It's not rare for select game music tracks to only be featured in a single game in the series overall but most surprisingly, the biggest share of this tune subset comes from Namco's gaming history itself!
Here's one of such tales, for an ongoing playable exclusive to the PlayStation 2's Appare! Sandaime.
Bravoman
ベラボーマン
| Game | Genre |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PS2 3 |  (Pop Music) | - | ★4 206 | ★5 352 | ★4 352 | - |
142
vbera (Videogame - Beraboman)Back when Taiko titles only had hidden unlockables as the way to "add" more tunes to the reveal/public launch tracklist, most of the early games had the home-entertainment equivalent of "playing a credit's worth of songs a bunch of times" to add a handful more tunes, just like in the game center. The third PS2 title could add 5 extra songs to its tracklist this way, with the very last one being this Bravoman theme. You've read that right- PS2 players would be unlocking Taiko series staples like Sports Digestdon and Saitama 2000 before this one obscure oddity!
This is a vocal arrangement of the BGM from a Japan-exclusive arcade title, going under the name of Chōzetsurinjin Berabōman (超絶倫人ベラボーマン, lit. "Super Unequaled Human Beraboman"). Released in 1988 for the Namco System 1 arcade board, this was created by former Namco programmer/composer Norio Nakagata (中潟憲雄) as a fully-realized vision from the "precursor" he directed years earlier, Genpei Toma Den (another Taiko darling across the years) with the mindset of developing a game around the things he enjoyed, primarily Japanese movies around the tokusatsu superhero theme and kaiju flicks, even to the point of hiring several former staff members from Toei for the job. The resulting story sees the upbringing of a Japanese car insurance salesman named Hitoshi Nakamura, who is warned by an alien visitor from the planet Alpha of the evil world-domination schemes of Dr.Bakusa and turns into the titular Bravoman to stop him. Norio Nakagata also made the game to pay homage to Namco's founder Masaya Nakamura (中村雅哉), with Bravoman's non-superhero looks being based on him and the same 'Chozetsurin-jin' part of the title being an amicable nickname given to one of Nakagata's colleagues across the years.
The game in Japan was a well-received hit, thanks to/despite the unique feature of pressure-sensitive button to land hits as hards as the buttons are pressed, which eventually lead into several faulty hardware issues across its run. A sequel by the name of Kaettekita Bravoman was eventually discussed on a concept stage, based around the idea of a jobless/homeless Hitoshi Nakamura who tries to win back the (divorced) love of his life as Bravoman, which was eventually shelved as there was no agreement of what kind of direction could have such a story premise in videogame form. One of Bravoman's bosses, however, had more luck with a spinoff title released as a Japan-exclusive in late 1990: Pistol Daimyo no Bōken. How the West got a hold of the original game, however, was through a TurboGrafx-16 port from Now Production which removed the pressure-sensitive input system, a port which was also re-released as a Virtual Console title. Eventually the 'arcade-accurate' version came to be thanks to Hamster's never-ending Arcade Archives line of arcade-accurate emulation releases for consoles, but inbetween there were a handful of years in which Bandai Namco pushed quite hard for a Bravoman revival in form of additional media coming from the now-defunct BanNam subsidiary ShiftyLook: a 300-strips web comic series by Udon Entertainment, a 12-episodes animated webseries on YouTube and a mobile runner game by the name of Bravoman Binja Bash!, all removed in any official form since the subsidiary studio's closure.
Although the Bravoman song in Taiko is marked as "pop music" for the genre (hell, even as a "Taiko no Tatsujin original" in the song selection screen!), this is decisively part of the Game Music crowd; even barring the gaming origins underlying it, this song is a direct port of the Bravoman BGM arrangement that was first featured in a 1989 arrangement soundtrack from Namco: Namco Video Game Graffiti Vol.4 (ナムコ ビデオゲーム グラフィティ Vol.4), with Ryo Yonemitsu (米光亮) as the arranger and the late Hideyuki Umezu (梅津秀行) voicing Bravoman himself.
Like the other 4 original songs before it, Bravoman as a song comes without a Kantan mode to claim its own, with both Muzukashii and Oni modes sharing the same charts. The percussion-based beginning aside, you can't go wrong with the rhythm by following the song's vocals, regardless of drumming skills.
