Coming up today is quite the odd-duck piece of music to come from the Mainland China's soil...
NI ZHAN
逆戦 NI ZHAN
| Game | Genre |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ACN China (Y1) AC Nijiiro (Y4) |  | ★3 75 | ★4 120 | ★4 233 | ★7 337 | - |
134
chaslt (China - Assault Fire)The latest Namco Original remix dons a title whose nouns are second-nature to every gamer out there: 'resume' (as in, continuing a paused game) and 'story', the bread-and-butter of several verbose games out there (if not outright game modes for some); it's about time we pick some gamey-tunes out there, isn't it? Truth be told, there was also a different angle to tackle the "free association" thing we're running these weeks with a medical SotW to match the non-remixed Chroma original's title -'Operate me', as in medical surgery-, but I'm afraid we've already filled the medical quota in Taiko right about a decade ago...
"But Lokamp!", you might inquire, "there's the Pops genre icon on the table! What's going on?" As it turns out, this is in fact a videogame's theme song, which is also called Nizhan (lit. 'Assault Fire' in Chinese). This first-person shooter game comes from the Tencent-subsided TiMi Studio Group, released on December 12, 2013 (as an open-beta) and revolving around a contemporary world's struggles between two factions -the NATO-established military force "Guardians" and freedom-yearning civilians banding together as the "Resistence"- in a world where the overall energy resources are starting to run low. Featuring competitive and cooperative FPS action with a dash of time-limited events across the years, Nizhan would eventually branch out into a full-blown sequel -Nizhan: Future (逆战：未来)- which has launched at the start of 2026.
Just like Karma from Tales of the Abyss taught us on Taiko shores, if a J-Pop/Pops label is attached to a videogame song, it's a coinflip between original version or a cover, with today's side of the coin decisively landing on tails. The original's singer was songwriter Zhang Jie (張傑) -also known as Jason Zhang- with lyrics-crafting, composition and arrangement duties respectively handled by Pen Yu (裴育), Qu Shikong (曲世聡) and Song Tao (宋涛). This song premiered on Chinese Nijiiro arcades' first year in August three years ago, with the Japanese cabs fetching it a couple months later. Between more than half the running time under Go-Go Time and the 1/16-based chart leaning into 7-note clusters near the end, it feels like we're back to Gen2 charting all over again!
