Welcome back to our usual pre-Christmas antics! The month of December has always been a time of anticipation, and we're gonna walk though it with another round of "wish list"-styled song features, thanks to the kind suggestions that have been fetched on the Taiko no Tatsujin Discord server these past days.
The theme of this year is an interactive advent calendar, with which we'll be adding a song feature per day just like the regular cloth/paperback-based ones. Just click on its windows as days go by to see which daily surprise you're going to be treated with!
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Identity part II SHK / O2JAMStarting up with jorj's request, we have a cold classic about user-suggested songs for an eventual Taiko port- tracks from other rhythm games! This one in particular lets us cross of the board another untalked-of title, too.
Released online on March 31st, 2006 for several Asian countries by developer O2Media, O2Jam is a matchmaking rhythm game with keyboard-based inputs and visual cues to call back to beatmania IIDX and derivative BMS chart readers everywhere, with the key feature being a slightly-different, 7key layout in three colors and a cumulative accuracy-maintaning gimmick for accurate plays to keep an ongoing 'Jam Groove' combo streak even if a Bad hit is registered along the way. The song here at hand is part of one of its more popular series by composer Shin Hyun Keun/SoundHolikK -or SHK for short- (SoundCloud; personal blog), who's also one of the more prominent O2Jam charters... including for his own songs!
Being part of a similarly-titled song streak nomenclature, each of the Identity songs in its source game sneaks in one of its mode's charts (usually the Hard ones) a particular pattern that has been labled as the 'Huk Mask', named so that it visually mimicks the Korean word for 'hug', or Huk (헉). On Identity part II, the Huk Mask can be spotted right after its slowdown portion, so see if you can find it, too! The song was also revived as a shared piece of an O2Jam collaboration with another IIDX-like rhythm game in the Steam-available EZ2ON REBOOT : R, for which the custom BGA you're looking at above these paragraphs was specifically made.
Chaos Carnival Splatoon 3Our next request comes from user garoni/e, making us land into a series that has already received the Taiko stamp of approval in the actual official games (and twice, at that!). Will the third time be the charm... for the third game in this really young series?
Splatoon 3, third entry of the eponymous series, was released just two months ago on September 9th worldwide, bringing in many a feature and enhancement job to the same territory-marking-based action of this peculiar third-person shooter which already made the rounds in Japan loud and proud. The setting, curiously enough, was decided by the developers upon the end results of the previous game's final online event -the Splatfest-, which say Chaos winning and a subsequent change of scenery in the chaos-rooted Spatslands, with its story touching upon the return of mammal animals which were deemed extinct for such a long time. Unprecedented for such a young IP, Splatoon 3's launch on its homeland was so successful to score the highest 3-day selling record of all videogames in Japan ever made! It's a shame it's not the title bearer anymore if you count the latest (at this time of writing) Pokemon games couple combined, but for a single release that surely IS saying something!
Returning from Splatoon 2 is the cooperative-multiplayer mode known as Salmon Run and with that is also the fictional ingame unit ω-3, starring Seigen Tokuzawa (徳澤青弦) as its cello player, creators in the game's canon of every song played in this mode. Among the unit's new picks for Splatoon 3 is this here track, which is heard on those really frantic night jobs in the Salmon Run mode. Think you can handle the pressure for 100 seconds straight?
Fakeover NIKITAThe Be-Music Source contest multiverse is slowly but surely having a hold onto commercial rhythm gaming releases as years go by, but the most avid of independent music enjoyers will be the first point how the few who already made it in is just the proverbial scaping of the iceberg's surface! Guided by Megi's request, for example, here's one of the many many songs coming from the same BMS contest that crowned this silly and harmless thing as its champion... and there'd be still MORE to talk about from where it comes, too!
NIKITA/piemologic's Fakeover stands as the artist's final (to date) BMS solo contest entry for 2016's BMS OF ULTIMATE tourney circle, subtitled -Legendary Again-. The theme of this self-dubbed "Jazzin'nova" piece is the world of a Phantom Thief, as also depicted in the accompaning music video by Nabehiro right above these lines. No commercial ports for the song nor high accolates were given to this one piece, but the author would later on collaborate with the now-retired composer SOTUI for a final BMS contest entry in the subsequent year, with the track Is this REAL?. While not actively composing new stuff on his own, the personal SoundCloud page is still up to house his past works!
CruX SUWAKI / DynamixDiamondN1nja's request is next in line, and it's... the third... rhythm gaming feature... we've gor so fa-I've been using a wheel randomizer to pick these this entire time, I swear!
Well anyway, what we have here is one of the tracks made for C4Cat's ongoing mobile music game Dynamix being made by composer SUWAKI (Twitter; SoundCloud), also a member for the currently-inactive Z20 Sound doujin unit. The CruX of the title refers to the eponymous Southern Cross constellation, one that would eventually see an extended version in musical form from SUWAKI a few years later.
The source game is one where players are asked to tap markers not only from above but the sides as well, and to better put those skills to the fore is the Wave Test mode with fixed 3-song courses of ascending difficulty, for which sidemode this and another of SUWAKI's songs (Rising Soul) were implemented. Curiously enough, a portion of CruX was leaked ahead of time through the TwoSquare SoundCloud, a compilation of which would also be shared on Facebook by the official Dynamix account as a way to plug their eventual inclusion into the game as part of a bundle (even if some of the other spotlighted tracks never were effectively ported in the game, apparently...).
