Here we are again, the day to trash another set of calendars across your home in order to welcome a new one... while thinking backl on what we've just witnessed! The latest Year of the Tiger is about draw back its figurative claws, but what sorts of markings have they left for Taiko no Tatsujin as a series in 2022? Well, that's where I step in with our returning recap feature series, complete with some personal impressions along the way.
Here's the story thus far...
1st Trimester
From January to March, we've witnessed the release/continuation/ending of many a project coming from 2021's final months, as well as reveals/hints of greater things to come from the newborne 2022. For the former camp stands tall The Drum Master, the first Taiko game commercially available on both home consoles and personal computers! The Taiko de Time Travel project also had its final couple tunes released in there, with the online multiplayer-focused services of Nintendo Switch's Drum 'n' Fun winding down a gear at the same time.
We've also seen many an interesting first in the coming of more Virtual Youtube songs since Kizuna AI, a proper collaboration with prolific Vocaloid composer DECO*27 (which seemed to be the ONLY one supplying new Vocaloid songs this year, for quite a while) and Taiko's also-Anniversary-brought animated YT venues going strong all throughout, between the 'main' Anime shorts and the side spinoffs with some of its characters (ia. the Omiko Sisters). Not to mention the juicier Taiko game reveal that would come to fruition a few months away...
Lok-approved:
- The Joys of Katsusoft Dondows - In quite the monumental move after last year's Apple device jump, The Drum Master has been the first time the series has jumped into personal computer gaming in a proper way! Considering how this has also been a milestone move for other long-standing music game series to consider in the recent past (DJMAX, Groove Coaster and the subscription-based bemani ports), this has been a release more iimportant for the precendent it set to reach an even-bigger audience, outside the traditional gaming systems or smartphone apps. A broader audience that could experiwence the latest arcade scoring system outside of the ongoing Nijiiro line, too!
Lok-abominables:
- The Handling of Katsusoft Dondows... 3.0 - On the other hand, however, it's disappointing to also point out how such a momentous release was conducted the way it was... which is to say, on the sudden kind of way. Well yes, sure, it's a digital-only game like last year's Pop Tap Beat, but having your big xBox/PC cross-platform project revealed as short as 8 days since launch is a bit underwhelming, considering how barebones on the gameplay features side it turned out to be, with just regular play modes and online matchmaking. Not to mention its actual tracklist, playing it the safest of safes...
Paging Pop Tap Beat a little bit more, it ended up having more console/series song debuts than TDM on its launch day, which is saying something for a release which to this day -current DLCs included- can only boast a small handful of console firsts, on a release that is mostly stuck in the Taiko music past like the first couple of Taiko PSP games before it. It doesn't help that another Taiko game from 2022 packed in such a big trove of content inside it from the getgo, leading to the impression that this was more of a "complementary" release of sorts than something that can stand up on its on among contemporary Taiko entries. Will this be like NS1's Year 1 DLC situation, all over again?
2nd Trimester
Of course, the talk of the Spring window was all around the fabled Donderful/Rhythm Festival, another of the trademark-filled games from 2021 alongside the aforementioned The Drum Master and heading to Nintendo Switch systems later this Fall. Being the first game with a complementary song pass subscription service, it's effectively the one title to boast the current highest launch day song tall at briefly over 500 different tunes to choose from!
Unfortunately for everything else, however, this has also been the slowest time of the year for a Taiko fan, as nothing really -that- eventful can be chronicled outside, barring Nijiiro Version arcades entering their third operational period, a certain well-awaited contest return and quite the quirky aspect in the modern Taiko landscape I'm discussing in the next paragraph...
Lok-approved:
- Super Zero Sudden - It has been a habit all throughout the year, but might as well address it here- for the lack of a better term, the Taiko Team has been trying to surprise players with many a day-later-debut surprises from more than a song-debuting angle and I more than applaud them for that.
Even the usual "Weekend Warriors" slot had their mix-up moments like the sudden Dance Monkey cover, sure, but even more outlandish things like console-headed covers from old/new times and even a foreign music game boss song coming under 24 hours of notice sure has been something to an effective wake-up call. And while we're at it, remember when we got arguably the hardest Ura Oni chart ever released this year, out of the blue... as a joke?! - Third time Is the Debuting Composer's Charm - The other big thing happening these past few months is the second Taiko no Tatsujin music-making contest from Columbia Makes, third overall in the Nijiiro generation. The one thing me (and seemingly the rest of the TT staff, too!) are in agreement with people online was the newly-added debuting songmaker clause to be put in there, in order to ensure in some way that new faces have a place as prominent as any other eventual winner returning to seek another Namco Original to his/hers name. More to the point when the newcomers' craft was appreciated to the point that 10 out of the eleven winners were made by Taiko-debuting artsts!
