Since yesterday, the latest Taiko no Tatsujin music contest hosted by Columbia Makes has started to feature the first of the participating music entries for it! Just jump in to the official website in order to have an early-bird view among some of the aspiring composers for it. It's also possible to have an English version of it, like in the past year!
We'd usually get you posted around here since the contest-hosting website's early sections opening (namely the participating Taiko Team judges and the song-submission rules), but this time around we opted to wait as the former section came out as 'incomplete' and still is as such with the first songs being published, so we'll just get to the chase with what we got so far.
In fact, beside knowing that Taiko Team leader Etou and SueP (as series planner/level designer rep) will be back at the incorporeal judges' desk, the Sound Director seat is still to be decided, so it's still up in the air who among any of the past judges will be back, or if someone else is appearing on its stead.
One thing that's unchanging, however, is the Song Submission criteria, that basically adopts 1-to-1 the application criteria from the last edition, up to (and including) the "First Recruitment Round" for songs whose makers have never had anything of their own to be available in the Taiko series thus far. Once again, at least one of the First-recruitment works will win one of the winning seats on this contest, but after seeing how basically EVERY winner from the 2022 contest but one were from newcoming artists, it's anyone's guess to see who's gonna get the lion's share between veterans and newbies!
There's also one last blurb in the website's "Apply" section, one that only appears on the website's Japanese version. Among the planned 8-to-10 winning tracks to make their debut in the upcoming World Championship 2024 arcade tournament, one of said winners will actually become the tournament's theme song!