As a charter/composing member of the ongoing Synthnova of music game RAVON fame, he saw his own CruX getting transplanted to that game about a year ago, as part of one of two Dynamix crossover events (link).
In The Garden Red VoxWe did it, people- the wheel finally landed on something not related to rhythm gaming, for a change! As you're going to read, however, we're not faring too far away from the gaming sphere altogether, and there's quite a reason for that...
ArceusGreen's Wish List pick takes us to arguable the most popular single release from the Red Vox unit (Twitter; Bandcamp), boasting an impressive 5.2+ million plays over Spotify to date! Formed sometime in 2016, the Red Vox unit has made quite its name online, mostly due to one of its more prominent members -Vincent- already making a name of its own... as the nicknamed Vinesauce/vinny of the eponymous content-creator-label fame! Six years into YouTube/livestreaming Letsplay-oriented content, a band was put up for original music and merchandise selling on its side, even with one of its fellow band members joining the livestreaming fun with vinny at times.
As you can see from the 2017 original upload of In The Garden's description, this was an early release from the album Another Light, ultimately releasing on December 14th of the same year on Red Vox's Bandcamp account.
Misogi Nhato / beatmania IIDX禊
It's important in life to stay true to ourselves... which for me, apparently, is to make some kind of misstep somewhere every time I handle something for the blog. I legitimately thought to have closed the Drumvent Calendar channel on Discord when the time came on the last day, but apparently it wasn't so as an extra request from Reichisama managed to sneak in. I have no problem tackling this one if the wheel calls for it, considering it was made within the last applicable day for entries before the Calendar's beginning, after all!
Leaving my baby boomer antics behind, Misogi was introduced in the 29th beatmania IIDX entry (CastHour) as one of the first unlockables in its signature unlock system, the CastHour SPACE. Misogi is an alternate naming of Harae (祓), the ritual practice of body purification from Japanese Shintoism by water cleansing, a theming which is duly enforced by the Yamataikoku-inspired BGA that the song has got, coupled with choice reoccurring IIDX characters as some of its stars. We're really coming full circle this year, as something similar was also suggested during last's!
The song's composer is one Tatsuya 'Nhato' Fukumuro (福室達也; Twitter; SoundCloud), a Japanese DJ from Tokyo with a knack for trance music who currently works as a lead composer for the ANAGRAM music production team. Across the years, Nhato's works have resounded well beyond the bemani boundaries, from Crossbeats to Sega's arcade music gaming trilogy to minor projects such as Impact Studio's polytone and Anarch Entertainment's NOISZ STARLIVHT. Hey, even the long-defunct Synchronica from Bandai Namco itself is housing the guy so who knows, perhaps we'll hear again of this composer the next time its Twitter account comes back from the land of the dead for that kind of yearly announcement...
BlackFlagBreaker! Yashiro Kizuku x sasakure.UKVirtual YouTubers' march has began anew in Taiko since this year's ending, something that is still quite tangible among our reading base as well! Yonokid's request lets us to also tackle an alternate side of the coin, from a male Vtuber as well one belonging to a different network from the fresh Hololive plugins.
The digital celebrity in question is Yashiro Kizuku (社築), a fictional 30-aged IT company programmer with a humble attitude and a knack for trying new content and rhythm gaming in general, specifically the original beatmania/IIDX and pop'n music. He was one of the very first Vtubers from talent company NIJISANJI in the middle of June 2018, which is the reason he was given the chance of having his own videogame-feeling single/image song as a 4th Anniversary gift of sorts! Gift-wrapping the package is the BMS/Vocaloid producer sasakure.UK, one who isn't a total stranger on Vtuber-commissioned jobs either, considering how he was asked to make a new theme song for the Groove Coaster series' Switch installment, garnering four different guest singers for the end result!
BlackFlagBreaker! also managed to eventually become a de-facto videogame song itself, getting ported around the same time to Sega's CHUNITHM (video).
I Nandesu 25-Ji, Nightcord de./Project Sekai COLORFUL STAGE!Iなんです／25時、ナイトコードで。/プロジェクトセカイ カラフルステージ！
Back on rhythm gaming at once via Shoxk's request, touching for the first time this year the realm of gacha-powered gaming and the Vocaloid sphere at the same time! For reasons that are soon to be disclosed, yesterday might have been a more fitting day to spotlight this one song, but if the wheel randomizer says that today's the intended day, then so it is!
With a punny title verve on 'I' similar to the Japanese pronounciation of the word 'Ai' (=Love) and pondering "what is it" with the reamining portion, I Nandesu is an event song made for the ongoing mobile music game Project Sekai COLORFUL STAGE! Feat. Hatsune Miku (プロジェクトセカイ カラフルステージ！ feat. 初音ミク), available world wide since December 7th last year. The credited fictional unit for its making is the English-romanized Nightcord at 25:00, dubbed so for its tendency of uploading the act's songs online specifically at 1AM. The act was founded in-universe by Yoisaki 'K' Kanade (宵崎奏) with the drive to make music to "save people" by spreading happiness, joined by composers Shinonome 'Enanan' Ena (東雲絵名), Akiyama 'Amia' Mizuki (暁山瑞希) and Asahina 'Yuki' Mafuyu (朝比奈まふゆ) being supported by a slew of "Gen 1/2" Vocaloids starting with Hatsune Miku alone, whose voice bank was used for I Nandesu.