Lok-abominables:
- Routinary Background Maintenance - Thing is, again, that this was the sleepiest period to snack on Taiko news as well, seeing how the road to Donderful/Rhythm Festival's release only got two major bulk of 'official reveals' preceeding its launch with little to nothing else for the other orizons on arcade/mobile Taiko gaming, outside from the expected monthly updates for each system. Granted, it must be hard to branch out a franchise in multiple directions at the same time, but a more regular stream of content in a semi-consistent fashion might help keeping interests up for what things to come, against the 'BIG-news days, slow news weeks' approach of extremes that we got preceeding NS2's launch.
The silver lining, at least, is that all other active Taiko products have received their usual support, which is surely a good thing! (now, again, if only TDM's support wasn't as underwhelming...)
3rd Trimester
It's finally happened- our blog has become as old as your average fatherclock can count by itself! Twelve years in and we as a fanbase are just as alive as our rhythm gaming series of choice, and it's not something than everybody can say it's true for both fronts at the same time! To end up such a milestone with a rather-successful console game launch at this point is just the icing on the cake!
Other miscellaneous projects have also wrapped Taiko gaming in by their pinkie outside of the TV Variety venues going on for years, including the opening of a de-facto Taiko no Tatsujin amusement center in Osaka's Lalaport Sakai shopping mall pertaining the series' history and collaborations with returning 'licensed partners' with the vtuber-oriented Hololive talent agency and the long-running One Piece series. Even semi-regular livestream news deliveries with Taiko Team leader Etou and the arcade branch's Kimuzu have started to become a semi-recurring thing, once again!
Lok-approved:
- Kumo-Fun for Everyone - For one console game's release that failed to impress, we have another one that has done an effective 180 on that kind of mood! Not only the highly-anticipated Nintendo Switch 2nd proprietary release was met with plenty of features from modern Taiko games alongside the huge slew of both returning and console-newcomer goodies brought in by the currently-growing Taiko Music Pass, but it was also a focus of Bandai Namco to try getting as much people as involved for it!
Worldwide Nintendo Direct reveals were not enough, as each version was met with its own regional flavor of media-shared ADs that were both shared with other regional areas' promos and personalized for some's interests! For the overseas versions, for example, it was nice of them to go to such lengths as to open English-focused Taiko no Tatsujin Twitter channels to share the news, and even to hire English-specific Vtubers to catch the pulse of the younhger modern audience to such a long-standing legacy, much like the JP/EN-tailored licensed debuts from Pop Tap Beat were. Perhaps there may be something more to these choice cameos, but who knows... - Ever-growing Omiko-CityTube - It's already been a year ever since the official complementary Taiko no Tatsujin channel and between the animated clips, the TikTok-alike YT Shorts and the Omiko Sisters side content, it really shows how the people at the helm of the series widely welcomes the feedback from players of all ages in many a way, well onto 2022 and going beyond!
Lok-abominables:
- Oshiri Switchiri Mushi - Obscure blast-from-the-past title reference alone, one sad recurring element in console Taiko releases is the hefty trove of bugs and glitches, something that not only the freshly-released Switch game suffers from, but that is arguably affected by it the hardest. Be it for the less-than-masterful usage of its programming engine away from proprietary ones or not, launch Dokodon/Rhythm Festival has suffered through menu navigation/afterplay-softlock online glitches of sorts and even really nasty instances of performance issues, with the game progressively dropping frames-per-second values as the performance goes on or until the track is reset, something that several players have found themselves in even after a few hours of gameplay at seemingly random times (and yes, even in online ranked matches, sometimes!)
Granted, modern Taiko games already have a history of the devs seeking to patch out software failures such as this one in the past, but some serious ironing has to be done for some of these issues, lest one's interest in one of the biggest Taiko releases in recent memory fades out... - Fading-out DLC waves - An admittedly minor pet-peeve of mine on the same game is instead on the "old-styled" pack DLC plan for the latest Nintendo Switch Adventure, which consists of six packs for Anime/Vocaloid songs from the Season Pass and... as of today, nothing else of the sorts. Granted, I'm cool with the idea of giving customers the option to buy separately single songs or lots of it from the Music Pass as a way to keep your favorites even without an active subscription, but it looks like the path is being discarded right away with no other one appearing afterwards.
