Namco Taiko Blog (September 4th, 2025) - The Customary Pre-Livestream Nijiiro Update

It's almost time for the usual Ranking-Dojo-ushering official livestream and with that, we're greeted with the notice of three songs made playable for the first time.

There's something else we'd like to talk about today's entry on its own, so we'll see you after the jump for that.

Nijiiro ver. Track Updates

	Title
2025/09/10 (📕Japan only)
	Kaijuu 怪獣	★?	★?	★?	★?
	Love Love Love Love Love Bakyuun! Fairy Tales! Love Love Love Love Loveばきゅーんっ！／ふぇありーているず！	★?	★?	★?	★?
	Hajime Gakuen Idolmaster 初／「学園アイドルマスター」より	★?	★?	★?	★?

Key: red = series debut; blue = arcade debut

Official Links

Taiko no Tatsujin official blog
9/7 Taiko no Tatsujin Official Livestream (Youtube) - start at 6pm JP time

Chirping Crumbles (April 22nd, 2025) - Cosmic Radio 2025 Involvment Confirmed for TnT

🎉 All members are here!
Muse Dash, Cytus II, DEEMO II, VOEZ, Phigros, Rizline,
Rotaeno, Yunyun Syndrome!? Rhythm Psychosis, A Dance of Fire and Ice, Arcaea, Taiko no Tatsujin
— A total of 11 rhythm games will participate in the music including for #CosmicRadio2025 (๑˃́ꇴ˂̀๑) pic.twitter.com/l3LIOp9j9K

— Cosmic Radio Official (@CosmicRadio_Evt) April 22, 2025

Say, remember this short bit right at the end of the most-recent livestream? Turns out it actually was a tease for the returning partnership endeavors on this year's edition of the Cosmic Radio music contest! Unlike with the 2024 edition where Taiko's involvment was only revealed a few days prior to the overal winners' reveal, this year it happens a few days before song submissions for the event in question can be accepted (April 25th).

In comparison from from last year, on the collaborating-parties side we got one dropped music game's involvment (Rhythm Doctor) and the addition of three more on its stead: X.D. Network's Rotaeno, the upcoming Yunyun Syndrome Internet Psychosis from the Needy Streamer Overload developers and lowiro's Arcaea. These too, alongside the 8 returning music game franchises, will be able to pick one or more songs for licensing rights into their respective games, once the 2025 contest's "regular" winners have been decided!

Livestream Recap: 2024/12/08 Taiko no Tatsujin Official Livestream

The final Taiko no Tatsujin livestream of the year is here, at long last! Behind the jump lies all the English-commentary walkthrough to what you can see on the video above these lines, sporting a particular titling format that may or may not be related to what's been unveiled inside...

Taiko no Tatsujin Music Recruitment 2024 - General Public Voting Phase 1 Winners!

With the month of September come and gone (plus a week's worth of recouping the results), the first round of General Public Voting results are out! In no order of ranking, the top 10 most voted songs have been listed on a dedicated section of this year's music contest and will be the tracks Nijiiro Version players will be able to vote for in Phase 2:

• Fete of Fate / MYUKKE.
• EUPHORiC ENERZY -XD- / Reku Mochizuki
• Miss Me Marionette / Halv
• Overblaze / Mihile (ミハイル)
• So laggy! / Goto Ryusuke, Hachi, Uzumaki are Having a Conversation (後藤涼輔、はぁち、Uzumakiが会話中)
• siren's eye / Katagiri + Frums (かたぎり + Frums)
• It's a Dangerous Art! / Ini Manami (井荷麻奈実)
• Koyoi wa Majo-sama no Showtime (今宵は魔女様のショータイム) / yuudo + Tsudu (yuudo + つぐ)
• Tor / 7Mai
• Senko Tenbu (閃光天舞) / Juggernaut.

Picking one of the past livestream recap post's snapshots, here are the rules for Phase 2 once again: playing arcade Taiko no Tatsujin with a Banapassport will hand out one voting ticket; up to a maximum of 5 tickets can be ever earned for this voting. Each ticket can ve used to vote once for any of the 10 songs above in the contest's dedicated ares in the Donder Hiroba website. Vote-fetching via Banapassport and vote-casting both run from next Monday (October 14th) to November 25th.

