, this still is a very solid entry on its own as much as it is with the superb extra toppings it got over time, which makes it sad the same seeing as its ride has ended.
2nd Trimester
Real-life incumbencies have forced a drastic slow-down to every major workplace section, with the entertainment one on which anything gaming-related is built upon being no exception. What was a surprise, however, is seeing how much a normally-lax franchise as this one still had its metaphorical hands full of things to doo and fans to please, even on the just-renewed arcade front!
Supporting your usual stride of licensing collaboration deals (including returning #C.O.M.P.A.S.S. collaborative efforts), the first months of the pandemic-plagued time period has seen the heat of a fourth official song-making contest, alongside some side activities to keep everyone happy from the safety of their homes.
Lok-approved:
3rd Trimester
Ho. Ly. Shit.
Real-life incumbencies have forced a drastic slow-down to every major workplace section, with the entertainment one on which anything gaming-related is built upon being no exception. What was a surprise, however, is seeing how much a normally-lax franchise as this one still had its metaphorical hands full of things to doo and fans to please, even on the just-renewed arcade front!
Supporting your usual stride of licensing collaboration deals (including returning #C.O.M.P.A.S.S. collaborative efforts), the first months of the pandemic-plagued time period has seen the heat of a fourth official song-making contest, alongside some side activities to keep everyone happy from the safety of their homes.
Lok-approved:
- Anti-Pandemic Support - It really begs underlining this point on my personal side: unironically the great worldwide thread that physically divided people has brought Taiko fans closer by the series' rights-holding company, with a number of social media-shared side activities that even bystanders could take their part on and put aside the epidemic's worries for a while. From publicly-available song contest music clips to a multi-parter poll for future song inclusions in the series to Taiko-themed backgrounds to use for online video meeting with friends, there truly was something for people of all ages!
- The Latest Taiko Song Contest Was Great! - It always feels like an eternity the amount of time that occurs between an official song-making contest's end and the next one's arrival, but that wait's payoff rarely fails to rake in with interests! The inaugural Faith Creation-endorsed Taiko contest was no exception to this rule, managing to lure out composing talents of many different curricular backgrounds.
Lok-abominables:
- ...but the Latest Taiko Contest's Outcome Was Not! - On the other hand, however, when the winners got announced, said results may cast individually-tuned shades of disappointment. It's usually because of something in the likes of "Waaaah, my faves didn't make in!" for many, but for me specifically I felt this iteration's results the apex of the winner-picking bias I and other blog staffers have grunted about even concerning some of the previous winning picks as well.
Picture this: in the past few years, the Taiko no Tatsujin series has become more and more open to all sorts of music genres for the Namco Original department and select Be-Music Source picks from the Variety genre, something that over time results in plenty of people drawn into Taiko contest with the mindset of picking up instruments/musical genres that have had a brief 'playable resurgence' of sorts. Keeping that in mind, may I ask why a lot -if not the majority- of the latest winners are mellow-vocals pop songs, again? I get it, not every track in its own song genre grounds makes it to become a quality work on its own, but the pitiful amount of tracks from uncommon-in-Taiko genres (like techno or -core works) that even made it to Bronze or Silver-medal honorable mentions really makes me less confident by the day how narrow the musical genre diversification for the Original song department may be, signed by well-known artist names or not. And hell, if we do include those...
...WHY THE HELL are we perpetrating the exact same returning composing names to snag a victory seat on these Taiko contests again and again?!? This is not a big deal if, say, Bandai Namco ran user-made song contests more often than the current norm is a-la SOUND VOLTEX, but they -have- to understand that for some of us it's already miserable to wait about the same time as a new Olympic Games edition for a new Taiko song contest, so imagine what it means to wait this much and then to be spotting as some of the victors the exact same folks from the past editions... and for some of them being an ongoing case of CONSECUTIVE winnings, mind you!? It was nice seeing someone like BlackY who got a round of redemption after two failed Taiko song contests in the past and there also were a few past champions who didn't make the cut in this edition, but do we reeeeeally need for, say, M-O-T-U and Yomii to take winning seats every time, instead of some unheard-of name? Can't Bandai Namco just comission them Originals at this point instead, if they're so confident in their composing skills to crown them winners so many times in a row? After all, this was a course of action that already went in motion towards many other names. Also, why are we getting so soon yet another Capchii and CHUBAY original, and WHY do we have to suffer yet again ofsome freshly-molded Risshu feat. Choco shi- - COVID-19 - No flowery introductions for this one, you probably know by now what it is and what has meant for the whole planet's usual business. As discussed before, here on the Taiko side of things it was properly managed in the means of franchise news/media continuity, but there's no denying this has been a hurdle to halt many a project from their usual pace... at least we got it good- some other music series in 2020 has been so ungodly uneventful on the arcade rooms to even rival the numbered-Taiko times where one-two cheat code tops were all the new songs you're gonna get that year if there was no home/portable console release to back it up.
(and it you want any specific names from me, know that it rhymes with the phrase 'Move Poster')
Ho. Ly. Shit.
Ten years together.
I myself would be surprised by us staffers' collective stamina sustaining this blog by default, but what amazes me the most is having such a recurring reading base going so strong, even after all this time! We once again thank you for your continued involvment, as much as apparently the franchise holders themselves have hold in store for their non-Japanese under this precise timing window.
For starters, the big console news of the year -that is to say, the Taiko no Tatsujin Dokodon RPG/Rhythmic Adventure Pack for Nintendo Switch- was delivered starting from this Summer's end, something that once again would grace donders from all over the world! Not only that, general Asia Taiko fans were also met with the reassuring news of current-gen Taiko gaming coming continent-wide on Spring next year... with a functioning Donder Hioroba, at long last! Then there was the ongoing content delivery, the 'popular artist ports' on the arcade, the extra eSports-flavored mode for Drum'n'Fun, that one collaboration, ...
