New year, same premise- to wait for the Taiko-ing to come by learning more about the tracks that are already gracing the series!
We're starting things up for 2026 with a song that surely puts the horse in horsepower for many...
RUNNING IN THE “90S” Initial D
「頭文字D」より
| Game | Genre |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PTB |  | ★3 126 | ★5 213 | ★5 319 | ★8 492 | - |
158.5
run90s (RUNNING IN THE "90S")The latest of Pop Tap Beat's lucky exclusives brings us once again to the world of Eurobeat with heated racing on the background... and by 'once again', I mean for the first time since about sixteen years ago, back then listed as a Variety tune. This time around, we've gotten a proper Anime genre classification for it, so you know where we're beginning our spiele at!
Mangaka Shuichi Shigeno (重野秀一)'s most popular work with Kodansha magazines-led serialiation starting on July 17th, 1995, Initial D is a seinen coming-of-age story about the world of illegal street racing, primarily set in the Gunma prefecture and starring high-school student Takumi Fujiwara. The writing's focus was always to portray this dangerous side of racing in the most accurate possible way, to the point of having a professional race car driver as its supervisor -Keiichi Tsuchiya (土屋圭市), notoriously credited as the father of the drifting technique- and having all the many mountain-based streets and locations being based on actual roads in the real-life Kanto region's mountain area, even with fake location/city names being novered in the manga.
Initial D's long-running manga, even with the finish line being crossed on July 2013 and novering 48 tankobon releases, has boasted a number of animated projectss, the primary bulk of which being the "xxx Stage" series airing between 1998 and 2014, featuring different animation studios each time (with the exception of the 2010s's Fifth Stage and Final Stage, both from SynergySP) and Third Stage from Studio Deen being the only feature movie from the 'core' animation block, in 2001. All of these (and the later movies) have popularized the common usage of Eurobeat songs as insert music, in order to amplify the tension across the series' many racing battles.
Among the most iconic insert songs featured in Initial D's early arcs is (uncapitalized) Running in the 90s, with vocal performance from the same singer behind the NIGHT OF FIRE we've hinted at in the incipit! Indeed, under the nickname of Max Coveri lies once again the Italian Maurizio de Jorio, one of the 80s/90s artists to share the same 'Max Coveri' art name at different points in time (with Mauro Farina, Massimo Brancaccio, Roberto Gabrielli and Corrado Berretta) for the Italian dance scene. Dual-composed by Laurent Gelmetti and Pamela Prandoni with the lyrics penned by Clara Moroni, this song made its debut in Japan as part of Japanese label Avex Trax's long-running SUPER EUROBEAT album series, as part of Volume 85 issued on February 25th, 1998. The year later, it managed to make its extended debut as a dual-sided, 12-inch single with the song Golden Age under the Delta Music Industry (DMI) Italian Eurobeat label. The same song would eventually see a second coming with digital services in the 2020s, with the SUPER EUROBEAT Vol.85 DELTA EDITION themed rerelease to feature its extended form alongside 4 other songs from the original album. Countless remix versions are to be expected across the years, but the one to nover among others is the fabled Running In The 90s 2023, made by one of the original song's composers Laurent Gelmetti (as "Laurent Newman") with a special music video being commissioned to release in conjunction with Delta Music Industry's 30th anniversary in 2025, animated in the style of the earlier Initial D anime seasons.
Just like NIGHT OF FIRE before it, this Eurobeat sensation made the Taiko transition as a cover song with the full title capitalization treatment (and "90S" in brackets). Rather than adopting a full-on "musical notation" charting approach, we've got an Oni chart mostly made of repeating beat stanzas under the lone 1/16 signature, really reminiscent of the 2nd arcade generation that fathered the other popular Eurobeat piece. Still, mind those 7-beat consecutive clusters at the end-they're quite the unsuspecting miss-tollers for those just stepping into the 8-star realm!