Livestream Recap: 2024/09/15 Taiko no Tatsujin Official Livestream

The incoming Autumn is a season to come back to several places: back to school, back to work, back to our usual routine habits... including (for us) a new official livestream broadcast! With the full recording as header, see you for our takeaway translated breakdown after the jump.

Namco Taiko Blog (September 12th, 2024) - Mid-September's Pre-Livestream Nijiiro Updates

A quick update on this ending day from the official blog... so much so that there's no need for a jump on this! The truly-new content, in fact, lies on the couple of Taiko-firsts that are coming to Nijiiro cabs next Wednesday:

Nijiiro ver. New Tracks

	Title
2024/09/18 (Japan only)
	SHEESH	★?	★?	★?	★?
	Hai Yorokonde Kotchi no Ken to はいよろこんで／こっちのけんと	★?	★?	★?	★?

Key: red = series debut; blue = arcade debut

Taiko Music Recruitment 2024/September '24 Livestream Reminders

Just as it says on the tin, there are a couple of topics we've recently seen around here on this short blog entry: this year's music contest entries becoming public all-at-once and the arcade-oriented livestream starring Etou and Kimizu, live just in about two days from now (more specifically on September 15th, 6 pm UTC+9). Also have the YouTube link for it!

Official Links

Taiko no Tatsujin official blog (2024/09/12)

Taiko no Tatsujin Music Recruitment 2024 - Contest Entries Now Publicly Out!

We're out from music-contest-related grounds, only to jump back into another one just as fast! Three days ago, all entries for the latest Taiko no Tatsujin music contest have been released on said contest's dedicated website section, for everyone to enjoy before the winners' announcement in next week's Taiko livestream. Remember, this year Donders everywhere are able to vote for some extras to enter the series after the judges' decisions, so you got one more reason to listen to the latest musical gladiators of yore!

Below, as usual, is a small primer of songs from both old and new faces, music-game-renowned and rising-meteors alike. My apologies for taking this long to compile a list this year, but it's rather hard to digest eleven pages of song's worth, all in one sitting!

• Something-a-mazing! by deli., fishing for a Taiko hat trick with the nicknamed Dadako (駄々子) who already joined hands for last contest's winning entry of his, Caramel Junkie. It's not even the only song from the duo, this year!
• T.D.K. from Tara (たら). No dice on social media nor former "modern-era" Taiko constests to date, so we're just left marveling at another -core piece trying to get a piece of Taiko action!
  
• Piano Concerto For Bass (ベース音楽のためのピアノ協奏曲), by Raimukun. This is a Korean composer who's made the rounds these past years for his works gracing mobile music gaming, most notably Nyarlathotep's Dreamland on both Lanota and Rotaeno.
• Yoki Ranbu (妖鬼乱舞) from takio, one of the few artists that has yet to miss one of the Nijiiro-era Taiko music contests (and with multiple tracks at hand every time, at that!) Joining the composer for this one is the nicknamed Salad Savior.
• Prisma, an energetic vocal piece from composer yumel and singer Shirosaki Aya (しろさきあや). The latter's vocal talent also found a place to call home in bemani's SOUND VOLTEX series, via a trio of contest-winning songs including Greedy Stars! (グリーディ・スターズ！).
• Narase Natsuiro (鳴らせ夏色) by kooridori, one of many Diverse System-affiliated talents to put themselves to the Taiko fore. Also a BMS contest attender with tracks such as Kirakirize World (which also got ported to Lanota), this artist also scored some commissioned works in TAPSONIC grounds (For Boyhood).
• Koto Mukeition feat. Rei Adachi (口頭無稽tion feat.足立レイ), an UTAU-boosted song from also-Diverse-System-affiliated U-Ruri. Sure, I could vouch for the composer's other music game outings in TAKUMI3, ChainbeeT and Milthm, but right now all this drum 'n' bass action is giving me the heaviest Soichi Terada flashbacks I've had in quite a while!
• EXRiXiS, from Yomii. One of the surprise defeats from last year's edition with his ◎nigashim∀ only achieving Silver and Bronze honorable mentions, the D's Adventure Note artist is back with a vengeance!
• Tryumphal!! from seatrus. He's another of the general-music-gaming-renowned big defeats from last year after presenting the double-Bronze-honorable-mention song Spooky Dance Party (スプーキィダンスパーティ), one of many former Taiko contest entries to eventually be removed by the author from the respective entires' listing post-contest in order to be made commercially available elsewhere (in its case, on Rotaeno).
• Gimme-Gimme Monster (ぎみぎみもんすたぁ), another vocal-powered piece from a new name in Taiko grounds: Tsubusare BOZZ, with vocal backing by the nicknamed madoka. In order to see if it's earworm-y enough to win the graces of either judges or Donders en masse, there's only one way to find out...
• Gehenna, eternal damnation by Shadan (遮断), one of this contest's earliest music submissions. I couldn't find any SNS intel on the composer, so I'm just left wondering if that early-year inclusion of a Blue Archive song arrangement has a play on some more 'Gehenna'-related parties to show their head. Do we have to expect some licky-licky foot fetishists, too?!
  
