Gather around to hear once more the tale of a song that got more than a year's worth of teaser deliveries via official livestreams, before its fiendish debut. And without the perk of being a 2000 song at that!
(although arguably, its upbringing may be as popular as one of those...)
†††Chaos Time the DARK†††
†††カオスタイム the DARK†††／t+pazolite
| Game | Genre |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro (Y5) |  | ★5 354 | ★7 474 | ★8 640 | ★10 1000 | - |
69.4-330.01
chaosd (Chaos Time the Dark)Music Video
It happened last year and we're back at it again: me talking about an April Fools song about two years after the fact. One could say this is as unproductive as to play the global/English server of a gacha game that's a few years behind the original ones just to read the story, instead of reading someone else's translations online near the moment of its original release (
Like the title suggests, this sequel to the popular t+pazolite Namco Original that ended many a livestream run with wacky dances and other chaotic silliness comes from the intent of turning the "very bright confusion" idea for the original tune on its head, to see how a draker take on the same concept would take root. This song was teased multiple times across official livestreams preceeding its eventual release with the song concept's first reveal on February 2023, a short audio clip for the same year's final broadcast to couple the "Touhou mashup interquel" from the month prior and once again on February 2024 when the project was officially completed, still as an unnamed "Chaos Time 2" label and with Etou behind an obscured glassed talking about it (in falsetto, too!), with half a minute's worth of audio preview.
Just like other April Fools songs, the original distribution was made via QR code, unlocking the song upon scanning it before regular play starts. How the reveal was presented, however, was drastically different from how the song can be seen in the tracklist nowadays, largely with the title being hidden with all sorts of unique and wacky effects, only revealing it after the song is selected. The first-time selection of Chaos Time the DARK also came with a custom splash screen with even more distorted imagery and a black&white photo of Etou shopped in, nowadays attributed to be an edit of a photo that has been used in the Bandai Namco website's job recruitment section (link, archived). Lastly, this was the only song on modern-day arcades without any kind of highlight audio preview point on the tracklist, only added with an update in late May 2024 to the one you can also hear from the top video.
Chaos Time the DARK sports a way more fluctuating BPM range from its predecessor, to the point of having the slower part being fully profiled by t+pazolite's official music video, although the actual BPM implementation ingame is slightly different when accounting the scrolling speed variations (the Oni chart from JP wiki Wikiwiki, for reference). One overlooked thing for arcade-only players headed to Oni charts, however, is that every other mode comes equipped with the same soflan visual trickery, from the sped-up giant Don (regular pace) and small Kats (slower portion), down to the frantic finale and the many Namco-goroawase small drumroll scrolling speed modifiers (x7.65)! If you feel a little bit cocky and want to flex either the scrolling speed or note randomizer modifiers on Muzukashii and below modes at game centers, a word of advice- DON'T.
As of its Oni mode, it's surprising to see how the more generous 'pause' portions make up for a hit/second ratio that's actually lower than the Oni setting for the original !!!Chaos Time!!! (7.52 hits/s against the original's 8.79 hits/s), despite a higher notecount and the higher-note-density finale of the DARK. This is also the first 1000-notes Oni in 5 whole years, since Seiten no Reimei from Taiko no Tatsujin Blue Version.