In real-world layman terms, the composer was quite the anticipated one for the game: Noushou Sakuretsu Girl creator Sasaki Kouhei (佐々木貢平), aka rerulili (れるりり). Already featured (in regular/cover form) with another couple of tunes for ProSeka (Noushou Sakuretsu Girl very much included), his coming with an original piece was already teased in advance with the game's 24th Wondershow Channel broadcast for future-content talk and even teased by the official Twitter account for the game (link), before making its (Japanese server) debut last month.
IDSMILE feat. Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin/Project Sekai COLORFUL STAGE!アイディスマイル／feat. 初音ミク・鏡音リン／プロジェクトセカイ カラフルステージ！
We're back to Project Sekai talk, back for another commissioned song headed to the same fictional unit, too! This one request from Pulsar, at least, is a song that is currently available to Global server players as well, so the risk of being left out is definitely at bay.
Delving further in the fictional unit's upbringing, the Nightcord in the title refers to the same instant messaging application that the team members use to chat with each other, with the set time of 25:00 being the most appropriate time for one of the first members, Asahina 'Yuki' Mafuyu, to compose her first songs without disturbing their parents, which is also why some of the act's earlier naver were either Nightcords at a different hour of the day ("21:00/Particularly 22:00/23:00/When Yuki's Mom Goes to Sleep") or literally "Nightcord When The Song Is Finished". Like the other fictional units, the Nightcord at 25:00 members have access to a personalized and mysterious world dubbed the SEKAI (JP for 'world', simply enough), in which the Vocaloids used for their songs (or 'Virtual Singers', as dubbed in the game) are living in forms more suited to the same Sekai's apparel.
IDSMILE was the 5th commissioned ProSeka song for the fictional unit, debuting in Japan on April 2021 and on August this year in the rest of the world. The commissioned Vocaloid producer is the nicknamed toa (とあ), debuting online in 2013 and with his first piece in 3 years overall. Hatsune Miku and Kagamine Rin are the Vocaloids of choice for this track, while solo versions for each of the act's human members also exist and in playable form. Curiously enough, the Vocaloid-powered original is also a Hall of Legend member with over 6 million views on Niconico/YouTube combined!
Hagishiko no Yoru -Psylent Crazy Night-はげしこの夜 -Psylent Crazy Night-／aran & Kobaryo / WACCA
FINALLY, something Christmas-y at long last! BOL's suggestion is making us land on a very peculiar Silent Night remix from about two years ago... If you look it in another way, it can even double up as a Taiko Time blog callback to our own Ghost of Christmas Past, too!
This one 'Bald Night' is the labor of love from two prolific HARDCORE TANO*C artist: the same aran we already know for choice Namco Originals (KUSANAGI; Aru Kuwa) and one Rei 'Kobaryo' Furuba (古葉玲), owner of the HiTNEX TRAX label and renowned for his so-dubbed brand of "Chaotic Speedcore", among his composing genres of choice. Other notable music gaming cameos from this one composer also include some originals on bemani fields pre-BATTLE NO.1-purge (SEITEN NO TERIYAKI, Royal Judgement), Sega's non-Miku music game trinity (Raven Emperor, Everlasting Liberty, Fluffy Flash) and even some mobile gaming jigs, including Arcaea (Vicious Heroism).
As you can tell from the posters in the official MV above (and the subtitle I penned above), this track was from the time when Marvelous's arcade music game WACCA was alive and well, being its 2nd Christmas song release to become playable (video) another 4-hand collaboration the year prior. Perhaps, next year might become its time to shine, too...
Puyo Puyo no Uta Puyo Puyo 7ぷよぷよのうた／ぷよぷよ7
Our yearly 'wish list' features do work in mysterious ways... as in, sometimes it happens that our reading userbase picks something that one of us blog curators might have picked up of ourselves instead! And so, after last year having my yearly Tsugumi Kataoka fancy getting tickled by someone else, here's Ice Queen Yumi asking for an earwormy track coming from arguably tetsu's puzzle series of choice...
The series in question is Sega's ever-colorful Puyo Puyo, a clear-four "well puzzler" a-la Tetris whose 1-on-1 gameplay with chain-based action has won the hearts of many an action puzzler over the years. Puyo Puyo no Uta is the PV used in the 7th main entry in the series, Puyo Puyo 7, a JP-only 2009 game that came first on Nintendo DS in July and four months later on both the PSP and the Wii. The game is notable for bringing in to the table a Puyo mode that changes the size of the playing grid with the 'Great Transformation' mode and for setting the ongoing in-universe canon sporting a more real-life-grounded cast between OG Puyo Puyo characters from the earliest entries and a slew of new ones, including the apple-loving school student Ringo Ando (あんどうりんご) who's the game's protagonist. She's also the singer of this one song, and if to your Taiko ears her voice sounds familiar... it's because it actually is! Ringo's VA is Asami Imai (今井麻美), already singer of DS2 main theme Nanahiro Harmony and Zeami/Xeami's Tenyou no Mai.