• MIRAGE RELIGHT from Yuki Nishijima, already on Taiko thanks to his contest-winning SAVAGE DELIGHT from last year. Former winners trying a sequel-of-sorts in the succeeding contest doesn't have the strongest of positive records, considering another former contest winner's tale in Mihile and his 4piece-Jazz Panic, which ultimately missed the bus during the CreoFUGA era. Will history repeat itself again?
• siren's eye, rounding up this small primer of contest entries from former contest winner Katagiri (かたぎり) of Tokeru fame. Joining hands for this one entry, however, is quite the powerful name in the BMS landscape: Frums, already strong of a Grand Winner seat in the music gaming sphere with Arcaea's Aegleseeker, co-composed with also-former-Taiko-contest-winner Silentroom.
  

[ACN] - Cosmic Radio 2024's Taiko-Adopted Contest Entries

【告知】

「Synthesis.」が次のゲームに登場します

Muse Dash
Cytus II
DEEMO II
ADOFAI
太鼓の達人

楽しみにしてね pic.twitter.com/2xFsjz1S8r

— tn-shi (@tnshimusic) August 31, 2024

Last weekend, we got the broadcast of the BanNam-abruptly-joined Cosmic Radio 2024 music contest's final results (still available on YT at this here link), with its latter portions being devoted to the entires from said contest joining the affiliated partners' rhythm games.

It's only fair we embed up here composer tn-shi's retweet of the results, not only for the past SotW on his other song in Taiko being inadvertly the first time we got to talk about the contest at all, but also because his entry for CR2024 was widely adopted across partners... inclusing Taiko! The composer's Synthesis. will grace Nijiiro Version arcades sometime in the future (alongside Cytus II, Deemo II and A Dance Of Fire And Ice), together with YOFUKASHi Sound Team's LUNATiC CiRCUiT (also coming soon to Muse Dash). Both songs will join the arcade line under the Variety genre and will be most likely cut from their original version's lenghts in their Taiko-playable apparel.

Taiko no Tatsujin Music Recruitment 2024: What's New?

Now that we're coasting away from the heated tournament clashing, we've got all the "dust-settled" mood we need to talk about its aftermath, starting off with the just-launched 5th iteration of the yearly Nijiiro-era Taiko no Tatsujin music contests, once again being hosted on Nippon Columbia's turf. The website, accessible with this here link, is available both in Japanese and in English, just like in the past years.

There's one big addition to talk about in particular for this iteration, but let's proceed with order...

[ACN] - Taiko Postcards from the World Championship 2024 Finals

The time has come and gone for the much-anticipated conclusion to the latest, 8-years-in-the-making Taiko no Tatsujin World Championship tournament. Given how little time has passed since the broadcasted run from now, we'll just leave you the full broadcast on YT with the above-attached embed of its 6+-hours-spanning run, so that people interested into watching the competition don't get match results spoiled in advance, for this post...