We already know how the progressive death of digital store fronts means that select songs will effectively become unavailable one day for any future player to try them out in legit ways, and the same speech can be extended to the Music Pass deal, and to greater exdends. As long as you got a system with a game and its DLCs installed on its memory, you can always pick up and play the content that time forgot; however, when the future comes and the Music Pass offer is effectively booted out from the game, it would mean a huge hassle for the console/overall debuts appearing in there, especially for the licensed picks (which is most likely the reason of music covers making the bulk of the licensed Pass songs, as opposed as the original scores). Storing DLCs for content not reprinted anywhere else is far more valuable for preservation means, which is why I hope some of the exclusives in there could be considered again for the DLC treatment, not just for the launch picks.
4th Trimester
It's another slow end-year for Taiko gaming in 2022, being raised up once again by the finalized Ranking Dojo grounds of the preceeding September and keeping up the spirits with new slews of interesting Gaiden trials for arcade players to bode with.
Gliding away to the year to come, we've also met welcomed returning trends, from the still-sustained content supply for all active mobile/console titles and the Touhou Project series returning to just one song release per year (having more than a playable arrange per year was has been good until it lasted, it seems...)
Lok-approved:
- Energizing Dojo Surprises - Back to the much-praised 'surprise factor' among Taiko releases, I found nice to keep on the spirit with brand-new content being released for Gaiden trials, not just the main Ranking Dojo trial body. You'll never know what kinds of throwoffs you might find on these themed challenges each and every year, now ranging even to extra difficulties to the Classic genre's most ported Classic song!
- Deck The Drumming Halls - It was also really nice to see how the positive reception to last year's traditional December blog activities has transitioned well onto this year's Advent Calendar format revision, seeing how we gathered a similar amount of requests by the end of it! My sincere thanks for those barging in for some festive fun.
Lok-abominables:
- The Middling Place of Taikaloids - Get ready for something I've never done... you set? Okay, I'm about to pen about something lacking on the Taiko song genre that I traditionally hate, with something
(which is not removing it altogether)that might better Taiko off overall.
Unlike something like the Game Music genre getting really little traction in 2021 (a somehow-alleviated position in 2022), playable Vocaloid songs for Taiko have always been supplied in a way or another, although the transmission channel usually tend to be the exact same ones, every year. Unless it's not a DECO*27 tune, a #C.O.M.P.A.S.S. song or a yearly-anniversary Mirai Komachi tune from Bandai Namco, there is little to no space for songs bounding from other sources, even counting more popular Hall of Legend entries! A nice direction for Bandai Namco to cultivate the genre is to diversify the kinds of sources from which Vocaloid songs come from, otherwise chances are the genre will be finding itself in the very sorry state that are similar song-making trends, from the rock-styled original Classic arrangements to -again- Touhou songs. You gave the family of songs its own dedicated ingame genre, after all- treat it a little bit better, okay? - The Lokamp-Not-Getting-Stuff-Done Extravaganza - It's also that time of the year where Ipublicly come to terms (again) of how life comes at me fast and makes me unable to work on blog-related content on a timely manner, by delaying several maintenance tasks and more than often not overlabbing ongoing news on the blog with the news feeds sent via our Twitter account.
Rest assured, it's all content and reworkings that ARE going to be delivered (including that one Taiko-game-reviewing project I spoke about some months back), but for the second year in a row it's been pressuriong how real-life hurdles prevented me to work on blog stuff as much as I wanted and for that I'm truly sorry with you all. You know things get busy when even this very Feature article's publishing had to be pushed back of 1 day to its public release!
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It's quite rare to see a 12-months cycle where console gaming held the Taiko lion-er, tiger's share, but that is precisely what we can label the just-ended 2022 with, all the while the evergreen smartphone/arcade scenes getting supported the same. As years go by, we're getting in a scenario where to spread the Taiko joys is to evenly supply all active fronts with content and little about what may come next and yeah, while disheartening to be dry on the news cycle, the interest into the series as a living phenomena that welcomes interactions from its followers is up and accounted for as ever, not only to equally supply every platform category but also every area in the world.
We've just hopped into 2023, but its story has just begun...
