The incoming Autumn is a season to come back to several places: back to school, back to work, back to our usual routine habits... including (for us) a new official livestream broadcast! With the full recording as header, see you for our takeaway translated breakdown after the jump.
What was first in business this time around was a short trip to memory lane with the now-ended World Championship 2024 arcade tournament, with some hefty snaps from the Finals event. Whether one of the big-wigs Donders on display or one of the many attenders, it surely was a sight to behold!
The sentiment was also shared by the users taking part of the Taiko Team's pre-livestream survey about the WCS Finals feedback. A handful of such comments were also featured in their own slide, down here! Be it for witnessing simultaneous Donder-Full Combo performances at some of the hardest Taiko songs available to date down to the few surprises along the event, it sure was a sight to behold to most of the attenders.
In current-arcade-showcase news
First of all, here are -once more- the couple of Pops songs joining the default songlist with the update. What's notable here is that we've gotten a short message from Kocchi no Kento, the author of Hai Yorokonde! Skip to around the 15-minute mark of the full livestream regording to hear it yourself.
A few days after this arcade update's implementation, the Autumn '24 seasonal Reward Shop will go live and bring these returning Namco Originals from former console games' landscape! Notably enough, it's also the first time one of the Taiko Music Pass debuts from Donderful/Rhythm Festival is brought to the arcade audience, with Megamina Sekai III.
Together with the RS lineup change, we also got a quartet of former unlockable songs that will become available by default.
We got some more merch news in this segment (aye, gachapon machines are also found in arcades, they count), more specifically about the reprint of quite the chunky Don-Chan plushie from Banpresto (35cm!). If you feel some quarters burning in your next trip to crane game-equipped game centers, try by all means!
We also got a couple of quickfire reminders on the soon-ending Anime-related collaboration campaigns with My Hero Academia and One Piece. It's too late for the former, but the latter has about two more weeks to go!
Don't forget that the latest Rewards-a-plenty campaign is running up until September's end! There's quite the unique Petit Chara assistant to grab by the end of it...
One last arcade-related event to note is that the Taiko no Tatsujin franchise will return once again to the Hakurei Shrine Autumn Reitaisai event, set this year on October 10th. Alongside the usual cab set in Free Play mode with Touhou songs, a new arrangement is scheduled to appear there first and then made playable on public Nijiiro cabs the month after.
This time around, however, the song will be a secret up until the event's actual beginning, with the official news relay on Twxttxr attaching a moon emoji right at the end and having people online speculate on that being the key for 2024's new arrange, possibly a song related to either the games' Lunarian race or one of the games starring their kind. I guess there's only one way to find out 🌝
Last on the quickfire announce block were a couple of nods about Donderful/Rhythm Festival's upcoming multiplatform ports, as well as a quick advert to the last web competition exclusive to the Switch players which will go live on September's end.
After the usual "What's-in-box?" donders question reading segment (with an extra serving of mild disappointment for no further comments when asked 'next 2000 series song when'), we got to the live winners' reveal for 2024's Taiko no Tatsujin Music Recruitment contest. For the second year in a row, the judges have selected nine original songs to be gradually implemented in Nijiiro Version arcades.
Breaking the ongoing 2-years streak, this time around we got two returning Taiko artists as winners (and two of the most-awarded-ones from the past, at that), but the real surprise (for me at least) was granting the "15 seconds of fame" for once to a couple of newcoming artists who have been sending multiple submissions every consecutive year, ever since yearly Nijiiro Version music contests have been a thing! As usual, the judges' impessions of the winning tracks and the Silver/Bronze Honorable Versions will be available at the contest's website at a later date.
With the official winners being elected, it's time to gear ourselves towards the upcoming General Public Voting, for the (still unnumbered) seats to be decided by popular Donders' demand! The first phase for it will start tomorrow and end on September 30th, with votes being tallied by how many times the song receives a "Like!", via a dedicated button that will appear next to each song in the 'Vote' section.
Every voter is bound to the "One vote for one specific song in one day" rule, but the same song can be voted again by the same individual in later days (always once per day) and one voter can leave a daily vote to any number of songs of their choosing in the same day.
Phase 2 of the GPV is only for for Banapassport users' involvment and will occur between October 14th and November 25th. Inside said time span, using a Banapassport-registered credit play on Nijiiro cabs will award one voting ticket (up to 5 tickets in total can be awarded per account) and these can be used on the Donder Hiroba online platform to vote for one or more songs among the most-voted tunes from Phase 1.
Voting within the tickets' bounds has no restrictions, so that one can either vote for different songs, dunk all votes into one song in particular or mix up their voting approach between the two voting spread modes.
Voting within the tickets' bounds has no restrictions, so that one can either vote for different songs, dunk all votes into one song in particular or mix up their voting approach between the two voting spread modes.
With that out of the way (for now, at least), here's the much-anticipated talk on the 5th Nijiiro Version year's final Main Courses for the Ranking Dojo mode! In more than a way, it sure had its own share of surprises...
First of all, here's a (partial) look at how main courses from Kuroto to Chojin will look like, each complete with a completely-unknown song, a Namco Original whose regular/Oni status is unknown and a fully-revealed third tune, Oni status and all. Suffice to say, some heads are definitely gonna roll for Mekadesu. Ura as part of the Meijin course, let alone as its middle tune!!
A more... let's just say "controversial" approach for some of the stream's live YT chatbox commentators was taken for the fabled Tatsujin course instead: all of the songs are completely unknown, save for the fact of all three being related to the World Championship 2024 tournament in some way or another.
This sparked a lot of live speculation as of cosMo@BouSouP's works being somehow related to this or not (ie: Ura Oni modes for the post-torney exhibition POLARiSNAUT or even new hellish Uras for his former songs like 4+1 Myriad Futures), but with a net being cast as wide as this, all we can do is just to wait...
The most astute of Donders might already have guessed it, but an official slide won't hurt: these final Ranking Dojo main courses will land together with the latest seasonal Rewards Shop update!
We also got a few updates on the Real Ranking Dojo events, both past ones (with image collage to boot!) and upcoming ones for October. The upcoming namco game center at Sapporo will launch with this event running, too!
That's all for all the near-future content to talk about, but Etou has also saved up a couple of arcade-related updates for the broadcast's very end. The first of those is Ranking Dojo-related once again, as there are plans to implement a Gaiden course starring the WCS '24 tiebreaker songs. One for the Preliminary phase's tie-breakers, in particular, will be launched mid-Autumn/start-of-Winter, approximately.
The very last thing being announced is an upcoming Namco Original release for next month: IOSYS Aki no Nikushokusai 2024, an effective sequel to the musical barbecue party from ten years ago. A small snippet for it was also played, showcasing the change-on a female vocal lead for this one!
This is where we end thing up as the stream comes to a close... but not before sharing one last snap of Etou in the midst of squishing the plushie from the merch session! Take care, until the next time.
