The time has come and gone for the much-anticipated conclusion to the latest, 8-years-in-the-making Taiko no Tatsujin World Championship tournament. Given how little time has passed since the broadcasted run from now, we'll just leave you the full broadcast on YT with the above-attached embed of its 6+-hours-spanning run, so that people interested into watching the competition don't get match results spoiled in advance, for this post...
...what we WILL be talking about over here, however, is everything else that has transpired for the arcade branch's near-future along the lines. I'm not exaggerating when I state how possibly everyone reading these very lines will find something arcade-related to note to be enjoyed in 1st-person... and in many a ways!
First of all, it's rather out-of-place for me to pen about personal first impressions in live-recap posts
Don't be mistaken- we're still served with Japanese-based streams as usual, but for this one we also got several of the slides shown to explain the tourney's Finals ruleset (and a little something else near the end) both in Japanese and in English, in order to get everyone watching on the same page about the tournament's rundown simultaneously. Below is such an example for it, by using the Semi-Finals rules description for it:
After the tournament has officially ended -the victors awarded their unique title plates and respectively-graded celebratory certificates to boot, the winner of the World Champinship 2024 ended up in the same situation as the winner of the last edition from 8 years ago: playing a never-heard-before 10* Oni contender, for the first time in front of a live audience... and its own maker, making a cameo appearance near the very end!
The Exhibition song for this tournament's after-party turned out to be POLARiSNAUT, from the 3rd-Taiko-gen-heralding Vocaloid producer CosMo@BouSouP! This song will also become publicly available on Nijiiro Ver. arcades starting from August 1st worldwide (date still pending for mainland China). As the winner in toe is shown playing the song, in order to avoid spoilers we just ask you to skip to about 6:20:50 in the livestream video on top to catch its very first notechart showcase (1234 notes on 10* Oni) but for an official audio of the song in question, just listen to it right below these lines! We assure you that no tourney spoilers of sorts are to be found- not even car-related ones!
The song will come with unique Banapassport titles bearing the song's title, each being differently-plated if a Normal/Full Combo/Donder-full Combo on Oni is performed respectively. Much like the upcoming Ranking Dojo Gaiden title revamp discussed in previous Taiko Team livestreams, the POLARiSNAUT title plates will also sparkle when equipped!
We got some more Weekend Warrior-y action before the WCS '24 Exhibition song's public debut, but for that one... let's just have BlackY here do the talking via social media, shall we?
Emma(裏)
— BlackY (@BlackY_bemani) July 14, 2024
𝕰𝖒𝖒𝖆(裏)
𝐄𝐦𝐦𝐚(裏)
𝔼𝕞𝕞𝕒(裏)
🅔🅜🅜🅐(裏)
ℰ𝓂𝓂𝒶(裏)
𝗘𝗺𝗺𝗮(裏) pic.twitter.com/VgQLhTzVq2
You read that right, folks:
In a quick-fire approach, we also got our first news tasing concerning this year's upper echelon of the Ranking Dojo main courses, as well as some of the newcoming tracks heading to it. Three of 'em, in fact- each having a short snippet of it being played and with their respective creators introducing their craft in a separate slide, a-la VICTORIA from WCS '16!
Speaking of VICTORIA is doubly topical here, considering how one of the two composers behind the BMS sensation conflict is having the first WCS Namco Original reveal, the same way as Cranky did!
This is siromaru, releasing his Irregular Clock under his INNOCENT NOIZE alias/album-name-bearer of yore, for a piece quoted by his author to be "the genealogy of some of the songs done in the past". The end result is an 'irregular tune' in many of its aspects, from its title and unconventional artist crediting to the song's rhythms and timing of release into Taiko gaming as a Ranking Dojo debutant. He also wanted to thank the nicknamed Zero -zero- for his guitar play for the song's second half!
Up next is the renowned chiptune artist Chroma, joining the Taiko ranks for the first time with an original track by the name of Operate Me. It's a song meant to depict the process of "stopping a runaway computer", going rogue despite being built with the best of intentions. Chroma hopes to have made a track that is as challenging to play while riding on the feelings train, as if that same computer is pleading the player to stop it on its tracks, in the final slivers of unaltered functionality!
The final track hails from BNSI's own home turf, courtesy of Yusuke 'Mifumei' Yamauchi (山内祐介) being for the first time at the helm of an original song specifically made for Taiko... or in this case, for Q! The general impressions for this song have been delivered in secrecy from Etou's eyes, as the same Taiko Team leader tasked the inhouse composer to make something for "a brand-new kind of Ranking Dojo music repertoire", something relatively untapped for the music gaming landscape and at a certain degree of difficulty. Mifumei's answer to that call was a song shrouded in mystery from the title, with contributions from both SueP and Yuji Masubuchi to come into fruition.
After the early Ranking Dojo talk, we're greeted with a notice pertaining the next Taiko no Tatsujin original music contest, whose website went live as you're reading these lines (click here!). Contest entries will be welcomed from today until August 26th, with the winners being unveiled the month after. Expect a follow-up post about it soon enough!
What came next sure has been a monumental reveal for Western donders to take notice of: the North America Nijiiro Version location tests have been warmly received, to the point of the arcade being officially released in the United States, for the first time in non-Asian-cab-import Taiko history to date! Distribution will begin from November this year and will lead with machines that are said to be equal to the models used for former location tests, aka General Asia Nijiiro firmware machines with no Banapassport support.
Last but not least, after a brief fakeout about not meeting the SMS interactions quota for the Puchi Chara handout, it was revealed how said quota was actually met (and by over 30k interaxtions at that!), so get ready to welcome the blue tourney variant of Cat and Ladle into your own Donder Hiroba!
With that, we're done at last. Despite the biggest official Taiko arcade competition coming to a close, we already got shadows of greater trials to come... but until then, take care!