The original Puyo Puyo no Uta PV is a bit shorter from the cut used here, which in turn was introduced in the succeeding entry in the series, the Nintendo 3DS's Puyo Puyo!! 20th Anniversary.
Searching... pop'n musicSpeak of the TT staffers devil, and it shall appear! Longtime contributor crystalsuicune's request is next in line, taking us to the land of slapping colored burger buns back when holding them out for longer notes was not a trending factor...
Coming from the unlock system event in the 17th entry of the pop'n music series (17 THE MOVIE), this is a song to follow the leitmotif of its debut game, which is... movies! Just like any other unlockable song from the Dai Ikkai Pop'n Eiga Matsuri (第1回 ポップン映画祭) multi-parter unlock event, each of the tunes is supposed to be a main/insert theme for different kinds of movies, with the one for this song being 'Futuristic Suspend-Action' and being teased as days go by with passerby comments by the series' two mascots, Mimi and Nyami. To better suit the near-future dark tones, it was opted to make of this song a Drum 'n' Bass tune starring the nicknamed Tia as its English vocalist, in order to give it a mature and sensual tone in a seemingly-mechanicized near future.
The composer for Searching... is ex-Konami artist Shuichi 'kobo' Kobori (小堀修一), formerly a Squaresoft sound designer who's currently employed as the audio director for Tango Gameworks (of The Evil Within fame). He was one of the charters in many of the earliest beatmania IIDX console ports (and even sound director at one time, too!) and for that reason, the bulk of his bemani compositions were for such series (including dissolve, PATRIOTISM and symptom), with some works for regional revisions of the DanceDanceRevolution series. Shuichi Kobori he's also a longtime friend with the ongoing pop'n music series sound supervisor Jun 'wac' Wakita for at least 10 years prior pop'n 17 THE MOVIE's debut (1998), usually chatting along in real life with some hot tea. It's due to this friendship (and according to the same kobo, "continuing to send him countless love calls") that he had his pop'n music debut with this one track, one which had to be slightly cut for gameplay purposes by ongoing series director Daichi 'PON' Watanabe but wishing to fully release it in some form, in the future.
To this day, the song never received a console-friendly official port, although it is playable as part of the ongoing pop'n music Lively, the subscription-based pop'n music entry for PC.
Salt Peanuts Dizzy GillespieNedmara's request for this year is something that's definitely more to my speed; I do like me some trumpet bebop action from time to time, talking about Vocaloid songs makes me salty and my ongoing Discord avatar has the kite-munching tree straight out of Peanuts comic strips- it all works out swimmingly!
What do we have on our hands today is a so-dubbed contrafact of the early 40ies, classed as such due to having a pre-existing song's harmonic structure -in this case, the one of 1930's I Got Rhythm, by George Gershwin- being overlayed with an original melody. Reportedly composed in 1942, Salt Peanuts is being attributed by the ska/jazz/bebop American legend of John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, who noted drummer Kenny Clarke Spearman and fellow saxophonist Charles Parker Jr. aka "Yardbird" as collaborators to its creation. The first recorded performance of the quirky tune is dated two years after its reported creation, with the most notable recording from his author as part of the Dizzy Gillespie and His All-Stars jig occurring in 1945.
One curious story looms around the legacy of Salt Peanuts, one to rival the eccentricity of his main jazz father's own when it comes to making of a bent trumpet his own musical instrument of choice! Gillesipe's band has had the unique honor of holding a jazz concert at the White Office in 1978, for the then-United States president Jimmy Carter. The same Carter was the one to request Salt Peanuts to be played in such occasion, to which Gillespie agreed on the condition to have him on stage singing with the rest of the band! It doesn't happen every day to ask a renowned "Peanut Farmer" to publicly sing something peanut-related and being agreed upon such request... moreso if said 'Peanut Farmer' happens to be the nickname of the one ruling an entire nation for the time!
Scott the Woz TV Show Intro Scott the WozStop me if you've heard of this one before: "Hey all, Scott here!" If this is not the first time this line crossed your mind, chances are you're already familiar to some extent with the online antics of the YouTube-renowned Scott Daniel Wozniak, the bulk of Discord user seilide's song request. Taiko gaming already has a past of both YouTube-spawned personalities (Vtubers specifically) and really short playable opening themes becoming playable treats, so I guess that general e-celebrities are just on par for our December course!
This 25-aged guy from America has made a name of his own online through the creation of several comedy-oriented shorts with many of his real-life friends, starting as early as November 2012 with the channel 'WozniakNewsTV'. Come January 2017, the content creator moved in a brand new channel by the title of 'Scott the Woz', where the bulk of of the modern/ongoing wave of content from Scott himself is published into, now focusing on comedy-grounded videos around the world of videogames. It's the gaming-oriented endeavors that have netted him the most vocal online supporters... including offers of TV broadcasting, outside the red (YouTube) screen!
