Game Music Showcase: Pokemon Medleys

Pokemon is an esteemed series of RPG games and the brainchild of Satoshi Tajiri, spanning all the way back to 1995, when the first two games, Pokemon Red and Green, were released in Japan on the Nintendo Game Boy. Featuring addictive 'catch 'em all' monster raising and battling gameplay, the series caught fire and grew at a breakneck pace all over the world, especially after its first movie turned out to be a massive hit. Many people would be familiar with the 'Pokemon craze' in the late 90s and early 00s. Though it is past that frenzied global phenomenon phase, Pokemon continues to enjoy worldwide popularity; with everyone enjoying the franchise in different ways, be it collecting Pokemon in the games, building strong competitive teams to battle, keeping up with the gigantic pile of Pokemon merchandise released regularly (which spans trading cards to plushies, figurines, even daily items like stationery and food!), or just simply adoring their favorite Pokemon, whether they like cute ones, cool ones, or everything in between!

Delving into the long history of Pokemon would be way too much for this blog, so let's look at it from Taiko's perspective. While Taiko no Tatsujin has been no stranger to opening and ending themes of the Pokemon anime series, the franchise has for the most time never tapped into anything from source materials; the actual Pokemon games that started it all. Then Namco struck gold when they managed to negotiate with Nintendo/Game Freak to allow them to use Pokemon game BGM as playable tracks for the Taiko games. The first one was released on Sorairo (Pokemon Black 2/White 2), and since then, at least one medley has been made for every game.

Game Music Showcase: Monster Hunter

Monster Hunter is, alongside Pokemon, one of the biggest crazes in Japan, featuring the same compulsive gameplay, though in a vastly different environment and context. While the goal in Pokemon was to catch, raise, and probably cuddle with your little colorful monsters, in Monster Hunter your goal is to hunt or capture some far less cuddly ones with various weapons and tools. In a way it's like a boss battle simulator; each of them have specific movement and attack patterns. The main attraction is co-operative hunts for up to 4 players, it's been that way since the beginning, and monster hunting still remains a popular pastime in Japan.

It's way more interesting than we're making it sound; the addictive aspect of Monster Hunter is killing the aforementioned monsters, getting materials out of them to build new weapons and armor, and then setting out to kill even more powerful monsters to forge even better equipment...the cycle continues. There are tons of subtle stuff in the series; it's something you have to try for at least a few hours to get a feel for.

Namco approached series producer Capcom when interest for Monster Hunter spiked up during its third generation of games, and from then on, each Monster Hunter game has had a medley on Taiko no Tatsujin, whether on arcade or on console. The medleys 'expire' however; on the arcade, each of them are replaced with a newer medley when one is released, and on the console side, the newest medley available is always used in a console Taiko release, never reverting to an older one; and never in any Taiko songlist do two MonHun medleys coexist. It makes some sense; since the medleys follow the same basic structure and are always bookended by the Monster Hunter theme song and the BBQ Spit tune (which are slightly different each game, but you get the idea). In selected occasions, non-medley MH songs have appeared in Taiko gaming, starting from a Monster Hunter Cross song (Generations in the rest of the world).

The collaboration between Taiko and MH is still going strong; sometimes you may see Taiko-themed equipment or accessories in Monster Hunter as well!

Game Music Showcase: General Medleys

In musical terms, a medley is a song composed of bits from other songs, played one after another. The 'medley' series in Taiko no Tatsujin are actually collections of background music from videogames, whether they're from Namco themselves or from other publishers. The reason why they're in a series is because they tend to have the word 'medley' at the end of their titles. Most of the game medleys from Namco games were originally in the Namco Original genre, and later moved to Game Music.

This series used to encompass medleys from the ongoing Pokemon and Monster Hunter franchises, however, they are now split into their own separate series, as Namco have made them a regular feature in Taiko games.