...what we WILL be talking about over here, however, is everything else that has transpired for the arcade branch's near-future along the lines. I'm not exaggerating when I state how possibly everyone reading these very lines will find something arcade-related to note to be enjoyed in 1st-person... and in many a ways!

Twxtter Snxppets (December 1st, 2023) - Rise of the Fourth Gen's 4th Contest Winners

【お知らせ】
明日、2023/12/2(土)から、#太鼓の達人 (ゲームセンター版)で、ナムコオリジナル『Mood Swing / tn-shi』が遊べるドーン♪

試聴動画はこちらhttps://t.co/o17MFFXB6F

おたのしみに♪#太鼓の達人 #taiko765 pic.twitter.com/HwGR2ZiTCu

— 【公式】太鼓の達人 ゲームセンター版 (@taiko_team) December 1, 2023

The title says it all: the winners of the third Nippon Columbia-endorsed Taiko no Tatsujin contest are starting to get released as weekend warriors! Bear in mind that from 2/3 out of the nine winners (full list available in this previous Taiko no Tatsujin livestream recap) will be tournament songs for next year's arcade focused composition and as such, chances are these will be made playable there first, instead of being a Saturday-debuting tune like many in the past.

Opening the dances is the winning pick from a Diverse System label-affiliated composer, coming out tomorrow (December 2nd). Stay tuned for the other winners!

	Title
	Mood Swing        tn-shi	★?	★?	★?	★?

Livestream Recap: 2023/09/03 Taiko no Tatsujin Official Livestream

Fall's advent is upon us once more, but there's still some time left to squeeze some Summer-shaped Taiko fun with Etou and Kimizu's livestreaming antics! As usual, after the jump is our go-through the main points being touched upon, while the YT stream per-se appears right above these very lines.

Taiko WCS 2023 Song Contest - Final Contestants Entry Update

On the 8th of this month, just as advertised, submission entries have been closed off for the latest of the official Taiko-endorsed music contests, going out with the unusual trend to add five more pages' worth of song entries right on cue. Eleven days have gone since then with no changes, so we're just left assuming that whatever leftover song to be featured has been posted in one fell swoop, instead of waiting a few weeks away like in the former Nijiiro-era contests.

This, of course, means the usual for us: a final looksie at who else is around for this edition! Gather around, as some of these names might ring a bell or two...

• HEARTiF4XZ by CHUBAY, trying to find their "third-time charm" after Itagaki and the contest-winning Vixtory. Will this one have what it takes?
• Massive Samurai Blade, proving once again how there's always room for Japanesque entries among Taiko contests! Composer Shioru (しおーる; Twxtter) strikes back after trying to reaich the peaks in last year's contest with the similarly-titled Massive Taiko Blade. Whether this latest blade is sharped to a tee or not, once again, lays onto the judges' watch...
  
• Arcobaleno by 7mai, already a winner with last year's turned-Ura-Weekend-Warrior L△chesis. Another submission trend is hit with its title too, as like many of the past editions' entries, rainbows are mentioned. In Italian, no less!
  