With Scott Wozniak being approached by Comcast Spectacor higher-ups and leaving a positive impression with his former craft, a deal was made to feature TV-edited versions of some of the most popular Scott the Woz videos in the hiring company's pay-television G4, an early-2000s gaming channel which was discontinued after three years beforehand. The hour-long Scott the Woz blocks stayed up in the 1-year G4 revival from November 2021 up to the second discontinuation last month, each being introduced by the custom-made opening theme flashing before your very eyes.
Thanks to its composer, Garrett Williamson, reposting the song on his own SoundCloud page (link), we also know who else was behind its creation: Joshua Taipale for the guitar, Luis Almeida at the bass and the Williamson brothers for its percussions, with Garrett for the synths and Scott at the drums. Garrett Williamson in general gained online traction as the music composer for many other YouTube content creators, with most of his current bulk pertaining to Scott the Woz-related materials, including the ongoing ending theme 'Break In' which was introduced halfaway in 2022.
Brionac of Steel-flash feat. Perio sasakure.UK / CHUNITHM閃鋼のブリューナク feat. ピリオ
Between last year and 2022's requests, it's quite clear that our reading base has a soft spot for the works of the nicknamed sasakure.UK, seeing how two of his songs have been pledged for a Wish List-styled feature here for the 2nd year in a row! True of the requesting user's nickname, Chunipenguin's request is also rooted deep within Sega's CHUNITHM since its inception.
Introduced as an unlockable song during the infancy year of the penguin-powered arcade rhythm gaming series, Brionac of Steel-flash is one of the UK Hardcore composers' pieces to star the nicknamed Perio as its vocalist, although it has been speculated across the years how 'Perio' is actually another art name for the same sasakure.UK. This song was released as one of the original tracks born with the Sega partnership with the United Music And Artists label (U/M/A/A as officially stylized), for which the sasakure.UK music album bearing its longer version -2015's Fukashigi Monoyukasy (不謌思戯モノユカシー)- was released under.
As years went by, the song soared away from its home pastures to join the older maimai and the younger Ongeki series (the former with the same original MV featured in the U/M/A/A network's YT channel, above these lines), both gradually phasing out the 'feat. Perio' mention from both title and artist mentions over time, even on the CHUNITHM front!
potato ni Natte Iku Wonderlands x Showtime/Project Sekai COLORFUL STAGE!potatoになっていく／ワンダーランズ×ショウタイム/プロジェクトセカイ カラフルステージ！
Sure enough, it appears that 2022's big user-pleaded sensation is the Vocaloid-powered Project Sekai smartphone music game, seeing as this is the third song from it that we're covering! This one, at least, shines through the talent of another of the fictional acts in the game's universe.
Driven to bring back the fabled Phoenix Wonderland stage to the glory of yesteryears, the musical show unit known as Wonderlands x Showtime touts an ensemble of part-time actors and performers to share their dazzling energy on the stage. The act is formed by first-year student Otori Emu (鳳えむ), upper-classman Tenma Tsukasa (天馬司), stage director/roboticist Kamishiro Rui (神代類) and the first-year shy singer Kusanagi Nene (草薙寧々), forging the unit that managed to receive all six Virtual Singers (Vocaloids) to complete their own digital roster. This unit as well has access to their own SEKAI, which in their case is a theme park mainly plasmed by Tsukasa's childhood memories of him trying to cheer his sister up, filled to such extent with many living stuffed animals and other whimsical imagery in such line.
The composer of potato ni Natte Iku (lit. 'Becomin Potatoes') is the nicknamed Neru, whose Lost One no Goutoku and Tokyo Teddy Bear are also officially available in Taiko gaming. The producer was tasked to come up with an original cheerful tune with Halloween-y song and -sure enough- its debut happened with the It's On! Wonder Halloween! event, on July 2020 in the original Japanese server and on Halloween's Eve, 2021 for the Global one. The extended version of the song, the one up here that was picked by the requester berdstep, comes from the 2021 single release of the song on July 21st, coupled with the Side-A song Sekai wa Mada Hajimatte Sura Inai.
Main Theme Team Fortress 2This here pick from ugyuu brings us to nearly-foreign soil on Taiko-related talk: music from a first-person shooter game! It's also one with quite the lineage from a fan-driven original modding project, so as someone writing for mone than 10 years at this point about a rhythm game series I genuinely care about, this really hits home for me!
The original Team Fortress first-person shooter, in fact, is born as a mode for id Software's genre-defining Quake, with John Cook and Robin Walker as its developers. Impressed by the results achieved by the Cook/Walker duo for their team-based multiplayer mod, developer Valve has hired the two talents in order to task them with the creation of a standalone remake of the original under the GoldSrc engine (1999's Team Fortress Classic), as well as a full-on sequel that would ultimately make its debut on October 10th in 2007, as part of the fabled bundle The Orange Box for both PC and xBox 360. The gameplay core is the same as the original mod/remake: players pick one of the available classes and are randomly assigned to a colored ream (RED or BLU), competing against the opposite team in a number of multiplayer-oriented objective from the standard kill-racking ones to a number of different alternatives, periodically supplemented (only on PC) with major updates from the most popular fan content being developed for the game's dedicated Steam Workshop section.