Lok-approved:
- New Music Game Collab at Last (and the precedent it might set) - Ever since the Tenkaichi Otogesai tourney line has ran its course, this music game franchise being the shy sheep it has been on the collaborative spectrum never truly had a meaty interaction with other music game colleagues, up until the sudden announcement of the 2nd Deemo collaboration round, with more songs for both parties than just a single exchange. While many would argue such a generous song exchange would have been nicer if that was the 1st collab's content to begin with, it's reassuring to see something that general music game fans are sure to get a better kick at, while being in the usual sea of licensed campaigns with IPs that cater to a broader public the most. I strongly hope this isn't the last time we see some series-on-series tag team matchup!
- Ever-growing Western Donder Involvment - It already was incredible last year to witness the official console return of this franchise in English-speaking soil (and debuting in Europe, too!), so you can imagine how glad we got to see such efforts to keep non-Asian players on the round with the home-distributed games being sustained in both DLCs and re-release of formerly-Asian-exclusive previous entries of the series, even with all the MIA additional contents from the originals. For cryin' out loud, the latter even got announced for the first time as part of a Nintendo Direct broadcast, worldwide!
Lok-abominables:
...uuuuh, I got nothing this time. Background issues aside, it's all smooth sailing. Go Taiko!
2020's ending was just as fruitful for the Nintendo Switch Taiko line as it was during last year at the same time, with the elder release for the system finally getting a dedicated online private matchmaking free from the ranked matchmaking's weekly song pool shackles, together with the worldwide launch of the twin (yet side-feature-less) Nintendo 3DS title ports. In more languages than your usual Japanese (and Korean), too!
It has also been the prime time for Nijiiro Version to demonstrate how sharp its difficulty-spike claws truly are, completing the release of its Ranking Dojo courses -among the returning 3rd-gen arcade features- and harkening multiple times back in time when a top-starred Ura Oni's debut could stand tall the "naturally-brutal" songs towering the progression charts with a lone and fearsome Oni trial.
Lok-approved:
- Drumming Up the Fun (and Variety) - One of the ongoing modern Taiko game's weaknesses that plagued the package in my eyes was its song list and early DLC support that was more catering to the 'best hits' aficionados, not necessarily by hanging on the most popular licenses but by offering song repeat after song repeat that would make this game hard to recomment to those who already got any of the last few years' Taiko games of the past generations (or even the PS4 one!).
One year of DLC tracks later and the situation is slightly improved by hanging on licensed song packs' theme variety and the Original-focused ones offering at least one series debut/"older-age return" to quell the tracklist overlap issue that Drum 'n' Fan always suffered with. No wonder how the game managed to move 1 million copies worldwide in 2020! - Yearly Seasonal Guests' Comeback - Kind of weird to talk about this, but in a way it feels nice to have some side-campaigns for the popular-media crowd to get bits of Taiko magic coming back approximately at the same time of the year for quite a while at this point, seeing how Taiko's Autumn season has been prime time for A3! and Touhou Project-related campaigns, just like August's arcade days have hosted a round of weekly new popular (Game&)Variety releases.
Now if only the Taiko people would add more than a single new Touhou song arrange per year once again, that'd be lovely...
Lok-abominables:
--------------------------------------------------------- Glitchmical Adventure Launch - The release of the twin Dokodon RPG Pack games was unfortunately met with a number of issues of varying nature that really didn't get that big of a word-of-mouth push, a rather unfortunate happenstance considering the good will of the series' Western revival atmosphere, from the Tatacon drum controllers not compatible with a great deal of the respective Story modes to technical problems that severely constrains the touchscreen-based control inputs.
Luckily, it looks like someone at Bandai Namco caught wind of the situation and a patch is currently in the works, so hopefully this problem will be a done-and-done ordeal well into 2021! - The Blog's Clerical Error Moments - On top of our real life committments that have slowed down our usual post rate downpour after every passing year, every now and then we also get the same platform on which we write on behaving odd in a number of ways! I especially liked an episode which occurred in this very month, where I finished the latest update to Nijiro Version's song list page only to discover the day after that it became completely blank with no way to revert a previous state of the page with the platform's native tools. Don't worry though- updates on the page will roll back (hopefully) in a timely manner.
In short, a toast for Blogger! The cause of, and solution to, (nearly) all Taiko Time's problems!
This was the course of the dual-couple-digits year in a nutshell. This time around, the closing-words pararaph from myself about it won't be as wordy as the last few years, mostly because some of the more 'chronic' issues the series has suffered of as of late still lurk around on different weighting from each other (over-relying on game longevity via DLCs instead of new games, meeting fan expectations from outside Japan and so on). On the other hand, however... I'm relieved of how this year has turned out for Taiko in general. I really was!
It's kinda bad to state this, but the huge worldwide constraints that have been put by the ongoing viral pandemic made me worried about the possibility of getting even less Taiko-related content in general, even considering how this arcade-born franchise still has its lion's share on the arcade rooms and their latest offerings, especially on the year of a new hardware generation! Luckily we got a good content diversification between platforms that have kept involvment on a constant rate (...still close to last years' snail's pace but hey, a constant is still a constant!), alongside a few surprises to keep a positive look at how much more can be told about Taiko no Tatsujin gaming for years to come. 2021 in of itself might be an eventful one just on the basis of it marking the franchise's 20th anniversary, so maybe there's something BIG on the horizon.
In the meantime, once again, we deeply thank you for your patronage with us in all this time, be it one-time visitors, falling-out readers or assiduous followers. See you on the other side!