• Invictus::"O"MEGA', a "Taiko Requiem" coming from the nicknamed Gram (Twxtter) of many an indie label and otoge cameo fame, including for the latter songs for beatmania IIDX (Sigmund, GuNGNiR) and the defunct Muse Dash (XODUS). There's more weigth bulling to this art name, as it turns out being one of the aliased of Genki "DJ Genki" Hikota (彦田元気), straight from the HARDCORE TANO'C ensemble!
• Neko no Uta (ねこのうた), from NOMA. Here's another recurring application-filler for the seemingly-yearly Taiko no Tatsujin contest appointments, breaking away from past entries of his with a lyrics-powered piece. With 2023 being the year of his other song's porting into Taiko gaming, will this be the right time?
• Blessed Horizon, by Qutabire. The Aloft in the wind composer is back for Round 2 after skipping the 2022 contest, looking for the top-spot the same!
• Tokyo Neon (トーキョーネオン), a vocal piece from the art-named Aintops (Twxtter), an artist who managed to climb iTunes charts in the past few years with multiple original songs, not to mention CEO and founder of sound company Big Kick.
• WHiTEOUT by SDF, another yearly artist who keeps coming back every year for the Taiko bout, following his past entries of Nijiiro Taiko no Gosho (虹色太鼓ノ御定書), SUPERNOVA (no, don't worry- no USAO plagiarism is to be found this time!) and Ancient Kingdom. And if the vocalist sounds familiar, that's because it's the returning A.Dokuga (UFO Swingin'), someone who's just as constant with Taiko contest entries as the same SDF! 
• BurlesKa WonderlanDoon, a whimsical cartoon-y piece from contest-winning EteRnal Ring's maker museo and the nicknamed Ryokucha (りょくちゃ), joining the Taiko competition works twice in 2020 (Good bye October; Guzutsuki Nijiimo Yo) and once more last year, with the song Tenmangetsu Overture.
• FERVOR!!, the latest of "Versus" music entries to band together three different victors of different Taiko contests at different point in time. Will the latest collaborative effort from K.key/Mihile/Yomii result into a shared triumph?!
  
• FANTASTIC PANIC, by Yonokid. I'd talk some more about this returning guy and his craft, but that choice avatar on display has reminded me about someone else online uploading a compilation of a certain Super Show's cover song segments, all in one convenient video! Now, if you excuse me...
  

Taiko WCS 2023 Song Contest - Judges Board Complete + First Contestants Sampler!

The latest Nippon Columbia Taiko music contest's last judge seats have been filled, and so is our top header for this very post! Three days prior, in fact, the website was silently updated to welcome the return of a couple of Taiko Team veterans, alongside one more page of song previews to take a gander at.

Taiko WCS 2023 Song Contest - First Contest Entries Available!

Since yesterday, the latest Taiko no Tatsujin music contest hosted by Columbia Makes has started to feature the first of the participating music entries for it! Just jump in to the official website in order to have an early-bird view among some of the aspiring composers for it. It's also possible to have an English version of it, like in the past year!

We'd usually get you posted around here since the contest-hosting website's early sections opening (namely the participating Taiko Team judges and the song-submission rules), but this time around we opted to wait as the former section came out as 'incomplete' and still is as such with the first songs being published, so we'll just get to the chase with what we got so far.

In fact, beside knowing that Taiko Team leader Etou and SueP (as series planner/level designer rep) will be back at the incorporeal judges' desk, the Sound Director seat is still to be decided, so it's still up in the air who among any of the past judges will be back, or if someone else is appearing on its stead.

One thing that's unchanging, however, is the Song Submission criteria, that basically adopts 1-to-1 the application criteria from the last edition, up to (and including) the "First Recruitment Round" for songs whose makers have never had anything of their own to be available in the Taiko series thus far. Once again, at least one of the First-recruitment works will win one of the winning seats on this contest, but after seeing how basically EVERY winner from the 2022 contest but one were from newcoming artists, it's anyone's guess to see who's gonna get the lion's share between veterans and newbies!

There's also one last blurb in the website's "Apply" section, one that only appears on the website's Japanese version. Among the planned 8-to-10 winning tracks to make their debut in the upcoming World Championship 2024 arcade tournament, one of said winners will actually become the tournament's theme song!

Livestream Recap: 2023/06/18 Taiko no Tatsujin Official Livestream

Four-ish months after the last venue, we're back again with Etou and Kimizu's Drum-gus Journey in their latest YT apparel to deliver all current and future Taiko no Tatsujin-related news! As usual, above your eyes is the embedded video in question while after the jump is our brief English recap for it.

Livestream Recap: 2022/07/16 Taiko no Tatsujin Official Livestream

Etou and Kimizu are back amidst the heat of summer to bring you information for the Taiko no Tatsujin franchise (mostly arcade Nijiiro ver.).

