It appears we still have to fill the unspoken "1 Ura feature per month" quota
Lightning Boys Sadakichi
さだきち
| Game | Genre |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro (Y6) |  | ★4 266 | ★5 340 | ★8 542 | ★10 815 | ★10 1030 |
225
lightb (Lightning Boys)Some say that lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place... a rule that has been null and void for us on SotW duty for quite a while by now. Might as well go for a third strike, while we're at it!
Lightning Boys is the return to the Namco Original scene of Sadakichi, once known by his Sadakkey Ihcikadas (さだきち イシカダス) alias with which he signed his Hurtling Boys as a Taiko contest piece from the 2012 competition. Thirteen years later, he was summoned by the Taiko Team as a commissioned artist to do what many other fellow Taiko contest winners have tried (and failed) to achieve: a playable song sequel to their first contest win! Taiko Team leader and Lightning Boys notecharter Etou was the one expressly pushing for such a title, while also hoping the parallel trend of an animal as a nickname for the song will stick, with Hurtling being associated with 'Dove' and Lightning having a 'Rat' nick to it.
Much about this song was shared around live broadcasts, both before and after its playable coming as the final Chojin course track in 2025's Nijiiro Ranking Dojo. For the June 2025 broadcast, Sadakichi wanted to recapture the same energy of playing Taiko no Tatsujin as a child when facing the inesorable passage of time, with all the challenges in mindset/interests that going from the kid years to an adult age occurs to an individual. When it was voted one of 2025's most popular arcade-original songs, the livestream run from 3 months ago has showcased the pleas of both Sadakichi and Etou to give life to the "Fast-feeling, strong kick" concept that would eventually lead to the Lightning name and to an "adapted" version of the Etou Beam as a Choujin course candidate, which eventually emerged online via SNS video teasers, dubbed as the "Neo Etou Beam".
At 225 BPM -an increase by 30 from the value for Hurtling Boys- this track's upper echelons surely spare no punches even at the regular Oni, with all slow/speedup scrolling trickery already up and accounting. Whereas 1/16 charting leads the regular Oni (with choice 1/12 streams backending the final scrolling/Go-Go Time portions), the home of the 'Neo Etou Beam' has something more to keep Donders on their toes at all times, with frequent portions made of denser small clusters to tackle for all sorts of Kat-leading hybridations. We've seen last week how Lightning Boys' unique counterpart has garnered some accolades, but the regular version sure has one across 'legit' notecharts, being the only song to date with over 1000 notes (on Ura Oni) to go beyond the 9 hits/ratio value (9.03, precisely).
