We've popped our fireworks, cheered with our dearest ones in the wait of the first days in the year to come, effectively putting the Third Millennium's first quarter behind our backs. It's final year in Taiko no Tatsujin grounds is surely a tricky one to assess, sure, but like that has ever stopped us from trying!
Thus, once again, I welcome you to a lookback on the major happenings for the franchise in 2025 as a nice stop-gap for things to come, coupled with a few opinionated interjections by yours truly! Grab your favorite Tatacon and Bachi drumsticks and let's go ahead and dive in.
1st Trimester
To the suprise of very few people, a new year's wake in Taiko grounds equals to a sleepy start on the future/ongoing projects talk, barring a few reoccurring events like the issuing of a February livestream in the wake of the franchise's anniversary and the early-Spring updates for Nijiiro Version, now turning 6 years on game centers.
Among the other projects to receive updates across the year are the monthly song drop-ins for the ongoing Donderful/Rhythm Festival cross-platform title and a few new chapters for the WADIVERSE project, the first of which being spread throughout March
Lok-approved:
- Amicable Farewells - Alongside the discontinuation of online-storefront-related Taiko entries, we're also used for a while in letting you know of publicly-revealed departures from Bandai Namco's inhouse sound unit, with greater emphasis on who has been closely related to this drumming franchise. Whether these professional partings were old or 2025-new, however, I always found endearing how some of these people have been called back for further projects later on, even as independent artists. In 2025, it was the case of Mifumei coming back in Summer for a brand-new Synchronica-related song and steμ with his involvment for the end-year Nijiiro online tournament in general.
Sure, at the end of the day it's all in pursuit of good business, but as a general rhythm games enjoyer I've seen how certain artist-related situations have ended in bad blood for some parties in the past (*cough*Something-and-other-ani-Sound-Team*COFF*), so it's nice to see how the "a farewell is just a new beginning" mentality is well embraced at Bandai Namco's for such a creative tangent!
2nd Trimester
The April-to-June time window shared a few beats in common with 2024, given how both saw the proverbial gauntlet of challenge being thrown by a April Fools joke of all places, even if 2025's iteration borrowed quite a bit from Taiko-charting past (and near future). The proverbial 1-up from two years prior, however, came in form of more collaboration announcements, with a few running in the same Spring lke the iDOLM@STER TOURS tie-in campaign and the dual-front collab with Ensemble Stars, one of the two instances from last year of Taiko songs traveling to foreign franchises.
This was also the time window lodging the worldwide debut of the Nintendo Switch 2 system and with the aforementioned Rhythm Festival being the previous system's first home, work was put up to the proverbial 11th hour in order to make sure that software compatibility wouldn't be an issue at launch!
Lok-approved:
- Drums of Fury - If the wordplay on a famous Bruce Lee movie's localized title doesn't give it away, 2025 overall has meant for the Chinese audience a renewed care on its audience with prioritized contents, spacing beyond the early-bird popular Chinese pop songs debuting there. This past Spring was a good example of this, with the Taiko Team's updates on official WeChat channels and renewed feedback polling for an upcoming Namco Original song's creation and development over the months. Not to mention shared e-sports events where the introduction of more music-game-affine content made its debut there!
- P-san no Tatsujin - One facet that better touches the Taiko no Tatsujin homelands, however, was the increase of content pertaining the Idolm@ster franchise, one of the 2nd/early-3rd arcade generation's defining traits that was relegated to the "once-a-year-collab" treatment just like the (ongoing) Touhou Project trenches. A tie-in campaign with the latest arcade installment -iDOLM@STER TOURS- was issued and monthly song dropins from the Gakuen Idolm@ster franchise were also allotted! Not to mention that's how we have heard of Angel Dream for the nth time around...
- More-of-the-Same Festival - The aforementioned update for Donderful/Rhythm Festival, while guaranteeing compatibility with Nintendo's next-in-line system, turned out to be just a bare-minimum operation to keep the (digital) ball rolling, with no plans of adapting the game to take advantage of the improved tech to bring the game's specs in par with the later-released PC/xBox/PS5 ports of the game. No doubt that the game on both old and new system plays fine the same (especially with the patches to some of the early months' most egregious glitches) but still, it's a bit disheartening that not even a "Nintendo Switch 2 Version" of the game to have another system capable of 120FPS gameplay is currently in the table...