The iconic main theme for Team Fortress 2 was composed by Mike Moransky and has been sticking around the game's world since the very beginning, later on appearing in the first of the "Meet The X" series of videos from the same developers (Meet the Heavy), introducing one by one the playable classes and their personality by only using ingame assets, a trait which is also shared by the many MANY user-made fan videos around the Web. Alternate versions of the main theme do exist in the ecosphere of Valve-related products, including the one which was introduced with 2017's Jungle Inferno update (link) and its blues-oriented rendition that was made for Telltale Games's multi-IP, card-based spinoff Poker Night at the Inventory (link).
Zero to Ichi no Kagi no Uta red glasses feat.Akinari / pop'n music零と弌の鍵の唄 ／red glasses feat.秋成
By request of Discord user Ariel, here we are back on pop'n music talk once more, with a track coming from what arguably is the most critically-panned arcade installment yet, pop'n music Lapistoria (pop'n music ラピストリア). It's also one track whose contributing artists have had quite the strong grip on the series' pulse, ever since each of them winning one fateful bemani contest a few versions before...
This 'Song of the Zero-and-Two Keys' is brought us by a couple of talents: composer Yuuji Yoshizawa (吉澤裕司) -mostly known as 'red glasses'- and the nicknamed Akinari as the vocalist, both winning one pop'n music-oriented talent-scouting contest that ended up making them regulars upon each succeeding new version: the Boku mo watashi mo★pop'n artist! (ボクもワタシも★ポップンアーティスト!) for red glasses and Anata mo★pop'n vocalist! (アナタも★ポップンボーカリスト!) for Akinari, with both venues happening during the operational period of the 20th entry in the series (pop'n music 20 fantasia). The same good-omen fate befell on the other contest winners for both competitions, counting the nick-named NU-KO and mami for the singers-focused contest and the well-renowned BlackY for the composing-oriented one, although the latter's true bemani stride was met with his plentiful side of compositions made for the SOUND VOLTEX series instead. Things for the quintet truly went full circle during pop'n music peace's lifespan, when each of them left their own print with the multi-hand celebratory song Welcome to pop'n fantasy. What better ensemble to represent that firmware than one made by people whose overall bemani contributions all started from there?
Zero to Ichi no Kagi no Uta was one of the Lapistoria launch songs to be available ever since its Location Test rounds, with sn initial working title of sirokuroao (白黒青) -as revealed by red glasses himself on Twitter (link)- that still pursuits the relation between sound and piano tiles that the definitive version also bears (siro as a slang for 'Shiro'=White, 'Kuro'=Black and 'Ao'=Blue). Also available in the Nostalgia series due to internal collaboration means (link), this song would later on be receiving the long version that was pledged up here, alongside a reworked/original full-instrumental song by red glasses that would make its debut on the succeeding pop'n game's launch songlist ("Schall" we step?).
Musica per Orchestra Sinfonica Yasushi Akutagawa交響管弦楽のための音楽 ／芥川也寸志
Barring Originals and kids-oriented picks, we finally got the whole spectrum of the genre color roster with this orchestral piece, as pledged by user jC. It's an orchestral piece that has yet to turn a century old, coming from a Japanese composer for a change of pace on the genre!
Originary from Tabata Tokyo and the song of renowned short-story writer Rinnosuke aka Chōkōdō Shujin (澄江堂主人), Yasushi Akutagawa has been a prolific composer and conductor of the 20th century, later on reveered as a master for TV ceremonies as well as for his movie-scoring duties favoring several of the national film directors of the time. His works were deeply inspired by the contemporary composers of the Soviet Unior, to the point of Yasushi himself illegally entering the state in 30ies just to meet and befriend several of the leading musical authorities on the time, from Dmitri Shostakovich to Aram Khachaturian and Dmitri Kabalevsky; as such, Yasushi's works have been the only Japanese ones to ever be officially published in the Soviet Union, back when there was no diplomatic relations of sorts between it and Japan.
The Musica per Orchestra Sinfonica was composed for the NHK Broadcasting Network's 25th anniversary project, seeing its completion on February 20th in 1950 and its first premiere one month later with conductor Hidemaro Kokoe (近衛秀麿). The piece is written for 28 musical instruments overall between piano, 5-strings, percussions, woodwind and brasses, which were worth a special composing accolade alongside contemporary composer Ikuma Dan (團伊玖磨)'s Symphony No.1.
The recording of the 9-minute piece up here comes from orchestra conductor Tadashi Mori (森正), main conductor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra between 1967 and 1972, recorded as one of the two B-side tracks of Yasushi Akutagawa in a vinile release dated around the same timeframe, with Side A housing a couple of works from Toshiro Mayuzumi (黛敏郎) instead. Additional details on the orchestral piece's production are available in its YT video description, straight out of said vinile release's booklet, so you can take a gander there for a better insight on it, too!
Inshie Romantic Yokai Watch Y 〜Encounter With M〜交響管弦楽のための音楽 ／「妖怪学園Y ～Nとの遭遇～」
Up next we have the final opening theme for a spinoff in a series that is already well-represented in official Taiko gaming... including the very same spinoff itself! This one was a suggestion from Mario of the Discord group.
