Song of the Week! 27 March 2021

 

With the latest Nijiiro update, the Game Music and Variety genres are getting split once again into separate entities on arcade grounds. As you're going to find out today, however, some of the affected tracks might still be counted as 'honorary members' of sorts for both genres the same!

 

Dogbite t+pazolite

Game	Genre
AC Nijiiro	->	★4 (200)	★6 (305)	★7 (488)	★10 (817)	-

 195
???

Storming nation-wide Nijiiro arcades during last Summer's surge of Weekend Warriors, Tomoyuki 't+pazolite' Hamada (浜田知幸)'s latest playable song in Taiko no Tatsujin is in somewhat of a weird middle ground of genre definition, being an album-spawn piece not from J-POP/Pops-affine scenario that pushes itself into "Game Music citizenship" despite not being a song commissioned for a rhythm game...

..well, any rhythm game in particular, to be more accurate.

You see, Dogbite is one of the tracks included in last year's without Permission album, released as the artist's 38th release under his proprieatry C.H.S. label on May 5th. There is one peculiar trait that sets this one release among the rest of his current discography, one which is also promptly listed in its own website: all of the featured songs -Dogbite included- can be freely implemented into any rhythm gaming project, be it for personal purposes or even to be plugged into commercially-available ones. As long as the Conditions of Use being listed on said album's website are uphold, everyone can feature any of its four tracks in their own game... without permission from the artist himself! So much so that t+pazolite himself also offers multiple audio file formats for song analysis/charting studios and complimentary artwork to advertise his creations within the boundaries of the target rhythm game, as part of the album's "Developer's Kit" purchasable release.

Up to this point in time, a little shy of one year since the without Permission album's release, several music games have already accepted t+pazolite's invitation of no-questions-asked-inclusion plan, with Dogbite arguably being of the most implemented one to date. Among these at this point in time, we nover its inclusion into SeedGames's VELUCITY, sep-neko-ya's Resonark X, Kaeru-gumi's ChainBeeT, TjiS Records's Halo Beats!, the mobile-friendly TAKUMI³ and Sho Aoki's WAVEAT ReLIGHT. The same t+pazolite has also left his song-making impressions about the track for one of the Taiko Team's official blog entries (link), alongside steμ who was behind its Taiko notecharts. As for many of t+pazolite's works, Dogbite's Uncut Edition was uploaded on YouTube by the author himself for his own channel!

Even repeating-with-minor-variations Oni notechart jobs can prove themselves worthy 10* challengers if backed up by the right supporting elements, something that Dogbite arguably has on its own side. If the pressuring pace and the repeated 1/24 clusters aren't enough to throw first-timers off the course, perhaps some psychological breakdown with x8-scrolling-speed small drumrolls might just do the trick!