3rd Trimester
This was also one of many instances for the seasonal Taiko Team official livestream line to share renewed interest on the heated arcade competition rounds, not only with the finalization of the Year 6 Ranking Dojo's main courses set but also with a worldwide score attack event which would last until 2025's end.
Lok-approved:
- Shared Eventful Memories - All across 2025's livestream broadcasts, the Taiko Team has always been eager of retelling their several travels to many Taiko-related official events across Asia, always with commemorative snaps on toe and the occasional official blog follow-up for things like the previous Amusement Expo convention. Whether local communities centered around a hobby of sorts are big or small, it's always endearing to see the reciprocation of such a sentiment on the other hand, the one at the origin of such a hobby.
This statement couldn't have felt closer to us in 2025, too! Our humble blog has turned 15 last August (where did the time go...) and the month right after that, here's a sizeable portion of one of the communities more in touch on our own Discord server being featured among many during an official broadcast, our very own blog's founder included! As if it wasn't crazy enough for the series to officially return to the West, now traces of Taiko Time are effectively part of the ongoing Taiko Team-acknowledged spotlight, how crazy is that!?
Lok-abominables:
- xBox, Go Home (because offline) - 2025 has also seen the permanent discontinuation of a digital-only Taiko no Tatsujin game by the end of September, this time around being the once-on-Game-Pass The Drum Master.
In the grand scheme of things, the PC/xBox family of devices still have means to engage with the series in modern times with an official and ever-expanding product, thanks to Donderful/Rhythm Festival's enhanced ports of a few years back. That said, however, here's another digital-only game with own unique quirks not to be commercially-available anymore, the same trend that is putting a dent into efforts of old-gaming preservation in the same guise as the already-terminated applications for mobile devices. - Ill-Fated Posting Slowdown - This just-ended year might have been a "year of the snake", but if there's omeone stuck into slithering-like movements and costriction across the year was... well, myself.
As I've recounted to you all between the blog and on Discord recently, half-away last September I've got some severe backpains to last me several months on toe, eventually ending up with me taking a surgery and some (ongoing) rehab times. This, of course, meant a more and more erratic period of time for me to work on anything smart-device-related for a long while, maintaining this blog very much included with several delays/skips on all kinds of posts these past years. Once again, sorry for the erratic state I've left things around here in 2025- rough times are ahead for my condition as of now, but rest assured I have all the intentions to catch up. Hopefully nothing else of the sorts is bound to happen, by now...
4th Trimester
With no other major announcement being dropped, 2025's last months were more of a general 'wind-up' sort of mood, with the World Score Attack @ Online 2025's conclusion, the returning Touhou Project collaboration campaign for worldwide Nijiiro and the Amusement Expo attendance, culminating with a dedicated portion for the Amusement Music FES cross-companies joint concert.
Lok-abominables:
- Nothing Updated on the Western Front - No other projects being available to talk about in this time frame, I sadly have to address an underlying issue that the younger Western branch has seen arcade-wise. Numerous reports from this past year have brought attention to western Nijiiro cabs getting the most sparce update window across all foreign Nijiiro firmwares, only running under the base version from their launch in 2024 and getting huge bulks of songs at a slower rate (for comparison, even Chinese Taiko arcades got two software updates in 2025, also counting the smaller song-delivery ones happening in the time span between the two!).
As always, it's commendable for the Taiko Team to nover more often on the official blog when the ongoing Japanese Nijiiro cabs's old licenses get ported to non-Japanese cabs (and which ones, in case of eventual limitations) on top of the area-exclusive SNS channels some areas have (mostly Asia-only, though), but a bit of clarity might be nice considering how not every game-center-attending person is willing to get in touch to a center's managers to hear more about updates on a manufacturer's side.
That's a wrap for now! As you can see, the ongoing "tri-party evergreen titles with updates" strategy between Nijiiro Version, Donderful/Rhythm Festival and Pop Tap Beat has been the main focus once again, contourned as always by a series of surrounding projects along the way. It's hard to tell at any point whether things will change or not and new playable entries will enter in the field as game-changers to renew interest in the franchise (moreso at the start of a brand new year!), but we'll keep our usual news-following momentum to keep you posted on any and all develoments around our cherished drum-pounding franchise.
Giddy-up in 2026! See you soon.
