Just when I was about to pen about the nth perma-removal among the Taiko series' licensed song pool, here comes one sudden weekend warrior that raises its head out of nowhere! Come greet it with us today!
| Game | Genre |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro |
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★4 (229) |
★6 (350) |
★6 (472) |
★10 (985/834/706) |
- |
200
???Advanced Route
Normal Route
Well, ...it's all the more embarassing to admit it, but the reason why this bit of news from Twitter slipped our radar yesterday is because of the Taiko Team going on a slightly-different route than usual to announce the latest sudden Saturday treat, posting in one of their tweets the video to the pre-existing song in question. As silly as it sounds, getting used to the "current-arcade song preview preview picture template" from the Bandai Namco YT channel previews made us overlook this bit of news, but now that's here we can properly talk about it!
Originally released on August 19th, 2019 as a physical promo single release, BATTLE NO.1 was set up to be the ongoing HARDCORE TANO*C label's "flagship ID" song, in the same way the track INSPION was for the eponymous sound unit. To reach such lengths, building it up as a work from the "TANO*C Sound Team" is not an exaggeration, as literally every single main artist directly affiliated to the label took part in its creation! In order of appeareance, we're thus greated by the combined -core talents of Noizenecio, DJ Noriken, REDALiCE, Getty, Srav3r, t+pazolite, Laur, DJ MYOSUKE, USAO, DJ Genki, Kobaryo, Massive New Krew and P*Light, with some of them leaving their first Taiko-shaped footprint with this very piece. Some of the music bits in there also act as references to the involved artists' former hits as part of the label, including REDALiCE's Taiko-transplanted Masakari Blade and USAO's Dynamite from beatmania IIDX.
Just as noted in the official YT upload of BATTLE NO.1's video description, this is not this pluri-handed track's first music game rodeo as it touched many a different series beforehand, starting out from Marvelous's WACCA as one of its launch-version tracks. Being generously welcomed by Sega gaming over time between the maimai, CHUNITHM and Ongeki series, it also left the arcade rooms for mobile gaming shenanigans between lowiro's Arcaea and PeroPero Games' Muse Dash.
Famously enough, this song was originally supposed to be introduced with bemani's SOUND VOLTEX series as its entry for the 8th KONAMI Arcade Championship tournament, but it was rejected for quite the trivial reason: the artist credit mentions... no, really. Back then, the infamous 'Bemani Sound Team' artist naming trend for Konami interns (the one we also talked about a few years back) was in its most active stage and the 'TANO*C Sound Team' monicker was seen by the company's higher-ups as a mockery to their internal decisions, so it was downright discarded. The TANO*C crew might have a Getty, but someone at Konami's must be a 'Petty' one, if you ask me!
This gargantuan collaboration piece steps in today as Nijiiro Version's ongoing forked-paths lone ranger for the Variety genre, locking out the branching conditions to the many small drumrolls that are scattered across its Oni mode. Ignore them all in a stanza and you'll branch into Normal route's 1/16-standardized shenanigans in the one after that, whereas if you score exactly 1 drumroll hit (in reference to the BATTLE NO.1 title), you'll get transported to the Kat-heavy Advanced route and its end-portion's 1/16 spikes. Scrore 2 or more drumroll hits in a stanza to get transported to the Master route, in order to face quite the aggressive update to PAC-TOY BOX on the hybrid cluster side, but be careful- path branching can always happen if you're note proficient enough with the later clusters, so you've better step up your quick-hit play if you're aiming for that flawless 985-combo result!