Earlier this year, in one of our regular Song of the Week entries, I touched upon the matter of the Yokai Watch franchise having some sort of an 'identity change' arc due to the vaning popularity that the videgame franchise birthing it was experiencing, which resulted in the creation of the Yokai Watch Shadowside series (with one of its themes appearing in official Taikos, too!). On the same page is the series succeeding it chronologically both in canon and in real-world release, going by the full name of Yokai Watch Jam: Yokai Watch Y 〜Encounter with N〜 (妖怪ウォッチJam: 妖怪学園Y 〜Nとの遭遇〜) and localized overseas simply as Y School Heroes.
Debuting on December 2019 with a feature-length movie release and spanning across a two-seasons run up until April 2021 in Japan, the series shows yet another 'alternate reality' setting from the original games/anime's canon with the human counterparts of regular YW yokai attending the illustrious Y Academy. On it, a handful of students manage to get their hands on a trinket known as the YSP Watch, which allows them to be turned into the fabled 'Yokai Heroes' and solve as a team many a zany situation a-la Super Sentai as series of yore.
Filling the composer's shoes for its 2nd opening theme is none other than Vocaloid producer NayutanalieN (ナユタン星人) of Invader Disco fame, only this time backing him up on the vocals side is the Vtuber Pmaru (P丸様。), a comedy-oriented personality who's also active for some viral TikTok shorts. Much like the quirky-alien-related composer, the latter artist can also be heard in officially-charted Taiko venues, but perhaps that's a story for another time...
Suisei Mitai na Koi ga Shitai Aikawa feat. Hatsune Miku彗星みたいな恋がしたい ／藍川 feat. 初音ミク
The genre icon is grey
Donning the wordy English translation of 'I wish I Could Fall in Love Like a Comet', the song made it's online debut after about 8 months from Don't Be Down's launch, composed for one of Project Sekai Colorful Stage's many original song recruitment contests, dubbed ProsekaNEXT (プロセカNEXT). Unfortunately for the composer, however, the winner of the ProsekaNEXT edition for which this song was slotted in (the third one) has crowned Kaga's Utakata Mirai (泡沫未来) as winner instead, resulting in Aikawa's piece getting a paltry viewcount in video-sharing websites, barely pusing into the 50k views threshold with YT and Niconico counts combined.
Omajinai Amane 1st Trial / MILGRAM -ミルグラム-おまじない
Excluding the occasional #C.O.M.P.A.S.S. collaboration campaigns, it feels like the Vocaloid genre on Taiko gaming these days is lifed exclusively by the shoulders of the nick-named DECO*27. That, however, is not the only source of creative venue for the producer, as he's also been involved in another interactive video project, as of late...
Started in 2020 as a collaborative effort with Visual Kei artist/member of The Oral Cigarettes Takuya Yamanaka (山中拓也), MILGRAM is a multi-parter musical project in which its listeners are questioned in musical form on morality/behavioral matters over the fate of ten fictional characters, all restrained in the namesake Milgram Prison for committing "murder" of some sort. Mental images from each of the convicts will appear online in MV form about their conduit and deeds, with people all over the Internet being called out to decide whether of not to deem them guilty of their own actions. The project is planned to go on with three different 'Trials' for each character, and the outcome of the previous trials will heavilly influence the individual development of each as well as the story as a whole, with additional character snippets appearing over the official social accounts or the MILGRAM Portal mobile app.
The song Omajinai (lit. 'Magic') appears as one of the 1st Trial tracks as early as January 2019, devised as the initial thought representation of convict 008 Momose Amane (桃瀬遍). On both supplementary matierials and trials, the girl is voiced by one Tanaka Minami (田中美海) who both Anime and gacha game players might recognize for her former roles in Granblue Fantasy, Zombie Land Saga and TYPE-MOON's Fate series. The first trial resulted in one of the four 'Season 1' Guilty online verdicts with a 51.66% favorable share, but apparently that didn't affect its trial video's millionaire YT viewcount! Always in 2019, Omajinai would later on receive a single release on April 16th, coupled on the same medium with a Tanaka Minami cover of Positive Parade (ポジティブ・パレード), a former DECO*27 song starring Hatsune Miku.
Moon of Noon Sampling Masters MEGA / maimaiWith yesterday's request from Acidity out of the way, today we have Notaweeb's Wish List idea to tackle, making us land one last time to the foreign rhythm gaming landscape.
Debuting as the 4th Challenge track in maimai MURASAKi's mid-life expansion (MURASAKi PLUS), this is one of the many Sega-related contributions from Shinji Hosoe (細江慎治), the Sampling Masters MEGA we know for his Ridge Racer series handicraft and the trio of Namco Original of his making. Moon of Noon is the second song to follow its naming scheme on both celestial bodies and an allitterating title, the first being SON OF SUN from DJMAX TECHNIKA which eventually got ported in the latest entry of the CHUNITHM series, among other places.
Danse Macabre Saint-SaënsWe're almost there, just hang on tight! This one request comes from another fellow staff member, as tetsu brings us once more to the world of orchestral music from a few centuries back...