Discuss this post: Reddit, Twitter

Sonority Scouts - Losing Competitors' Foreign Pick-Me-Up

Less than two days are left between us and the unveiling of the latest Taiko no Tatsujin song contest, via the upcoming livestream session starring Etou and Kimizu!

Right before that, however, we're holding one brief talk about something related to the song-making scenario, similar to what we've done around the last edition's closure. Because yes, apparently there might be something else behind a losing song's entry leaving the submission form...

Namco Taiko Blog (July 8th, 2022) - Summer Synth Beats, with a Spoonful of Livestream

This time around, the latest arcade Weekend Warrior gets announced through a full-fledged Taiko Team blog entry, complete with the final details pertaining next week's livestream of July 16th.

2nd Nippon Columbia Taiko Contest - The Final Entries

 

The Taiko Team has usually been eager on telling on Twitter when all of the a song-making contest's public entries have been uploaded on the contest page for everyone to see... but that doesn't look like the intended course of action for this one edition! Thus, after giving the benefit of the doubt for a few more days, we're just assuming at this point that every valid entry is already online.

Step right in for a final slew of talents from the last 5 page additions! Among the final contestants, we can find...

• Raitei Akatsuki Kane (雷霆暁鐘), by the nicknamed siqlo (pronounced 'saikuro'). Already a multiple-time SOUND VOLTEX contest winner (Electric Injury; Adrenaline Rush among these), he's also found a place inside lowiro's Arcaea, with the collaboration song Mirzram.
  
• Venus Victrix, another song submission from a trio of artists: the nick-named deli., vocalist Dadaco (駄々子) from Retropolitaliens (Toon Town Toys' Tune from Taiko gaming) and one Carmer (かるめん) who might mislead people thinking back to a certain The future of the Taiko Drum-shaped composer (at least it tricked me...). Will the trio succeede where other ensembles have failed in the past? (Also, what's up with the lyrics choice at the beginning...)
  
• Shadow Fairies, by Black Oblaat. This one here is a really fresh name to witness, seeing as his online-posting musical activities stretch as fas as mere months, with the personal YouTube channel starting out with IA-powered Vocaloid songs!
  
• Akumade Yamitsuki (あくまでヤミつき), an upbeat tune where former 11th-hour-submission contest winner Versus tags with the Taiko-recurring vocalist Yura Hatsuki (葉月ゆら). Should this tune cut in, it'd be the first song without her usual partnership with Drop!
  
• Fantasia Sonata Lily, A song from the nicknamed PYKAMIA that not only already bolsters a presence within mobile music gaming as a BGM composer, but that also makes some of these for motern Vtubers, too! Joining the artist are power metal talent Ring and DJ Timotei, here credited as Satsunan (薛南).
  
• Stella no Senritsu (ステラの旋律), from the sole winner of the second Taiko CreoFUGA contest's Overseas Asia divition! BTB/Ben TinyBunny is back at it again with a full-instrumental piece, and a more aggressive one in tone from his former Asagao!
• PRESSSTART NEWWWORLD, a chiptune-based submission from the nicknamed HALLPBE.S, from Jaxalate Records. Among the former works, two of the same author also made it into music gaming: Egoistical Drug from the defunct MÚSECA and Enola Farewell from Deemo II.
• Hexenprozess, starring the nicknamed Δ→Low who's applying into the yearly Taiko song contests for the third year in a row... and every time with a couple of tracks to boot!
  
• Hidari Kulikku ga Osenai (左クリックが押せない), also from a duo who's been attending the recurring contests for the third year in a row! After earning a winning seat with 2020's edition and missing the mark the year after with two different submissions, how will Risshu and Choco's latest creation fare, this year?
  
• Hakujitsumi, Kirisame ni Tokete (白日夢、霧雨に溶けて), ending our recap with a newcomer tangent once more! Composer Goto (後藤) -who already got the song Predation into mobile music game Overrapid- is joined by vocalist Zerowan (ぜりょわん) in the hopes of landing one of the vacant Taiko seats this edition is offering.