Happy 23rd Taiko no Tatsujin anniversary! Once again, the Taiko Team's big shots have anticipated its coming with a livestream session on YouTube, bearing news on anything current and near-future about arcade Taiko gaming's upbringing.
Up here you got the original broadcasting and even a recap of it from this past Monday's Namco Taiko blog entry (click here), but for our usual English-based roundup you already know where to look!
After a quick look at early February's new Nijiiro Version song releases, Etou and Kimizu's first point to address is the beginning of the World Championship 2024 tournament, whise first phase was just concluded. Prior to the Area Elimination phase's beginning, have a snaps collage from one of venues attended by the Taiko Team staffers... plus a small video recording of it in the livestream itself!
The WCS promotional goods were also shown on display, alongside a brief game center selection which will sell all the items on the spot (they're also available online in the Bandai Namco online store!).
Last but not least, a brief glance at the title plates related to the competition, unlockable for Banapassport players who respectively have played one of the Qualifiers' songs under the same time span and have actually attended the WCS Qualifiers themselves.
With that out of the way, one last bit of recycled Nijiiro recent-releases news! We've already heard about the Taiko x FOCUS ON collaboration from last week, but it deserves its own mention here as the three Nijisanji Vtubers opening the project have also left a brief message of their own for the livestream! You can watch it at around the 32-minute mark of the livestream session.
But for ACTUAL, brand-new collaboration announcements, the wait wasn't that long to endure...
Started this Monday and running for about two months, a collaboration campaign with That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime is running, complete with its dedicated sub-section in the Nijiiro Version website!
The long and the short of it is that Banapassport owners will be able to redeem Petit Chara versions of Rimuru and Shuna upon playing the related fresh opening theme transplant once, whereas every player applying to a QR-code-based campaign will be eligible to attend a lottery that will award one of 30 acrylic keychains of either heroine from the anime series!
The involved song in question is the Anime's first opening theme, which was made available concurrently with the campaign's beginning. Although the collaboration keychain giveaway is a Japan-only event, Nameless Story is still scheduled to reach overseas Nijiiro cabs as well, at a later date.
Speaking of acrylic keychain giveaways, the lottery for the campaign related to the already-concluded Idolm@ster collaboration of last year will happen next Tuesday, so if you've applied for it, make sure to check your Donder Hiroba to see if you're one of those lucky winners!
This segways quite nicely into the familiar "What's in the box?" segment, with Kimizu and Etou answering some of the inquiries from arcade Taiko fans being collected last month.
The highlights of this round are Kimizu listing off all non-Chinese/American countries to host Nijiiro Version arcades to this day... as well as the hosts exchanging late Valentines/early White Day gifts with each other!
For those keeping the score at home, the other countries listed with Nijiiro Version arcades are Indonesia, Australia, Cambogia, New Zealand, Burnei, Lombok, Singapore, Thailand, Macao, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Myammar.
With the latest fan questions behind, we're back at one certain mystery that has been all the rage this past month...
The now-dubbed "Unidentified Mystery Song" that is the sequel to !!!Chaos Time!!! is now rumored to be completed! We even got live testimony from someone who caught aglimpse of it, out in the wild...
That falsetto voice, though... It sounds familiar...
Other takeaways about the track were compiled in the slide below these lines, stating how the overall impression of "very bright confusion" brimming from the original t+pazolite classic is flipped upside-down for this upcoming demon... Verily, there are no better words to describe it as "Chaos Time of Darkness", as it seems!
A brief half-minute snippet of it was also played during the livestream, happening at around the 1:19:00 mark of the original broadcast (and also here!).
For the final final rehash of news delivery for the day, here's a reminder for the latest couple of Ranking Dojo Gaiden tracks available to select, with a carner of of Namco Originals from Green Version and the first operational year of Nijiiro Version, respectively.
And finally, just as we opened up this post on, ... Happy 23rd birthday to the Taiko no Tatsujin series!
Yes indeed, the franchise's inception is being celebrated once more with a brand-new song for it on Nijiiro Version at this very day, summoning the same BNSI composer behind last year's anniversary song, too!
This time around, however, there are no Makinas
With that, once again, we're done! Until next time, see you around.