The day was January 24th, 1875, the day which saw the premiere of the Danse macabre, Op. 40, a tone poem in G minor for orchestra brought to life by French composer/conductor/organist Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) after a three-years-long thought process. The piece originally was a 1872 art poem based on the Danza macàbra play by Camillo Antona-Traversi a featuring French writing by the poet Henri Cazalis, but the same Saint-Saëns reworked it as a voiceless track scored for an orchestra of percussions and 19 wind instruments of varying kinds, with the Danse macabre's 'voice' now being an obbligato solo violin portion.
Alas, as recorded by the voices of the time, Saint-Saëns's tone poem premiere was hashly criticized, although its merits were better appreciatel long after the French composer's death. It still warranted a number of contemporary transcriptions at the time, most notably among these being the piano transcript by Franz Liszt, a good friend of Saint-Saëns who started his work right after the harshly-judged premiere (Liszt's La Campanella is also playable in official Taikos, mind you!). From 1922's Swedish-Danish silent horror film Häxan to the critically-acclaimed Mr.Robot TV series from just 3 years ago, the Danse macabre has found its place on modern audio-visual productions as an insert song from many movies and shows, the same!
Words to Give Dragalia LostThe time is here, the time is now... it's time for Christmas.
This time around, we're closing our readers-powered tradition of the blog with a song request of my own and unlike what we've seen thus far, this one was not chosen with the specific mindset of "wouldn't be great if this song I like was on official Taikos?!" or something in the likes. In order to further assess the reasoning behind this being the Drumvent Calendar closer, we have to delve inside the origins surrounding the invited 'dream team' pick, one last time in 2022...
Launching on September 28th in 2018 for mobile devices, Dragalia Lost was a hack-and-slash gacha game, most prominently known for the two main companies leading to its creation: gacha industry veteran CyGames as the developer and Nintendo as its publisher. Following the exploits of a runaway prince in the land of Grastea where both humanoids and dragons walk the ground, this was a top-down-perspective action game alternating brief exploration treks to boss fights with a team of up to 4 adventurers wielding one out of 9 weapon types, each with the ability to temporarily shapeshift into a dragon thanks to the aforementioned prince's unique lineage. This was also the first major project in which ex-NAMCO SOUNDS musician Taku Inoue was deeply involved into until the very end as an associate to the Toy's Factory musical label, ever since his departure from BanNam in late June 2018. As of November 30th of this year, Dragalia Lost is no longer playable as its hosting servers were shut down worldwide.
It's in the context of this game's termination that waltzes in Words to Give as one of two of the Main Campaign's credits themes, as well as the last original song made for the game in general. Taku Inoue, however, was just an arranger for this one track alongside inhouse Cymusic artist Hironao Nagayama (永山ひろなお), with the actual composing duties belonging to freelance musician Keisuke Okada (岡田ケイスケ). Singing one last time for the game was also one of its more prominent vocalists with the nicknamed Kurokumo (くろくも), giving life to the singing voice of in-universe songstress/adventurer Lucretia, voiced by Ai Kakuma (加隈亜衣) on non-singing duties.
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Now, I'm aware that a final bitter-sappy moment from a dead gacha game isn't exactly what one would call a tailor fit for such festive-driven times, but I do believe that... no pun intended, the words this song had to give (as also sported in the above video by direct-hearing transcription) could have a broader reading key for what pertains following a hobby in general, not just as the metaphorical 'parting words' from a discontinued franchise.
I mean sure, Taiko no Tatsujin players like many other videogame series' fans can always just jump back playing one of the past games with no server-linked expiration date on sight (unless you like Pachinko gameplay shenanigans, of course), but eventually the day could come in which either a medium/series is discontinued or personal interest on it fades out for good, maybe even coming to question whether the time spent on it was worth the hassle or not, afterwards. Be it forced or not, the departure from a fond interest is not an easy feat to manage, but I think there's truth behind the idea of growing up from the impactful memories one would develop, eventually allowing to move on while treasuring what has been experienced thanks to that interest, perhaps even meeting someone later down the road who walked a similar (former interest) path and forming new bonds from these past insights. Hell- I myself, while scouting for trivia for this one last song, have managed to witness an active will of the online Dragalia Lost community to preserve its legacy in some form around the Internet, with several of the fan-dubbed "Losties" banding together to preserve main story/event scenarios alongside the expected gameplay footage reels, just so that it won't become Lost Media in the truest sense of the expression.
If you want to take some parting words for someone writing weekly typos with a side of Taiko content for such a long time, let it be these ones: try to figure out what are the root elements in all those activities/facets/companies you enjoy in life, and keep those in mind very tightly! It may remind you why you were fond of such hobbies and personal connections in the first place, or even guiding you to what's next in your future to experience, in any field. If Taiko is in your cards, that's cool! We're here as long as we feel the drive for it. If the Taiko interest phases out one day, that's cool too! Just don't forget to treasure what you took out of it the most fondly (and any other element somehow related to it), it might just help you to face what life has in store for you next.
If this for you is a day of celebration -be it for Christmas or any other holiday/eventful happening in your life- make sure you're celebrating it the way it deserves! Have a good one, folks.
